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Hybrid Plug-In Electric Car - vs - Total Electric Car

E. Bryan Hoover

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Aug 7, 2020
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My son just ordered a BMW Hybrid Electric Plug-In Car.

He drove a rented Electric BMW car when he visited Disney World this spring.

He fell in love with the BMW engineering (he is a former US Navy Nuclear Engineer and a current Nuclear Operator).

The car has electric motors which drive the four wheels (four wheel drive) AND
a small battery (35 mile range) which powers the wheels AND
both a plug-in AND a gasoline Motor built into the car which can charge the battery.

This is the way Toyota went for over the last decade.

With California State Government telling EV owners not to charge their cars off the grid in the last few weeks
this appears to be the way to go.

My son plans to use the BMW for local errands, in climate weather (Eastern Washington State) and long vacation trips,
until his $12,000 Nissan Versa (an ICE only car) wears out from driving back and forth to work.

Anyway the BMW is a Model X5 45E and cost 70K plus with a six month build/order time.
It is assembled in the US (no telling where the parts come from).
 
A plug-in hybrid (PHEV) with enough range to cover your daily driving gives the best of both worlds. Your daily driving is on electricity which in most places is 50-80% cheaper per mile than gasoline. On long trips you can go wherever you want and stop whenever you want vs. having routes and meal stops dictated by fast charger locations. You can run on gasoline if the grid is down or on electricity if there's a sudden gasoline shortage. PHEVs also tend to be less expensive than long-range battery-only cars (BEVs), e.g. MSRP for a Toyota RAV4 Prime is 40k yet it's more capable than a 60k+ Tesla Model Y.

Many EV purists hate plug-in hybrids with a passion and claim they were invented by Satan himself. Ignore these zealots. The gasoline engine lasts forever with minimal maintenance because it mostly runs on long highway trips which cause very little wear and tear. More to the point, our transition to EVs is limited by battery supply, which in turn is limited by supplies of lithium and key metals like nickel and cobalt. We won't be able to build enough batteries to fully switch to BEVs for at least a decade. Meanwhile, we can build four PHEVs with the 80 kWh of batteries needed in single long range BEV. Used properly, those four PHEVs will shift 35-40k miles per year from gasoline to electricity vs. 12k miles for the BEV. So PHEVs are better for both the individual and society.
 
With California State Government telling EV owners not to charge their cars off the grid in the last few weeks
this appears to be the way to go.
Just to clarify, the instruction was to not charge during peak hours and the flex alerts. Something like 4-10 pm. There's still plenty of time to change a car. We just need to be smart about it.

The actual quote I found: "We’re not saying don’t charge them,” she said. “We’re just saying don’t charge them between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.”
 
hybrid plug-in seem ideal for trucks where the miles/kWh is relatively low. I bought a Chevrolet Bolt in 2020 and wouldn't go back to ICE. I haven't seen a hybrid plug in at a decent price point to tempt me away. I tow a lightweight 4x8 trailer with the Bolt and it's amazingly versatile.

There isn't enough demand to convert everything to battery electric. A lot of folks are still in love with tried-and-true. I'm not convinced we are battery constrained. I think it's an excuse to build expensive electric vehicles.

As long as folks charge their vehicles overnight, the electric grid may actual see better utilization. My car is set to end charging around 7am, but I could easily shift to 6am or any time to work with grid demand.
 
Most EVs can be set by the owners to charge when told, such that you plug it in when you get home, but it doesn't charge until midnight or whenever you set it to charge.
 
I would like to get a hybrid and connect the battery pack to a high-voltage inverter. Will act as a backup generator with the ICE autonomously starting to recharge the battery pack.

Yes will have to make it dummy-proof to prevent some moron from asphyxiating themselves. ICE oxygen sensor would shutdown with excessive CO2, and the backup sensors would check to ensure the garage door is open.
 
