Comment by bit_logic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bit_logic | Hacker News Reader

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We have let the perfect become the enemy of the good. With the urgency of climate change, current grid infrastructure, and battery technology and production, the solution we needed to push hard was PHEV. For the battery in a single EV, it can build four PHEVs which means four households reducing most of their gas miles versus a single household. A common strawman is that a PHEV is more complex and harder to maintain. And yet that theoretical argument is directly countered by the existence of the Toyota Prius, one of the best for reliability, so good that it's used in taxi fleets. A PHEV is basically a Prius with a much larger battery. Another strawman is that there wouldn't be demand. And yet there is incredible demand for the Toyota RAV4 Prime. A PHEV with 40-50 miles EV range can be charged overnight with a simple 120V outlet, no expensive electrical upgrade required.

>directly countered by the existence of the Toyota Prius,

The transmission design in the Prius is a lot more simple than a conventional automatic transmission. The engine is also so overbuilt that I've seen Prius engine swaps (sans hybrid system) into other Toyotas the basis of race engines. The 1.5L had forged crank and titanium conrod (very rare, even in sports cars), which could be pushed to 10,000RPMs with some valve springs.

> For the battery in a single EV, it can build four PHEVs which means four households reducing most of their gas miles versus a single household

Is the adoption of new EVs being slowed by the lack of batteries? Building 4 PHEV with the same batteries as 1 EV doesn't mean you're going to sell four times as many PHEV.

yeah. World battery production has had to rise dramatically to even get EVs to where they are now. (and they contribute to EVs being about 10k more expensive than an equivalent gas car). A PHEV with 20-40 miles can get most of the environmental benefits of an EV without nearly as much of a weight penalty (especially since you can go the Toyota route to ditch the transmission) or cost.

A 40 mile PHEV covers average travel in EV mode range. You get 4 effective EVs for the battery of a short range (~200 mile) full EV with a substantially cheaper price.

Four PHEVs that draws down its batteries every day is far better than a single BEV that leaves most of its range untapped, given that batteries are expensive and require valuable resources.

Rich people buying luxury EVs as a third or fourth car is a huge waste as the VMT from those is wasted. EVs should be aimed at high VMT sectors like taxis to max their benefits.

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