WetEV said:
GRA said:
Yes, BEV sales have grown faster than PEV sales prior to last year here. A year's worth of sales is definitely beyond a blip.
I don't see any point at cherry picking short term intervals out of a longer term trend.
One year is a definite change in trend. Whether and how long it will continue remains to be seen. If you don't think 1 year is long enough, then go back over the last century; what's the trend there? By your logic the increased rate of PEV sales in the past decade is just cherry picking a short term interval out of a longer term trend, since fossil-fueled ICEs dominated for the preceding century; thus we should ignore the 'recent' increase in PEV sales.
WetEV said:
BEVs are just nicer to drive than PHEVs, HEVs and ICEs. Driver preference matters. Sure, there are some use cases for PHEVs.
Some BEVs are nicer to drive, but buyer preference obviously shows that most people still prefer to buy ICEs in one form or another. Cars are first and foremost transportation for most people, and how well they provide that for a given amount of money is most people's main metric. Just because a car is running on electricity doesn't guarantee that it will be quieter, vibrate less, accelerate faster or ride or handle better. To take just the case of noise, engine noise often masks wind, tire and road noise, and without it those become much more noticeable. You need to deal with lots of other issues to handle those. To which you may add add gear and motor whine in EVs, depending on the quality of those components; One BEV I drove sounded just like an electric golf cart, with the major difference that you only drive a golf cart for a minute or two at a time; 15 minutes or more having to listen to that car's whine got very annoying.
I've read reviews of plenty of modern PEVs that have noise complaints due to one or more sources. Thus, while the Model S is noticeably quiet, the Model 3 isn't. Whether the latter is due to aero design, lack of soundproofing and laminated glass, or just poor fit and finish QC I couldn't say, but see here:
https://matthewjcheung.medium.com/3-ways-to-make-model-3-even-quieter-624cf107d255 Remember the odd headlight covers on the original LEAF, whose shape was said to be due to wind noise reduction? Finally, there are plenty of drivers who like engine noises at least part of the time, which is why some BEVs offer an artificial version.
WetEV said:
Electric power is cheaper than gasoline. At home I'm paying about $1 per equivalent gallon (0.11 per kWh), and about $2.50 (0.31 kWh) for the infrequent fast charge. Based on 1 gallon of gas is about the same as 8 kWh. Energy in a gallon of gasoline is about 33 kWh, and the electric car is about 4 times more efficient.
Today's gas price was $4.546 (3/8/2022) average for Washington State.
https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=WA
Why would I buy a PHEV and pay almost twice as much for energy/fuel on road trips?
Electricity is certainly cheap for you, but then you have some of the cheapest electricity in the country thanks to lots of old hydro:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ Other locations (like mine) have different ratios.
Your needs are well suited for a BEV, because as you've told us your wife's personal endurance is only 1.5 to 2 hours, and from what you've said doesn't sound like you take multi-hundred let alone multi-thousand mile road trips. Why would anyone buy a PHEV for road trips? Because it allows them to go anywhere they want, any route they want any time they want in any conditions, in the shortest possible time, with maximum flexibility, and without having to plan their trips around charging stops. Current gas prices won't stay this high anymore than they did in 2008 (which is still the highest average U.S. price all-time, adjusted for inflation), so at some point in the probably not too distant future it will once again be cheaper to gas up on trips than it is to FC. After all, it's only been in the past month or so that the reverse has been the case (note, I'm assuming that anyone seriously concerned about gas prices would instead opt to buy an HEV/PHEV, rather than a low-mpg ICE).
WetEV said:
GRA said:
Obviously, PHEV sales are starting from a smaller total, but we're seeing the same PHEV/BEV trend in Europe, which I also provided a link to.
Europe:
https://insideevs.com/news/571644/europe-plugin-car-sales-january2022/
BEVs: about *83,000 (up 78% year-over-year, 10% share)
PHEVs: about *73,000 (up 11% year-over-year, 9% share)
Total: 156,236 (up 39% year-over-year, 19% share)
78% is a little more than 11%. Or maybe you were looking at somewhere else.
Yes, yearly not monthly sales, as I consider the former essentially cherry picking a short term interval which (may) mask a long term trend. Provided a link somewhere for the year upthread. However, came across the following while surfing around trying to locate the original source, so my claim about Europe may be wrong (I'll keep looking for the original source):
In December, the electric car market had a record month (181,641 registrations, +7% YoY), but PHEVs dropped significantly (-13% YoY). That was PHEVs’ first sales drop since August 2019. So, while plugin hybrids ended 2021 with the same share they had in 2020 (46%), December tells a different story. BEVs’ share of plugin sales jumped to 65%, a full 11 percentage point jump over the full year result. Will this monthly result provide any type of guidance for the evolution of both technologies in 2022?
January and I think February continued along the same path, so we'll have to see if it changes.
WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
HEVs are even less of a transition for consumers, and use less of the limited battery supply. And just like PHEVs, you don't need to plug them in. :?
Sure, and that's why HEVs are outselling all PEVs in Europe and the U.S. right now.
Yes, but like a horse that just sh!ts a little less, HEVs doesn't help that much with air pollution, and still drives like an ICE, except for short periods of time.
Yes, and that's what the majority of EV users are buying. So much for consumer preference. Obviously their preferences differ from yours and mine, but then MNL members are a self-selected minority.
WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
A transition can be good. I doubt if many horse owners missed shoveling out the stables after getting a horseless carriage. I don't miss stopping at gas stations in the winter at 1 C temperature and with rain coming down horizontally.
Of course a transition can be good, especially when you can't foresee the long-term negative consequences (air pollution from cars wasn't foreseen as an issue, and wasn't until their numbers got very large - until then everyone was glad the streets weren't covered in horse manure and urine, with massive numbers of flies spreading disease. No doubt there will eventually be unforeseen negative consequences of a shift to EVs as well). This transition is good, at least as far as solving our current environmental problems, but in order to make it as quick as possible we want it to be as easy as possible. PHEVs are cars that are electric when you can, and gas when you must or want to, with minimal or no infrastructure upgrades required, the easiest possible transition.
Yet PHEVs require more L1/L2 infrastructure faster. While a PHEV might used a quarter the battery of a BEV, and produce 50% electric miles, home charging would be needed for all of the PHEVs, assuming of course that they would actually be plugged in. HEVs would be better for those that can't plug in yet.
Of course HEVs are better for those who can't plug in, and who know that is unlikely to change in a useful period of time. PHEVs don't
require any extra electric infrastructure, nor do they require home charging, but you can bet most people opting to buy one (who aren't motivated by bad incentives like automatic HOV lane access even when running on the ICE) instead of an HEV will have access to charging often enough to be worthwhile. As I said, electric when you can, gas when you want or have to.
I take a two-mile walk in my neighborhood just about every night, both for exercise and to feed a feral cat colony, and I know all the PEVs around there. One of them is a Niro PHEV, which I've never seen plugged in at home. The previous occupants of this house owned two Nissan LEAFs, first a 2012 or so and then replaced it with a 2018. They charged the car at home L1 via an extension cord run out the living room window. Seeing the owner of the Niro one day, I asked her where she plugged in, and she said at work. She also knew many of the locations of public charging stations in town, although she rarely needed to use them. Her commute and local errands are handled and she doesn't worry about the rest, although if she needed or wanted to she could L1 at home the same as the previous occupants did.
WetEV said:
This assumes a even bigger government hand forcing PHEVs over BEVs, as PHEVs are mostly currently subsidized and BEVs are most not, at the US Federal level. States are different, of course. A larger subsidy for PHEVs will be needed to overcome the driver preference for a BEV, or for that matter for an ICE.
As you know I'm against direct to consumer subsidies, as they distort the market whenever they prefer a particular tech. I want buyers to make financial decisions without the government's finger being so visibly on the scale. That's why PHEVs far outsold BEVs in the Netherlands for the first few years they were available, as PHEVs had more favorable subsidies there. he opposite was true in other
European countries where the subsidies went the other way. Any time such subsidies distort the market, we have only a vague idea of which product consumers would prefer given a level playing field.
WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
HEVs would provide more reduction in gasoline usage than either PHEVs or BEVs. The limitations to that are customer preferences as well as supply chains.
Even if that's accurate (I've seen various results depending on the use case), HEVs wouldn't reduce air pollution as much in the urban areas where it's concentrated, now would they?
Shifting goals would provide different answers. HEVs would reduce fossil fuel usage and CO2 faster... assuming no supply chain issues other than batteries. Would not provide as much reduction in urban air pollution.
One 60kWh BEV would use the same batteries as 60 HEVs. We could have been at 100% HEVs a few years ago. The real issue to consider here is driver preference.[/quote]
Yes, see above; Consumers still prefer HEVs. If gas prices stay in about the same territory for a while that may change, for financial rather than ideological preference. I've certainly seen articles saying we're at the tipping point for PEVs, but given how rapidly the price has climbed in the past couple of weeks it could drop just as precipitously, and people would go back to buying their full-size ICE pickups without another thought.
WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
Ah yes, like the graph above. You ignore that BEVs are growing faster over the whole period to focus on some cherry-picked interval.
Maybe you don't think you are flogging, but that's the way I see it.
You're entitled to your opinion, but when it comes to cherry-picking, please do take a look in the mirror before accusing anyone else of same.
Feel free to call me out.
I do, and have.
WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
Sure, if driver fits into the "Goldilocks" use case for PHEVs. Some do, some don't. HEVs would do better, of course, at reducing emissions in the shortest time at the lowest cost in batteries at least. Stop-start hybrids aka weak hybrids would do even better, but at least some manufacturers have dropped these do to supply chain issues.
PHEVs aren't Goldilocks cars, that's BEVs right now. Anyone can buy a PHEV and use it for anything they'd use an ICE or HEV for, right now, with no compromise (other than extra upfront cost and some extra weight) or change in behavior required. You can't say that about BEVs yet, which is why we play twenty questions with newbies to see if a BEV will work
for them. The answer for BEVs is always "it depends" followed by those questions. For PHEVs the answer is "Sure", but it may or may not provide them any benefit vs. a less expensive ICE/HEV alternative.
BEVs are an edge case car. Very high performance, very clean, lowest cost in some cases.
PHEVs fill the space between BEVs and HEVs. Remember their limitations. If your daily mileage is enough beyond the AER, you might have been better off an HEV.
No argument, that's what I've been saying. For me given my typical usage, if an HEV gets maybe 2 mpg HWY better than a corresponding PHEV, I'll burn less gas on a typical weekend or longer trip with the HEV, because of the distance between charges. But the average American or European driver doesn't have my use case; they commute to work and do local errands every day via car.