I guess you don’t travel by car except for work commutes?

I’m a few years into PHEV ownership now, and I’m so glad I didn’t get an EV. Just a normal weekend trip to the beach or mountains (200-ish miles from the Triangle of NC either way) would mean I’d have to limit myself to hotels/Airbnbs with a charger. And chargers are VERY sparse everywhere I’ve been.

With my RAV4 Prime, I get 40-50 miles of EV range, enough that most days I use zero gas. But if I want to hit up the beach or mountains, or take a cross-country trip, or drive up to PA or VA to visit my girlfriend’s family, there’s zero hassle to find a charger. It just reverts to a normal hybrid once you run out of electric-only range (around 20% of the battery’s actual capacity).

It also performs far better than any EVs or ICEs I’ve seen anywhere close to its price point.

This “everyone should just have an EV” thing really reads like a modern “let them eat cake.”

> bumfuck nowhere with expensive electricity, zero solar power and a daily 5 hour commute

If we put aside 5 hour commute, this describes central Tokyo, not bumfuck nowhere. Bumfuck nowhere has land for offgrid solar and therefore free home charging.

If the city you're in offers free roadside parking with L1 or L2 charging on light poles, good for you, but Tokyo and Japan at large isn't like that at all(unattended roadside parking is banned nationwide and robotic garages are everywhere).

> Unless you live in bumfuck nowhere with expensive electricity, zero solar power and a daily 5 hour commute, an EV will likely work just fine for you.

Or do not have a garage, driveway, nor any other parking spot besides on the street, so can't charge at home.

If you live in large parts of the USA, by which I mean pretty much anything that is not the eastern seaboard or California, and you need to go anywhere remotely rural, charging infrastructure is absolutely not reliable.

I have an EV, which is amazing in my metro area, but I regularly take trips where I would not feel comfortable finding a place to charge, despite what EV locator maps might tell you. If you show up and that charger is not working, which is not uncommon, you might be stranded.

I agree I don’t like having both engines, more to fail. BUT I could see a world where you basically have basically an EV with a smaller battery pack (150 mile range) and basically a swappable $300 generator. I saw swappable so that if anything goes wrong they just swap it for $300, and credit you back async any recovery value. Just electricity generation from it, for rare needs of longer range. I think in theory, it could be a good way to get a cheaper EV supporting rare bursts of range and low maintenance cost.

But I’m not even sure regulators would allow such a design. Even then I’m not sure it’s worth it.

But I am totally done with ICE car maintenance. I want nothing to do with it anymore.

> I used to like hybrids

I think that is a transition issue with most tech.

Like when film cameras were first transitioning to digital there was a lot of reasons you wouldn't just glom onto digital. Early digital cameras had low resolution (or files were huge), bad dynamic range, either terrible lenses or didn't work well with slr lenses, etc.

I remember when tesla came out with the first EVs the batteries had ridiculous/expensive capacity compared to other EVs (compare 90kwh to a leaf with like a leaf was 24kwh). Hybrids made sense because EV range was either poor or expensive or both. And charger infrastructure was barely getting started.

Now it is different.

Also city dwellers with street parking and it’s hard charge, so a pure EV is a bad fit.

Hybrids with their good mileage although complex are a good fit for those.

UK has some of the most expensive electricity in the world, and I can't charge at home without paying the council north of £1000 to cut a cable gully in front of my house (which I'm not even guaranteed a parking space outside of). Public chargers are at least 2x higher cost than home charging and can be up to 20x.

Despite this, I bought a cheap used 2020 Nissan Leaf and hopefully will never look back. This year it makes a huge difference but last year it would be barely a few percent cheaper than petrol. I'm a nerd and I'm happy to do some extra planning for road trips, but I don't think the average person will look at an EV like this. Range anxiety essentially limits you to ~60% of total range capacity (you're not going to sit at a service waiting absurd amounts of time to charge the last 20%, and you're not going to risk getting so low that if the next charger is faulty it will strand you).

