Featured Hybrids offer fastest route to reduce CO2, says Emissions Analytics

It is hard to enforce in practice when you get only 30 miles on a charge.

But 60+ mpg in the summer works as well.

(And just like that, I turned a negative into a positive.)

 

I could get to work and back entirely on electricity if I had 30 miles of electric range with a little left to spare. Honestly, 30 is more than enough for most people. The intent of a PHEV should not be to drive entirely on electricity but to displace majority of gas consumption. Half of Americans could reduce their gas consumption by 80% even with a Prius Prime (more or less). Suppose the number was shown to be exactly 80%. To achieve, 90% electric driving, you might need a PHEV with 50 miles of electric range. To achieve 95% electric driving, you might need a PHEV with 100 miles of electric range. You can see the law of diminishing returns at play here. A PHEV with 100-mile electric range will not be cost-competitive with a 200-mile EV.

The optimal electric range for a PHEV might very well be in the 20 - 40 miles. If a PHEV with that kind of electric range cannot reduce your gas consumption by 80%, you should consider purchasing a different kind of car or choose a different mode of transportation. (Assuming your primary motivation is to reduce CO2 emissions.)

 

"Next most efficient" I love it. Truly an article written by a Wordsmith. In other words, 2nd place ... 1st loser. As a PHEV driver, don't get me wrong. It's just the ridiculous factor is funny.

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Personal experience:

• 25 mi EV, Prius Prime - a '3 stop' EV, knowing where every charging location is important or too many return to home trips for charging or expensive gas burning. EV miles are ~1/2 to 1/3 the cost per mile.
• 72 mi EV, BMW i3-REx - a '10 stop' EV, knowing where every charging location is affects shopping but not so obsessive.
• 200 mi EV, Model 3 - drive all day, anywhere around town, and charge when home. Businesses having chargers are 'nice' but not 'necessary.'

Bob Wilson

 

this is a fleet article. i wonder what % of vehicles that covers?

 

My friend owns a fleet of three cabs in town and all of them are hybrids, a 09 Camry, a Gen3 Prius and Hyundai hybrid with 50K miles that just cost him $2400 at the stealership to replace water pump and 30K mile maintenance. He says from now on he's only buying used Toyotas because all the other hybrids he's had cost a fortune to keep running.

Point being, because his fleet is a hyrbid fleet he figured that he saved 9,000 gallons of gas last year. So the argument this article makes holds up, but we've spent the past 20 years in a hybrid transition and full conversion to electric and the end of gas stations as we know them needs to be accelerated.

Too many times Toyota and other players are holding back full electric cars because they haven't maxed out their return on investment/profits on gas powered cars yet.

 

"Further analysis found that mild hybrids provide the most efficient method of CO2 reduction per unit of battery size, followed by full hybrids."

This is similar to what I've said about mild hybrids, that their lower cost could yield better fuel savings for the fleet than full hybrids. I also tend to stipulate that a car model, or manufacturer line up, would have to make the mild hybrid standard for this to pan out. Which should be easier to do than a full hybrid because of that cost difference.

Which is the weakness in their proposal. Yes, hybrids offer a better return in terms of CO2 emission reduction than BEVs, but that only works if people buy the hybrids. That may be the case in Europe, where the article is focused, but car buyers here are choosing the traditional model over the hybrid. Meanwhile, among sedans, I think the Model 3 is outselling the hybrid offerings.

 

The key here is the lens of the article: constrained battery supply. If the supply is constrained then it makes most sense to allocate to hybrids that have the most co2 reduction per kWh. If we can fix the supply then you can move up the chain to bev. Focusing on other things is missing the point of the article's argument.

 

Fixing the limited supply issue has never had more focus/determination... It really is the single most defining driver of the future of vehicle production numbers. And no doubt this article didn't analyze the return on investment for delivery trucks that have 4 vehicles worth of Tesla batteries. But corporations dependent on a fleet of maximum size delivery trucks have run the numbers and are all in on all electric semi craze once it happens.