I would like to get a hybrid and connect the battery pack to a high-voltage inverter. Will act as a backup generator with the ICE autonomously starting to recharge the battery pack.

Yes will have to make it dummy-proof to prevent some moron from asphyxiating themselves. ICE oxygen sensor would shutdown with excessive CO2, and the backup sensors would check to ensure the garage door is open.

Here you go.

Logo1.jpg
 
Many EV purists hate plug-in hybrids with a passion and claim they were invented by Satan himself. Ignore these zealots. The gasoline engine lasts forever with minimal maintenance because it mostly runs on long highway trips which cause very little wear and tear.
While I agree with that statement when talking about a Toyota, But the threat OP has a ordered BMW.
BMW is a Model X5 45E
The most problematic part on any post designed 2000 BMW are the gasoline engines. They are very much overengineered. I owned a bunch of them. 3 series, 5 series. and currently driving a BMW i3 - without an Engine. - for a reason. Which is by far one of the best cars I ever owned! 5 years on battery - only one maintenance stop.

Bring Me to Workshop

With a BMW hybrid you get two worst of two worlds. It's not like owning a Prius ( which I also did) which is robust as it gets. You can literally remove half of the Prius electronics and it still drives - while at BMW a single sensor wire leaves you stranded and needs 15 hours of labor to get to it.

BMW are making great cars, don't get me wrong, test-drove the i4 a few weeks ago - really nice car. But the engines are not reliable. The remainder of the cars is amazing - great materials - fit and finish. One of next cars will be likely an iX or whatever comes the replace the X3.

I'm a EV advocate - but I see that many people don't need the long ranges, and are better of with gasoline range extender, as long as they made by someone who how to make engines reliable (Chevy, Toyota, Honda)
 
A hybrid is good for some use cases... but boy I love the fact that I pay absolutely nothing for energy to drive about 10,000 miles per year. I also really love the fact that I don't ever have to go to gas stations. Ok, so I live on an island and it is pretty hard to drive more than 200 miles in a day unless maybe you are doing Uber.

A hybrid makes a lot of sense if your normal commute is less than its electric range, and you occassionally need to tow something, and are into marathon driving.
 
I have owned or leased thrre hybrids but now own two EVs. Hybrids are complex and EVs are simple. Long term they seem to be the future. But for the reasons stated above they may be a good interim step.
 
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I've had 5 hybrids and am passively looking for my first PHEV or EV. Honestly would have had one or the other probably 5+ years ago, but life took some turns. Now im totally off-grid electrically and that's even cooler, so im giving myself a pass.

Problem for me is im an auto tech who has a mental block about paying fair market value for a car, ever, since i usually buy stuff broken or with extremely high miles for pennies on the dollar, and those deals are FEW AND FAR BETWEEN on phevs and evs since both are fairly recent and somewhat uncommon. Recent in the sense that most cars bottom out in value at ~10+ yo and not many of them are that age yet. I tend to buy at the absolute bottom so i can 'justify' playing with a bunch of stuff i dont need (i have ~20 cars, sure couldn't do that if they weren't cheap).

Anyway, i know a lot about hybrids and even have an ASE certification on the topic and i agree with doggydogworld that phev's are the smart move we aren't making. They exist, but in nowhere near the number of what they should. Every manufacturer knows they have to go EV, but many are skipping the PHEV segment almost completely, and i think that's tragic and shortsighted.

The only hybrid of the 5 i still have is my first one.. a 2001 Honda Insight which i parked at 347k miles. It finally stopped running because the fuel pump died of neglect, but i intend to get it back up and running as a stationary auto stop-start backup generator for my house, probably never to be driven. ?
 
I'd get that Honda insight going again! They don't make em like that anymore.
I drive a 2001 prius, just turned over 276k miles and still going strong. I just posted in the LVX6048 thread about how I can use the prius as a portable 6000 watt split phase generator!
 
