Featured Future Toyota Prime PHEVs: How much range and performance?

For me, the problem is that I'm often near or beyond the range of the car, necessitating me to either start the engine or stop to charge. For example, my Mom lives 22 miles away. I use 65-90% of the battery (depending on temperature and weather) getting there, and need to charge to get back (usually on L1 at her house). My son's best friend is 16 miles away, which is right at the edge of the round-trip range. My flying field is 13 miles away but 1 mile of that is dirt road and it's a 600 foot climb meaning I usually get back at 15% or so. My aunt is 44 miles away, meaning I can't get there without starting the engine.

My "commute" is no where since I've been working at home for the last 20 months, but when I did go in to work, it was 11 miles each way, which is no problem except that I get home with very little charge left if I need to go somewhere else.

There's only one place I ever go where power is occasionally a problem - to my flying field. There's a left-turn onto a 55mph highway up a 5% grade and, if traffic is on-coming, it can be a struggle to get up to speed in time once in a while.

 

I can tell you what we do with coal ash in NC, we truck it to a old sand mine and hope it never rains hard. And yea, it is my county that gets the stuff.

 

While it's a good idea to try to stay on battery the whole trip, it's not always necessary. As a rule of thumb, if the ICE is going to run more than 10 minutes the "per mile" environmental impact is not significantly higher in hybrid mode (after various losses) than what you get using power from the grid.

 

I see you've never dealt with an autistic kid who's currently stuck on not using any fossil fuels. For him, having the engine start in-town is like having a knife in the chest for you and I.

 

Yes, that little tidbit makes a big difference. Obviously you need a long range BEV or steam powered car to avoid that.

To take it to the extremes, of course, you'll also have to keep the secret that a LOT of the electricity from the grid is from natural gas to avoid triggering a panic attack. Heaven forbid that he should ever learn that virtually every surface of any car interior is made from fossil fuels and their by-products. Even the roads you travel on and the shingled roof on your house are most likely to be tar, a fossil fuel byproduct.

I guess the point is that you can't cover every possible scenario. I'm glad to hear that your son is high functioning. My grandson will never reach the point where he can worry about such things.

 

Oh, I don't keep any of that a secret at all. He knows a ton about the power grid and where materials come from.