Featured PHEVs taking a hit in recent study

Not true, at least for the new Corolla.

 

I remember the Great Lake Erie and the Cayuga River that dumps into it, while in my first yr of high school. You know pollution is high when everything in water dies - & then the water catches fire.

This is actually optimistic on multiple levels. It shows that life will return after we use our natural resources as a sewer, and it shows how much we're regaining our sensibilities
.

 

I prefer to start with 'requirements' and then pick the vehicle(s):

• Mandatory
  • seats and internal volume
  • operating cost
  • purchase cost
  • cruise control
• Optional
  • color
  • safety features
  • cabin creature comforts
    
  • performance

The mandatory requirements eliminate a large number of vehicles. The optional requirements can be assigned a utility value, say part of 100%, to bounce against the cost and rank the remaining vehicles. So this is how it works for us:

	MANDATORY	BMW i3-REx	Std. Rng. Plus Model 3
1	two retired adults; no kids and; three small dogs	4-5 seats	two large bags and receiver hitch
2	operating cost	urban EV	90%	and gas	10% cross country	100% EV with Superchargers
3	purchase cost	$30k or less	$30k or less
4	cruise control	dynamic	dynamic
5	OPTIONAL
6	10% - color: not-Green	White + Black trim	10%	Blue	10%
7	50% - safety	quick steering	10%	self steering	50%
8	30% cabin	navigation	15%	navigation coupled steering	30%
9	20% - 0-60 sec. performance	<8 sec	10%	<6 sec	20%
10	score	45%	100%
11	Column 1 0
12
13	[*]'not-Green' - spent 4 years Marine Corps	once had a hated green Chevette	and rejected green 2001 Prius that had no cruise control
14	[*]'safety' - auto steering keeps car in lane without bleeps or wandering off into bad places like neutral stable 2003 Prius
15	[*]'cabin' - GPS navigation with updatable maps
16	[*]'performance' - get away from the idiots: across the intersection first; grab opening in traffic	and; reach speed limit first
17	[/LIST]
18	The BMW i3-REx	an EV with a decoupled	range extender engine	fully meets our requirements. Due 50 kW maximum DC charging	electric cross country miles are 4x the cost of running on gas. With ~3	000 lbs and 168 HP motor	it has serious scoot. Wife's folding wheelchair can be carried on back. Taking a nap is in seat or bent leg.
19
20	The Std. Rng. Plus Model 3	~3	500 lbs with 283 HP	has serious scoot so operated in 'chill' mode for a calmer driving experience matching the BMW i3-REx. The peak 170 kW charging means half the BMW cost of gas per mile. Two can sleep in car stretched out or nap in seats. Supercharging network building a station between Little Rock and Tulsa/Joplin. Last trips	had to use J1772 and take a 3-4 hour nap.
21
22	Bob Wilson

 

So big deal if plugins take a hit when owners are too lazy or incapable of plugging in. Out of 10K+ miles so far - 95% of our miles were plugged in & 90% of those were off of our (paid for their self) solar panels (guess the article doesn't want to put that issue into the efficiency equation either) .
In any event, with a standard Pacifica for example, we'd only get 20 MPG . If we never plugged in our Pacifica, we'd get 30mpg as a hybrid. By plugging in during ~90% of our miles - we get near the 84MPGe that it'd get if we never used gas. And that's a 5000 pound vehicle!



So - if folks don't plug in to a car that is designed to do that, heck, I figure they're just paying Road tax for both of us.
.

 

Since MPG with a plugin is really an equation involving electricity and gasoline, the headline is really saying:

Researchers find that operations on the left side of an equation must also be carried out on the right

Shocking news, truly.

 

Right. Its like saying EV wont move if you dont chatge it. Hello....thats what is designet for. If you missuse it, no wonder it does not work.


SM-G973F ?

 

researchers find burning gas makes pollution

very surprising

 

The actual news of the OP report, if it didn't pursue a slant, is that the fuel use, and thus carbon emissions, are worse in real world driving than the easy going test results used by Europe. The difference can be even bigger with PHEVs, depending on the amount on the charging the driver does.

 

Makes one Wonder. Since this slanted article purpose is to make plugins look worse rather than better than regular hybrids? Maybe the article should have said, "if you add cheat software - you make your cars look clean, you'll get 40X the amount of pollution ... better power performance AND higher mpg than hybrids!"
... wait - the European clean diesel Community already tried that.

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I don't believe you can accurately compare different vehicle technologies. You can compare specific vehicles but, within each technology there is so much variation that comparisons are useless.