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Comment by pryelluw | Hacker News Reader

I just bought a new Camry hybrid. Gives me 60+ total mpg without any fuss. I’m learning how to drive it to maximize electric use.

My first pick was a Prius prime but those were on a huge back order. Having a 25 mile electric range is perfect for us.

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Can you actually use just the electric? I owned a 2016 Toyota Avalon hybrid that had the option to be electric only, but whenever I tried to engage that option, it gave me an error that I was either going too fast or too slow. I could get it to work for very short stretches (maybe 50 feet), but it would always disengage almost as soon as I turned it on. This was the biggest reason I sold the car.

Toyota hybrids are fairly parallel in their designed operation. However, you should have been able to get that Avalon up to ~47mph on electric alone with a (very) light foot, no grade, and a full battery. It doesn’t really matter though, Toyota hybrids are always using the electric motors to do part of the work even when the engine is on. EV mode is more of a psychological thing in hybrid cars, it isn’t more efficient. (If anything it’s less efficient) If you want to operate in EV in broad circumstances, you are looking for a plug-in hybrid.

I wonder if any of the plug-in hybrids have some form of "going home" mode where they try to arrive home with a nearly empty battery.

Just put it in EV mode when you leave the house, and once again when you're coming up your street on the way back.

A Camry is not an EV and I have no interest in burning fossils ever again.

Edit: I can't reply to comments under this, I don't know why, so let me just add here: Yes, I know that the manufacture of any vehicle produces unwanted byproducts. That doesn't mean they're all equally bad. My electricity comes from completely renewable sources, and none of my money goes to the oil industry. Those issues are important to me. I don't need lecturing on how I've got it all wrong.

Unfortunately many fossils will be burnt in the production of any EV, the shipping of it, and (most likely) the fuel used to power it.

Don’t get me wrong, EVs are great (my parents own two that run off-grid on solar), but the absolutist mentality of a lot of the EV community about “fossil fuels” is counterproductive.

We should be encouraging as many realistic countermeasures as we can — priuses, EVs, hydrogen, hybrids, whatever! The less fossil fuels being burned the better!!!

It's not exactly unreasonable to be absolutist about the fossil fuel burners you actually have control over, and the technology really has gotten to where you no longer need to ever use things like gas powered lawn mowers weed wackers chain saws cars motorcycles etc. It's not harmful to choose in electric form in an absolutist manner, if you must have those things at all.

Hydrogen cars will require fossil fuels to be manufactured, same with hybrids. EVs have a smaller carbon footprint than both over their lifetime.

No duh, current manufacturing is done with fossil fuels. Everybody knows that. So what's the point of a comment like this, other than to downplay how important EVs are going to be at solving the climate crisis?

The point is that we should encourage people to buy hybrid and highly fuel efficient cars over gas guzzlers. Many people who can’t afford EVs could afford the alternatives.

Someone driving a 45mpg Mitsubishi Mirage (a tiny car with a low manufacturing footprint, and the cheapest in the US) around town once in a while is a lot better than someone driving a GMC Suburban.

Click on the time stamp of the comment you want to reply to and you should be able to reply, unless you've been recently rate limited.

driving a non plug in hybrid to maximize electric use is not the goal, the goal is to minimize fuel use. The former is at odds with the latter.

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