 

One problem with fleets that I've read - is getting PHEVs charged. It was in relation to a Mitsubishi Outlander "Oh, someone forgot to plug it in overnight - but it still runs on petrol". The problem then is that it uses 10-12 l/100km in petrol mode, far more than a RAV4 hybrid.

A prominent motoring journal here had a VOLVO TurboDiesel-Hybrid XC90 on long term loan - and every month they'd report on the great car - then say:


AND


and so on for the 5 months they had it - I think only one month they seriously plugged it in for part of the time.

 

A friend sent me this - it looks like LEXUS have addressed the issue with a ONE HORSEPOWER LEXUS:

 

agreed. my daughter used to work at the university of vermont transportation center. they had a fleet of aftermarket plug in prius, and they never plugged in.

 

I ran a fleet of vehicles in my last job - oh, dear. They often came in after hours and parked in the underground carpark. The number of times I'd have a call "The TARAGO (PREVIA in some countries) has a flat battery". Once the RACQ (AAA here) came - discover that some child had turned an interior light (or 2 - I think it had about 8!!!) on and it wasn't noticed in the well lit carpark.

Or report a flat tyre - which looked like they'd been driven ½ flat for a week etc.

Nobody took care of them - I'd ask them "please check the tyres when you refuel" - nope, never happened. After a few months, I'd take one of the office staff with me to the carpark first thing, and between us check every tyre before the workers took the cars out. At least one would need repair most months.

I'm sure the same would happen with a PHEV (or worse an EV - I can imagine "this seems to be out of petrol too - it's got a very low battery?")

 

Article is awkwardly worded and makes it sound like hybrids are better at reducing CO2 emissions than PHEVs or BEVs, when really what their saying is that battery production is a current bottleneck so more CO2 could be reduced by spreading them among a greater number of hybrids than a smaller number of PHEVs/BEVs.

 

Unless you're in one of the few countries or areas with Green power - a HYBRID is the better option. PRIUS produces only 80g/km.

Nobody seriously considers the future - how will they produce 1+ billion EVs and batteries - that's how many cars are running on the planet? And - how will they recycle 1+ billion Li-ION batteries every 10-12 years?

 

Excellent and under-appreciated points. We can't build the next billion batteries by recycling the last 100 million, just not enough to go around.

Zero emissions for a few doesn't do much to address the overall problem, but we have to start somewhere. Now at least these things (HVs and BEVs) exist. Let's not forget- we've also massively improved the emissions output from plain old ICE vehicles- the ones that run on USA highways, anyhow.

If the overall goal is reduced pollution including CO2, we can still do a heck of a lot to improve small engines, offroad/construction/ag machines, marine shipping & aviation. A few of those have virtually no standards or enforcement anyway, though Trollbait has reminded me that things will get better for marine engines shortly. Gas cars are a big polluter, but there's still some even lower-hanging fruit out there.

 

About 15-20 yrs ago, I think it was BMW who said that their petrol engines were so efficient that in a smoggy environment, the exhaust was cleaner than the surrounding air. I don't think we quite believed them. Then about 10 yrs ago in their H2 experiment, they made the same claim - yep, more feasible..

A Landcruiser V8 today issues 250 g/km, but 15 yrs ago was 345!!! [and a PRIUS is 80].

 

Battery innovation is still in it's infancy... We aren't just limited to lithium in the long run, maybe in the short run, but there's lots of new battery technologies coming online, like sodium batteries which can ship at 0-volts, as well as new capacitor powered lead-acid battery designs that could upstage lithium for power walls and power plants. You can learn about all the startups and partnerships at this event every year: The Battery Show | Power & Energy Storage Conference Trade Show

 

That claim comes up every now and then. It's true- modern cars will emit exhaust with less hydrocarbons than the air they take in. They're doing a more efficient conversion to CO2. So no, they're never going to win for CO2, but at least now they aren't dumping the HCs which were worse to begin with.

But not all engines have that technology- my point is we can get a lot of gains by working on the worst actual sources of pollution- the ones that have avoided all forms of regulation thus far. Time to eliminate the waivers and grandfathered in stuff.