Why Did You Decide To Go PHEV over Full EV?

Let's be honest here, the Bolt is really a Sonic/Trax EV. While there is downsides to basing an EV on an ICE model, there are some upsides. One of those is shared components.

Wasn't people having issues in getting replacement windshields for the Prius/Prime in the before times?

The Prius Prime is not high volume. It generally sells better than the Bolt, but sometimes not. I don't think it has broken 30k a year in the US. It does benefit from being a Prius, in that some parts are interchangeable. Though Prius sales aren't what they once were.

I'm in the take it to a store camp. In NJ, the township had a collection site. Which is slightly better, as I have found that the store near me won't take old coolant, but the one by work(same chain) does.

Some areas have Li-ion recycling, but for electronics. Don't know how clean or effective it is.

Of course, being bigger, there is challenges in recycling EV packs. Companies are working on solutions. There is valuable materials inside the packs after all. Tesla's latest cells had recyclability in mind when designing them.

Before recycling, there is reuse. A pack at 70% capacity may not be good enough for a car anymore, but it could be just fine for back up power and peak shaving in a building. Toyota did that with some old NiMH packs at a couple stores in Japan.

EV battery recycling will happen. Before it can be economically sustainable, there needs to be a stead stream of old packs coming in.

The 70% figure was being passed around before the car companies got serious about EVs. I first saw it presented as a counter to EV skeptics bringing up battery life. So it likely comes from some third party that wants to see EVs succeed. It is a bench mark to keep the manufacturers honest. They'd only supply a warranty to 50% capacity, or not even mention capacity in the battery warranty, if they thought they could get away with it.

Great if you can keep an EV pack going down to 50%, but keep in mind that it isn't just range you will be losing. Performance will also drop. While the lower range can work, can accelerating seconds slower than a Prius work too?

 

This is news to me...
Do you have a source?
So my Spark EV, let's say it's at 80% kWh capacity from new specs.
Are you saying it now only gives me 80% of the kW of power it gave when it was new? I have a power display...
I can't tell it's 20% slower than it was when I got it at 3500 miles.
And, I'm sure it will still smoke any Prius at a stop light! It's a fast little EV POS!

These packs are getting recycled now. How, I don't know, or where....
They're too valuable to chuck into the ocean... I hope....

 

Capacity loss is not the only thing that happens to a battery while it ages. There is also an increase of internal resistance, which can lead to loss of power, though it likely will be more important to the car owner as it leads to longer fast charge times.
EV Battery End Of Life | batterytechonline.com

For small batteries, Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling: The Complete Guide - GreenCitizen
There are companies and groups working on the challenges of recycling EV batteries.
These companies are solving the EV battery recycling problem | World Economic Forum

 

Thanks for the links!
Although, this is all news to me as I have never heard owners of high mile EV's report these problems.
More research is required,,, or not. I can just keep waiting for the downside of owning early gen EV's.

 

Yeah, I've taken some items to Green Citizen before over the years. They take most items and I think they often will try to refurbish and repurpose before other means that are necessary.

Back then I would see that they would receive tons of 1 to 4 year old macs and laptops and just turn around to refurbish/resell them. I think it had to do with some licensing/lease business agreements.

But those are interesting articles. I read some and have done some looking into before. I recall the big issue with recycling is whether a company does it or they just dump it somewhere and call it "recycling."

This is also why I don't recycle plastic anymore as I've learned now that they used to just dump it in China and China in turn has to dump it elsewhere. Or dump it into a landfill....

So often I am weary of any new "recycling" news.

Oil on the other hand I can understand. I see the used oil and I know they can reuse it via a filtering process.

Anyways! Thanks for the discussion! These are definitely interesting choices. Yeah tons of pros and cons.... lots of choices....

 

For me, it's long road trips. My commute is about 15 minutes or so one way, I can get to work then to the gym and more or less all the way back home before it goes into "hybrid mode".

 

An EV can have high miles, and still have over 90% of the battery's capacity though. Then some high mileage EVs might be on their second pack.

As anyone actually taken a Leaf with abused pack down to the track to see if it performs like new?

I'm of the thought that burying plastic in a landfill is the best thing to do; sequester that carbon back in the ground. When it does occur, plastic can't recycled like glass or metal can. Heating it up changes it chemically. Might be better to apply more heat and pressure, and turn it back into the hydrocarbons mix it was made from.

The nickel and cobalt will make old batteries too valuable to not recycle after they are no longer useable. The lithium may even go that way too. We were using a lot of it before needing it for batteries, and those uses haven't gone away.

 

My main reason for the PHEV:
1. Lack of charging infrastructure where I live. We're in an apartment complex with no parking lot adjacent plugs. I work at a school where there are no accessible plugs in parking lot as well. Public chargers are few and far between in my city, at least within my commute. It just wouldn't be practical to buy a BEV until we can charge in a garage at a future house. That's probably a few years away for us.

