Issues with PHEV in my experience that people CBA to charge their car when the battery depletes and will treat their cars as if they are ICE only. And in that case they just weigh more, put more pressure on the road and the battery takes up quite the bit of cargo space.
Getting 50 extra miles in your garage or a 15 minute pitstop is a lot easier than charging an EV to full. Each 50 mile charge is about 2 gallon saved, and people like to save $10 every few days if possible.
PHEVs are lighter than full EVs, and incentivize the manufacturer to build a smaller car. (EVs are longer because the batteries take up lots of horizontal space). If Mazda's experiments pay off, then a wankel [1] engine PHEV will be space efficient and sustainable. Now not everyone needs to tow, but EVs are horrible at towing. A PHEV is an ideal long-term alternative to petrol for heavy-hauling use cases.
I firmly believe fully emissions-free vehicles will be the future. But the powergrid & charging infrastructure for 100% EV are at least 10-20 years away. Until then, PHEVs should be encouraged as a stopgap, especially for countries without easy ways to generate renewable energy.
I calculated how much our savings would be if we buy a PHEV instead of a new ICE (or a very efficient mild hybrid like the civic or a corolla) and we wouldnt get even after 5 years, because buying a PHEV costs that much more.
Of course this is based on our car usage patterns so its really subjective.
I agree with you on the powergrid and charging infrastructure. A counterpoint i rarely see is if everyone would switch to EVs or PHEVs in 5 years, the electrical infra would collapse. And the electricity price world skyrocket and it would not be this cheap as it is now. So we should keep that in mind when we calculate the savings.
> A counterpoint i rarely see is if everyone would switch to EVs or PHEVs in 5 years, the electrical infra would collapse.
Electricity grids are massively overbuilt and underutilized because they need to deal with a big spike of power usage in the early evenings. So if grids became strained by EVs, it would be relatively easy to fix this: just encourage or mandate time of day tariffs.
The price signal would encourage people to charge outside of peak times. The improved utilization of the grid may even reduce distribution costs per kWh.
Over the last 30 years, South Africa's generation capacity has crumbled from 37GW to 28GW. So yes, sure, electrifying anything there is not going to work. But I'd say that's a completely different category of problems.
PHEVs have the potential to lower emissions, but humans are lazy based on the data. Ergo, you have to engineer around the human (support BEVs, do not support PHEVs through policy).
I don't think these studies are saying what you think they are. The incentives are clear for a PHEV that you can plug in yourself in your home. its cheaper and not hard to do.
This is a very strong prior, and with a little digging you can find out that these cars are being bought by tax credits, and then used by people who do not have access to chargers. Either because it is a rental or because it is a company car. If it is a company car, the reimbursement process for gas is easier, and why would I go through the hassle if I'm not the one saving money?
The case for PHEVs is very strong, it is a much more economical use of lithium battery capacity, is cheaper to operate, produces less CO2, and can be operated like an ICE vehicle in a pinch.
They strategically dominate EVs. Its absurd to suggest otherwise
If you have data demonstrating strong EV use of PHEVs (vs defaulting to ICE most of the time), provide it, but it is absurd to propose these suboptimal vehicles will be maximized for low emissions use based on human behavior.
It doesn’t matter how strong the case is for PHEVs if the data doesn’t conclusively demonstrate they’re being used appropriately to minimize emissions. That’s just hope, and hope is not a strategy. Frankly, PHEV tax credits should be something like revenue you have to recognize over time, only provided when proven they’re being used in the manner desired (versus at time of purchase, after which you might not ever even plug the vehicle in).
