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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

Tesla is no longer the largest EV producer, if you consider plug-in hybrids EVs. Reminds me of the great idea of German politicians to "save" the "ailing" car industry (while pretending to be doing something positive for the environment) during Covid by heavily subsidizing EVs, where the definition included plug-in hybrids. Which led to a run on large luxury plug-in hybrid SUVs, which probably use more gas than a smaller non-hybrid car, and it's safe to say the plug-in charging functionality is seldom used (although with the increase of fuel prices since Russia invaded Ukraine, maybe some owners will now start searching for the charging cable).

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So you're claiming that hybrids are bad, if a) people buy a bigger car than they would otherwise, and b) never plug it in.

Is this true, and does it actually happen in numbers we should care about and why do you think it is true? Did some respected environmental group suggest this was bad for the environment?

Or like a comment lower down, do you believe that every government regulation mysteriously has a perfect 180 degree backfire? Which would be fascinating if true, but seems unlikely.

I looked up Greenpeace's take on this:

Short version, Public Transport > BEV > PHEV > HEV > ICE and various non vehicle things should be kept in mind like designing cities around people not cars, supporting auto workers during the transition, ensuring the wider electric grid is decarbonised, reducing the carbon impact of steel manufacturing and mining are all important goals.

They're keen that HEV get phased out at the same time as ICE (no new sales after 2028 in EU) and warn that PHEVs are being overmarketed but still seem to think they're better than ICE alone, but not as good as EVs.

https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-eastasia-stateless...

I wouldn't be surprised if hybrids were better for the environment than evs.

every comment I see about any ev is more range. but the fact of the matter is, most people don't travel that far most of the time. So if you buy a hybrid with a range of 100 miles electric, with an IC just in case, but that never gets used. thats less embodied energy than building a 400 mile range ev where the extra 300 miles still doesn't get used.

Or in other words we can all construct a scenario that proves the point we want to make.

It's a good argument (although let down by the fact that only 3 PHEVs have an all-electric range greater than 50 miles), but there's a glaring loophole: It saves both embodied energy and transportation energy if you buy a low-range EV without lugging the weight of an inactive ICE around with you for most of your miles, and then rent/borrow/whatever an ICE (or other transport) for your long-distance needs.

I suppose people want solutions that look very much like what they have right now, so 35ish mile range PHEVs are the future!

Hybrids that companies bought with lots of tax deductions were not used as hybrids (gasoline was payed by the company).

Hybrids bought by private people are usually used in EV mode.

The problem is the 10x mismatch between the expected CO2/pollutant emissions and the estimated after usage for company owned PHEVs. They caused a mess in EU.

I'm sorry, what?

You think that if someone puts gasoline in a hybrid car, then it's "not being used as a hybrid"?

Even plug-in hybrids are designed to do both. That's what "hybrid" means. I've never heard of a hybrid where you can just...turn off the hybrid-ness, and make it operate 100% as an ICE vehicle.

So if companies buy hybrids, and run them on the most inefficient settings, they're still getting vastly better gas mileage than if they bought a pure-ICE vehicle instead.

The main point is the ineffective distribution of capital because of the 5x difference between advertised and real gas usage. The same capital would probably be better allocated on only BEV subsidies.

https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/fs-real-world...

I mean, I wouldn't at all object to shifting faster to full-electric vehicles, and getting rid of both full-ICE and hybrids. But it seems to me that this is a bit of a nitpick, given the degree to which fossil fuels are still subsidized (according to [0], it was about $20B/yr in 2019 for the US). I'm having a hard time quickly coming up with numbers as to federal subsidies for hybrid and full-electric vehicles for comparison (best I could find quickly was [1], which indicates about $7.5B allocated for building out EV charging infrastructure).

Personally, I doubt that hybrid vehicle subsidies come anywhere close to that $20B/yr, though I'd be happy to be proven wrong...and even if they are comparable, it still seems like a silly kind of self-sabotage to be calling for cannibalizing hybrid subsidies to give to EVs when fossil fuels are still getting that much.

[0] https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs... [1] https://www.transportation.gov/rural/ev/toolkit/ev-infrastru...