Other considerations that are surmountable:
2. We make a couple of road trips per year up to DFW which is about 300 miles one way. It's feasible to drive halfish way and stop for 30 minutes to recharge at a fast charger, though it'd be less convenient than just making the trip on one tank. I'd consider the benefit of full EV to be worth the inconvenience in a heartbeat, but...well, see #1.

3. Cost. When I was looking to buy a car last year, I was initially looking at gently used ICE compacts/subcompacts like Corrollas and Fits. I just assumed any form of EV was out of reach. It was once I started sniffing around this forum that I learned about the kind of deals they were offering for PPs. I bought mine last year out of CA to take advantage of the big nice person Toyota rebate + the ability to negotiate several thousand dollars off. Getting this thing for $20K last year compared to what the market looks like now is just an outrageously good deal and extraordinarily good fortune. There are some EVs that I would consider affordable/in my price range once you factor in the $7500 federal rebate (i.e. Leaf, Mini Cooper SE) but I'm wary of their longevity/reliability. I'm hoping that with more EVs coming onto the market in a few years, our family be in a position to replace my wife's car with a full BEV under $25K (or failing that, a PHEV with a long enough range to be used as an EV 98% of the time.)

 

Like everyone else, it was range anxiety for me. I wasn't confident there were enough chargers around for charging.

The Prime serves my needs, and I'm on electric most of the time anyway. The occasional long trip puts me on gas mode, which is good as I don't want the gas staying in the tank too long, so it works out.

I'll seriously consider an EV for the next car, though that will be my wife's, and I'm not sure if she will want one. The prime is our small car...her current Prius V is our larger car, so it would have to be a larger EV. Hopefully chargers will be more prevalent by that time, otherwise I'll wait for my new car...which, at my historical rate, it would probably be another 10 years. Or when the Prime battery fails.

 

Waiting to move to a new city to see what our commutes are. Mine would be 35 miles to the airport. Level 2 charger installed at the house. Charge at home. Looking at a BZ4x all in for $50K..... parts shared with Subaru since the companies designed it together. 250 miles of range is about all my back and bladder can handle on road trips anymore anyway. So I won't mind the stops. Only 7,000 models will be available in 2023.....so MSRP or higher will be the price to play. 2nd to that I might just keep my 08 Prius and drive it into the ground...and spend money on my child tuition. Mid choice would be a Prius Prime 2020 or newer. I need the 5th seat. but still $35K if you can even find one. And I haven't had a car payment in years.......and like it.

 

First reason: wife’s time anxiety. I have a 200 mile/320 km round trip commute to work (most semesters only 2 or 3 days a week, very occasionally—last semester—5 days a week) and in winter, the shorter range/slower charging time because of -15 to -25C temps (typical evening temps) would extend my commute time by 40-50 minutes vs the other seasons. I was prepared to live with it but it wasn’t worth fighting over it.

Second reason: price. We have generous incentives but, at the time, the only price competitive EV with a range sufficient for non-winter commutes was a used Bolt. I could afford more but didn’t want to spend more than I did. And a Bolt, used or new, has a slow “fast charge” rate in winter (see reason one above).

Third reason: exceptional overall fuel efficiency. Once I decided to go PHEV, only ones that fit my objectives were Prime and Ioniq PHEV. The tie-breakers were the extra hybrid experience at Toyota and I preferred the EV mode in the Prime vs Ioniq (otherwise, it was a very close “race”).

Fourth reason (increasingly minor as time passes): I do spend a fair amount of time traveling in rural areas of southern Quebec and northern New England where charging infrastructure is not nearly as well developed as around my town (Montreal region) and along major autoroute corridors in Quebec. I could have adapted but it is more convenient for me at present.

My primary goal was to significantly reduce my overall fuel costs for commuting and that has been accomplished spectacularly (fuel savings alone since I bought it 13 months ago have more than covered the 13 car payments I’ve made and with current gas prices, that’s only accelerating). So I’m already very happy with it. And by the time I get my next vehicle, I expect winter EV range/charge times to be a complete non-issue.

 

Range mainly. It partly depends on what you're using it for. Given my normal driving, I could probably do with an EV, but picked the Prime as I had a 2005 Prius for many years (and miles).

One day at work, I had to drive the company van 300 miles on a job....and it broke down. Not bad, I wanted 3 hours and it worked fine after that, but my boss said the next trip would probably be in my own car. Remember, I got paid 3 hours for doing nothing. Including my compute, my total travel would've been 333 miles, kinda beyond the range of a Tesla even if it was fully charged when I went to work.

I hope to travel more and like the idea of going from San Diego to Las Vegas and not have to worry about finding a place to charge.