Yeah, i had a 2009 prius and loved it. I drove it from ~220-280k and sold it to my FIL, it's now at 370k and while it is getting extremely haggard it is still a usable and fairly efficient vehicle on the original battery pack! He recently hit a deer with it and i offered to trade him a 5kw generator for it to get it back in its wrecked state and make THAT my stationary auto stop start car-shaped generator, but he didn't go for it.. :ROFLMAO: He loves it so much i think he plans to fix it. ?

Sometimes i regret getting rid of it.. but the Prius put me in an odd position of being so perfectly practical and reliable that it would never give me a GOOD excuse to get rid of it, and if i was going to do so i had to simply decide to cut it loose purely for reasons of being bored with it. The pragmatist in me really struggled to let it go.

I wish the first version of the prius plug in was a better car. I'm sure its reliable but 11mi of range or whatever it is, is a hard figure to get excited about when most PHEVs are more like 20-50.
 
Plug in hybrids could eliminate 90% of road fuel use. Plug in only will never get past 50%.
 
Plug in hybrids could eliminate 90% of road fuel use. Plug in only will never get past 50%.
How do you figure? It will be interesting to see where we are in 5 and 10 years; my take is that we should hit a point where BEVs are significantly cheaper to build than PHEVs, but it is hard to know when we hit that point on battery pricing. I wonder how much the catalytic converter is on a PHEV, as a point of information.
 
The countries to watch are China and Norway. Their EV sales are significant. Norway has better electrical infrastructure.
 
I have to wonder just how many realize that Internal Combustion Engine powered vehicles have an average max range of 350 Miles / 560kms per tank of fuel. Fuel tanks are sized accordingly be it a small 1.5L 4 Banger or a 6.7 L 8 cylinder. This of course assumes normal & regular driving, not Pedal Mashers or working vehicles hauling a 2 ton trailer full of bricks.

There are also different kinds of "Hybrids", the BMW i3 REx for example is an Electric Car with Electric Drivetrain BUT but the REx adds a 34-horsepower 0.6-liter (647cc) 2-cylinder engine that can run the car OR charge the batteries.

I have been patiently awaiting the arrival of a reasonably priced 4x4 Pickup to arrive on the scene. A "Car" or 2WD pickup truck up here would certainly not serve my needs in winter and it has to be a "hauler" because I am in bush country and haul hay/straw, logs and more. I don't need or want any frills or Techno-bling that fluffs up the price, so waiting continues. The shame of it, is there are actual 1/2 Ton to 3/4 Ton 4x4 Pickups that "Fit the Bill" made in China and well priced with great specs... but with politics being as stupid as it is they will go Everywhere else BUT North America, they already are in fact. Many African Nations have opened up to electric, some on scale too.
 
How do you figure? It will be interesting to see where we are in 5 and 10 years; my take is that we should hit a point where BEVs are significantly cheaper to build than PHEVs, but it is hard to know when we hit that point on battery pricing. I wonder how much the catalytic converter is on a PHEV, as a point of information.
Never is a long time :)
Plug in only are not practical for a large swath of the population and they just won't go there.
Plug in hybrid bridges the gap and allows them to charge from home/work for most maybe nearly all of their miles, but they can still have a weekend getaway without starting on thursday.
Also stretches the limited lithium resource to avoid price pressure.
Battery-electric isn't that great of a road fuel for over 100 miles.
 
Plug in only are not practical for a large swath of the population and they just won't go there
That is similar to saying they will never go there. I am sure that was said 120 years ago by many people who used horses for transportation. I have taken many trips over 100 miles in my EVs during the past ten years.

Battery-electric isn't that great of a road fuel for over 100 miles.
On a cost per mile you can't beat the economy of an electric car. DC fast charging can give you 100 miles of range in twenty minutes.
 
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I have taken many trips over 100 miles in my EVs during the past ten years.
I've taken my bike 50 miles.
But I also need a vehicle that meets my other needs.
Great that your EV works for you. Doesn't come within a whiff of close for me.
 
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