Plug-in hybrids are the perfect car for most people - I won't repeat myself but a previous post on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38863491
Literally none of the problems pointed out in this article apply to people with plugins, and you still get 95% of the benefit of having an EV.
Hybrids by the way are not new at all. They have been used in shipping for ages in situations where the electric load was about the same or higher as the mechanical load, which happens in cruise ships for example. It worked in ships because of the high electric load and because weight doesn’t matter too much. This all doesn’t hold for cars. If it would have worked great, we would all be driving Priuses by now.
Good news, millions are! Millions more drive non-Prius hybrids, because people thought the shape of a car that cut through the air more efficiently than most was "unmanly"
That's a common refrain, but in my personal experience I don't think it really holds water because of the additional savings you get:
1. The battery can be much, much smaller. This results in huge savings in cost, weight and environmental impact that offsets a lot of the cost of needing a gas engine.
2. You will end up utilizing much more of the battery. That is, the only reason you need a big battery in EVs in the first place is those thoughts of "what about longer trips", even if you only take longer trips 3% of the time. Plus, I would frequently drive my Volt's EV charge to near zero or zero (but still only use something like 0.1 gallons of gas), but with my current EV I never take it below ~30 miles of charge for fear of getting stranded.
Your other examples don't really hold for plug-in hybrid vehicles. I think the big reason they were largely passed over in the marketplace is they were often "bolted on" to existing ICE models, so people saw them as just an additional expense with marginal benefit. Perhaps a good marketing guru will market them instead as "All the best parts of an EV, but with all the things that you hate/that scare you are fixed!"
But, to be clear, a plugin hybrid is lighter than a comparable all-electric car because the battery is so much smaller. E.g. a Chevy Volt weighs about 3500 lbs vs. about 3800-4000 lbs for a Model 3.
2. so you have much more parts, more expensive to be produced and assembled just to wear out an expensive component quickly, UAU, that's a nice ideas... For the car OEMs...
Is this suggesting there is a connection between "led by Musk" and "made a hug mistake".