> I've never heard of a hybrid where you can just...turn off the hybrid-ness, and make it operate 100% as an ICE vehicle.

This seems easy to do: never charge the battery, or only charge it from the ICE.

What am I missing?

Hybrids are generally significantly more efficient that ICE cars because it keeps the engine in the "sweet spot", efficiency-wise. If the sweet spot for engine efficiency is more power than you're using, then the extra power goes towards charging the battery. If the sweet spot is less power than you need, it can make up some of the difference with the electric motor using previously stored power.

People talk a lot about plugging them in, or regenerative breaking, but that's overlooking the main way they work, which is in concert with the ICE to make it more efficient. (caveat: I'm not an expert, but own a hybrid and had a long discussion with an engineer friend who had just taken a hybrid powertrain class)

It's a particular scheme of hybrid where the engine is not connected to the wheels but a generator. I don't think any of these are made in Germany, at least in the form of a car. This is popular on heavy trucks and some Japanese micro-cars. Normally a hybrid runs its engine just like a regular car and supplements it with an electric motor when possible.

Even then a hybrid will recuperate energy when braking. The "Earth-saving-mobile" of early 2000s, Toyota Prius did not even allow plug-in charging.

SUVs in general should probably either be outright banned or taxed to the point of not being competitive anymore. The immense harm they cause is just laughable, and the benefits are highly dubious.

In the next few years, the majority of new cars (at least, those sold in the EU) will be bloated hybrid SUVs. It's the most cost-efficient way for manufacturers to meet the EU emissions regulations, and apparently will help us transition.

SUVs have become a prime target for activist vandalism recently. Oversized and not linked to any practical work use like other large vehicles.

I would qualify this more. A Chevy Tahoe/Suburban is a much different SUV than a Toyota Corolla Cross, which has a better fuel efficiency rating than my conventional sedan.

The latter is a car in basically every way that matters and would be described as a hatchback if the marketing department didn’t have their way.

I think the best type of tax would be on weight, emissions, and energy usage, the factors that most greatly affect the public (road maintenance, public health, and climate change/resource consumption, respectively).

> The [Toyota Corolla Cross] is a car in basically every way that matters

Are you sure? I don't know specifically about that model, but my understanding is that SUVs - including the smaller hatchback-like "crossover" ones - are technically trucks because of the way they're constructed and thus subject to different safety standards. I'd say that's a way that matters.

To my knowledge they aren't subject to any different safety standards. They aren't non-passenger vehicles unless they meet specific guidelines, most of which a typical family SUV will not qualify under. [1]

Most of the family SUVs and crossovers you see are constructed on unibody platforms shared with cars. The Corolla Cross that I mentioned is built on the same GA-C platform as the regular Corolla and a number of other cars, vans, and SUVs. [2]

There are very few body-on-frame SUVs remaining on the market, which include:

- Chevy Suburban, Tahoe, GMC Yukon, Cadillac Escalade

- Toyota 4Runner, Sequoia, Land Cruiser, Lexus LX, GX

- Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator

- Jeep Wrangler

- Mercedes G-Class

These models generally share similarities with their truck counterparts, e.g., a vehicle like the Chevy Suburban shares a platform with GM's full-size pickups. [3]

[1] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/do-suvs-designs-let-them-be-mor...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_New_Global_Architecture

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMT_T1XX_platform

Ah, OK. So that strongly underscores the original point that not all "SUVs" are the same and they should not be treated the same. Thanks!

Most SUVs are rebranded station wagons.

Hybrid seems like a huge shade of gray though, while the two ends on the spectrum are absolute. How efficient a hybrid is would depend on where on the spectrum it lies, whether that suits your usual needs, and how often you have these exceptions. Also, in order to utilize a charging cable you need to have access to a charging station. Not everyone has that, nor a garage. Fuel prices have gone up, but so has electricity prices.

Tesla never was largest EV producer, if you consider hybrids, Toyota was always bigger

Perfect example of how government intervention has the opposite of the intended effect.

I don't think that is really the case here. It is more greenwashing of the intentional effect to subsidise expensive cars.

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