The average US commute is 27 minutes https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/acs/acs-47.... which is around 15-20 miles one way. That means at least half of US workers have enough range on a 40 mile battery to do the full commute.

More to the point though, even if you have a 40 mile commute, reducing gas consumption in half is still a massive win.

I haven’t seen detailed data on the distribution of daily mileage in the US, but I’m fairly confident that the average miles driven per day is under 40. A 40 mile range obviously wouldn’t cover everyone’s daily commute, but it certainly wouldn’t be rare. And going 80 miles a day with half of it electric isn’t shabby either.

A ton of people don’t have access to charging at home due to apartments or condos. Plus if they do it would likely be level 1, which is not exactly speedy.

I wouldn’t spring for a level 2 install for a 10-15 kWh battery.

I’m not sure PHEVs are the panacea many people seem to think they are. In theory most tris are short and could be covered by the battery. In practice do average owners do that?

Yes, but a normal hybrid only has a single mile of range. Much, much lower capacity than your typical PHEV.

Sounds like an infrastructure problem if you need to go further than that just for work. But given you're French, vous êtes, selon toute probabilité, complètement d'acc.