Featured Corolla Hybrid 2019 ad - any comments?

But a BEV will work for far more people than are buying them at this time. The UCS estimated that 40% of American households could have a BEV work as one of its cars, and that was back when the Leaf and Volt were the only nationwide options. Their success at reducing petroleum use is not dependent on everyone driving one.

In countries with high fuel prices, the BEV will hit total cost parity with the equivalent ICE car in a year. Always room for improvement for the batteries, but part of the BEV's higher price comes for not benefiting from the production scale that ICE cars have.

The trend towards every car being hybridized to some degree is starting. But if more people are buying them because they are the only choice, or high fuel prices, it isn't a sign that people got hip to them. People got hip to the Prius during past spikes in gas prices, and many went to other model once prices dropped. Plug ins are doing better, despite lower gas prices, because they have more to appeal with.

Gas prices likely won't go up in the near future. Multiple sources are stating we will have an over supply this year.

 

My town has one public charging station. It is occupied by one of the same two cars every time I go by. For all day. I have gone by at least 10 gas stations and probably 80 pumps by the time I get to that parking lot.

All the gas stations have canopies for when it is super hot or raining. The charging station sits out bare.

Now again, which vehicle is more convenient? As an urban shopper/commuter 2who has 240 in the garage, the EV. For all circumstances...

 

Certainly if "convenience" is your only criteria then you should continue to buy and use a gas car.
And if everyone does this we are like a frog in boiling water.
Hopefully, not everyone has this same single, me first, criteria.

Mike

 

Yes, EVs are expensive. Math will tell us that.

Math also tells us that, about the best a practical gas car can do is 50 - 60 mpg.
Virtually every EV (or PHEV in EV mode) is above 100 MPGe. And if you subtract off 10% for charging in efficiency and another 10% for electricity transmission you are still far greater MPGe than using oil. The mix of fuel source that go into the electricity generation also matters so it is possible to have greater GHG in an EV compared to the best hybrid. But on average EVs are much better.
All the studies with attention grabbing headlines about EVs maybe being not better are just comparing the best of the best hybrids to the worst EV in the worse grid.
Apples have never been successfully compared to oranges like this

Mike

 

I don't know where you live that you think everyone else is (maybe) like you.

63% of all households have a garage or carport. These stats don't break it down further, but I spent just 30 seconds searching for it. Feel free to do a better search. But as a guess ~50% of households have a garage...maybe. That is plenty of people who could buy an EV and charge it at home. No?

(Most of them probably have 2 cars or more anyway)

Fact #958: January 2, 2017 Sixty-three percent of all Housing Units have a Garage or Carport | Department of Energy

Heck, 23% of households have a second fridge in their garage. These people have money to waste (consume wisely?) on keeping extra drinks cold so certainly they can handle charging at home.

Mike

 

We got the second fridge to better handle our Costco runs.

Hard to believe we lived without it for so long.

Oh the joys of a 23%er.

 

You'll need a chest freezer soon

 

Then I’ll have to park outside.

Wife doesn’t want that, so we’ll have to do without .

If we had the 3 car garage, I’d be all in on it.

 

That's not good math. MPGe says nothing about the amount of GHG released by the EV which if concentrated at the power plant. The inefficient conversation of chemical energy to a different form just happens to be outside of the car itself.

 

That is if you cannot charge with renewable sources.

 

Cars are all about convenience. Average car occupancy is under 2 in this country. If you don't want to pollute, get rid if your car and walk/bike/public transport to work and other places. You will also need to alter many of your other life choices like having children, eating meat, taking a shower every day, etc.

Shaming people into buying electric cars is laughable.

 

I am of the opinion that people who purchase big V8 SUVs that return 15 miles to the gallon SHOULD be shamed.

 

A car built in Japan and brought to the USA for sale gets here on a car carrier ship. Those ships burn marine heavy fuel (aka HFO), commonly cited for having 2,000x as much sulfur in as any street fuel (diesel/gasoline etc)

So... figure ~45 tons of fuel per day, 11 days from Yokohama to Long Beach, 6000 cars on board... so that's what, 82.5kg of HFO to get each car here.

If the HFO really does have 2000x the sulfur content of gasoline, you'd have to burn 27,500 gallons of gasoline in a locally-built car to measure up to the amount of sulfur released by getting a Japanese car to California with 0 odometer.

So strictly in terms of sulfur emissions, essentially anything built in Detroit leaves the air cleaner than anything built in Japan and shipped in.

Now, my math is loose! my data isn't good! These are frank admissions. I simply don't have access to great data that I trust, and I'm not an accountant, climate statistician, marine fuel buyer etc. I'm certain that there is error in these figures.

But in very blunt terms... cars (of all kinds) are not a problem once you realize what the ships and planes are doing.

 

Once the Ontario plant closes down, I'm thinking that all of the Corollas will be ASSEMBLED in whatever they call underdeveloped regions these days (Kentucky, Mississippi, Mexico, etc...) but yeah.....it's a cute add for a very entry-level car that's in a very different depth band than those that most EVangelists are buying.

It's at least a little refreshing to see Yota making commercials that people do not roll their eyes at for very different reasons!

 

Can you define "depth band?" I'm not familiar with that term in an automotive context and I don't speak bubblehead.

You might dig this one:

 

Easy.
Corollas are roughly $20,000 (18,700)
T3s are roughly $45,000


Different markets, different commercials.

 

Then you don't need a garage or carport for home charging. There are EVSE available that can charge the car outside, in the drive way.

Charging for those without private parking needs to be addressed, but a large portion of cars can be switched to BEVs or PHEVs while that is happening.

In the US, on the most carbon intensive grid, a typical BEV causes as much GHG emissions as a car getting 40mpg. In the regions where most plug ins are sold, 70mpg equivalent is the lowest, and it goes over 100mpg in some locations.

I want to same the switch is in the fall. There is concern it can cause a price increase for all fuels.

Then why take a cheap shot at charging?

 

I'm guessing there was an autocorrect or transcription error, the word "same" should have been "say?"

I've been wondering about that problem for a while. HFO is pretty much the leftover "heel" after everything else has been made from the crude oil. Right now they are able to charge money for it, and people take it away and light it on fire to get some energy while also disposing of it into the atmosphere.

But what happens if we put a stop to that? Suddenly a portion of every last barrel of oil is now essentially toxic waste, and we have to do something with it. Can't profit from it; it's now suddenly a cost burden to deal with. Pump it back into old wells? Consume it in a different sort of apparatus for less residual emissions?

I expect this change would add something to the cost of all refined petroleum products, and if the ships lose access to this cheap fuel they'll have to burn something more expensive in its place. That's a lot of prices going up at once.

 

Correct on the autocorrect.

The heel of crude is asphalt. The sulfur can be removed from the bunker fuel, just like it is now done for ULSD. Sounds like the sulfur gets concentrated into a residual of the fuel. That may get burned in a power plant, or end up in the asphalt. They might be able to remove the sulfur, but then you have sulfur to get rid off after spending more resources.
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The sulfur limit is going from 3.5% to 0.5% on January 1, 2020. Emission Control Areas around some ports and cities is already at 0.1%. production will have to start before that date, so any effect on other petroleum products will happen before then.