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Comment by sam345 | Hacker News Reader

>One favorable sign for Toyota: Its head of sales in North America said recently the market for hybrids is “smoking hot” and the company is trying to make as many of the vehicles as possible. Last month, Toyota had a little more than a week’s worth of Prius hybrids in stock, compared with more than two months’ supply of its electric SUV, the bZ4X. “I have continued to say what I see as reality,” said Toyoda. Someone needs to convey to the industry what will make car buyers most happy, he said, and “if regulations are created based on ideals, it is regular users who are the ones who suffer.”

True.

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The bZ4x is widely considered to be one of the weakest offerings on the full BEV market, vs the decade long market leader in its segment.

Sure, totally reasonable comparison.

Which is really fucking weird, considering they (Toyota) already made a fantastic RAV4 EV from 1997–2003(!!) and 2012–2014. The second time was a collaboration with... you guessed it, Tesla.

Not even just a decade long market leader, the new Prius has been heralded by auto reviewers as pretty much the first Prius that is actually kind of 'cool' looking and sporty and isn't just a econobox designed purely for best fuel economy with compromises in everything else.

So, they're comparing a huge step release of the Prius (which, always generates a lot of sales) vs. nearly the worst EV on the market.

> “if regulations are created based on ideals, it is regular users who are the ones who suffer.”

As opposed to the bystanders who are suffering from every ICE vehicle sold? Make better EVs.

Or just make PHEVs. Cars that have small batteries, that are big enough to do 95% of your driving on electricity. That still let you jump in and go somewhere without hoping that there is a place to charge up. And even when running the ICE engine, you're getting fuel economy much higher than a regular ICE car.

I think that if everybody could reduce their ICE usage by 90%, and only use 1/4 of the batteries, that is a win-win for everybody. People driving around in 200-350 mile EVs, that only drive less than a 1/4 of that on a regular basis are just wasting batteries that could have gone into other cars and saved them on the cost of their current car.

Like seriously, how often do you drive more than 100 miles? Once a week, once a month? We all know the stats for people's commutes are far shorter. Most people don't need long range EVs except for once in a while. That's what pro-EV people have been saying for years.

Even a Jeep Wrangler 4xe that only has like 10 miles of range... if your commute is 20 miles round trip, that's still half the gas usage. That guy probably wasn't going to buy an EV anyways. PHEVs are also a way to get skeptics to reduce reliance on gas.

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