I do agree that hybrids are nuts, and only make sense for a small demographic. I also suspect that they are a green scam as I read that most PHEV owners don't bother to actually plug them in, so the impressive ~100 MPG figures are actually worse than ICE. I'm not a car guy but even I can recognise that the hybrid engine provides absolutely zero satisfaction, especially with a CVT.

So yes, people are buying hybrids because of inflated MPG marketing, virtue signalling, whatever government benefits you get from a "green" vehicle (not much, our government isn't serious about EVs and hates anyone having a car) but most importantly the fact that every service station in the country can fuel it, in a few seconds.

I agree in general, however there is one small issue here. First I have an EV and love it. I would not buy another gas car for myself or my wife. The issue is I need to purchase a car for my kid who is in the process of applying to medical school. Depending on where they go, an EV could be an issue. It is not that the school will not have chargers, it is that they will be living in an apartment which will likely have no place to charge. This is the reason I am looking at a hybrid.

I generally agree: I've owned two hybrids, and their high complexity leads to maintenance problems. (Toyotas seem to be the outlier.)

IMO, if you have a place to charge it, go EV. (I have a two-car garage for mine.) Otherwise, stick with ICE until the charging situation improves.

My live-in girlfriend has a Tesla that she has had for six years. We live in northeast Ohio, not a small population.

Each of us once a week have to drive far enough that we would public charge and the inconvenience is enough that we are getting a hybrid.

A 2 hr trip becoming a three hour trip only has to happen to you once a week for a few weeks before you realize the limitations.

I disagree. Basically anywhere an ICE engine is used for whatever reason, it should be a hybrid instead. There are good enough reasons not to use EVs but there are zero practical reasons to not use a hybrid.

I love the simplicity here. Another edge case - apartment management company doest allow installing EV - despite legality. Just bureaucracy is mind-boggling in EU. I'd rather have a hybrid that gives me 18-22 km / liter. We had one neighbour in the area who won after 3 years of fighting bureaucracy - Coming up with a proposal for the board meeting that happens once a year and taking all the feedback points, and working through the insurance companies to amend their standard practices.

As always, it's countries in the global south that can't get EVs because they are sold locally for twice the price of an ICE car, even when both are made by the Chinese. So hybrids, price wise are a middle ground because they use smaller batteries which are less expensive

>Unless you live in bumfuck nowhere with expensive electricity, zero solar power and a daily 5 hour commute, an EV will likely work just fine for you.

In NYC it's a nightmare to own an EV and rely on public charging.

Your comment could be featured in the recent Reddit “what are the clues someone has never been poor”.

Are you from a main Spanish city? Because the chargers are being set up but not so fast, and parking is not exactly an easy thing to find for most people.

I just bought a Caddy Maxi diesel for moving my family on weekend and vacation trips. In Europe the future is bike + metro/train + big diesel car.

If you live in a European city, you should be using a car for commuting.

> Unless you live in bumfuck nowhere with expensive electricity, zero solar power and a daily 5 hour commute, an EV will likely work just fine for you.

Whoa, you're leaving out some pretty big demographics.

There are also a lot of people (the majority of people?) for whom EV charging is inconvenient or impossible -- apartment dwellers and people without driveways.

(Yes, yes, some apartments offer EV charging and some people without driveways can just run a charger out to the street)

Or live in an apartment and can't charge at home using cheap electricity.

You really think people should get an EV when they don't have anywhere but public chargers to charge?

The coolest type of hybrid is obviously Toyota's original Prius design with the power split system. The point of it just to have a really efficient petrol car. If having a petrol car isn't something you want, then don't go hybrid.

Hybrids were a great solution 30 years ago. So many companies dragged their feet for so long they’re only putting them in everything now that the writing is on the wall it’s much too late.

Pathetic.

Before the War on Iran gas was equivalently priced to electricity in parts of California, like where I live, so a hybrid made more sense then. Especially as they are usually far cheaper than all electric vehicles

I actually disagree. Why do you need a car for city trips? Most often you can take transport, a bike or walk. And in emergency situations take a taxi.

I have a car and use it only to go OUTSIDE the city, road trips and to the mountains / sea. That's why I think a hybrid is still the best option.