[strawhatguy]

Every 5 years, there's a better battery in development 5 years hence. So I'm a bit skeptical that just a better battery would exclude hybrids. Any battery improvement would improve PHEV and EREV vehicles also, and they'd retain their advantage over straight EVs in range.

The advantages of these hybrids is a) using multiple fuels - has all of the main 80%-of-trips-local on electric range advantage of EVs, combined with an extended range of gas (and those gas engines run at optimum rpm, so they're more efficient too) and b) easier on the battery supply chain; they don't need as large batteries; batteries have more uses than just EVs, making all such products cheaper, including EREVs

The real disadvantage is the higher complexity, although EREVs do still get rid of the transmission gearing and other driveline components.

And of course, EREVs are probably the only solution for trucks and off-road vehicles. Edison Motors's diesel EREV for full trucks seems way more promising than Tesla's Semi (if Canada could stop over-regulating their startups, that is).

[dalyons]

If batteries get cheap enough, the fixed extra cost for the complexity of the additional ER system will become prohibitive & uncompetitive. Who wants to pay extra for a car with >1000ml range? Almost no-one, it’s unnecessary for 99.9% of people. We know this because almost no cars have massive or dual gas tanks.

Short to medium haul trucks are already being replaced by EVs in china, Europe is next. I agree about long haul US distances though, it will be quite some years before they can go full ev, the physics is hard.