the fuck they aren’t
Technology Connections video on hybrids opened my eyes to what they actually are.
I used to think they were a crappy 1/4-step toward EVs, that their main feature was regenerative braking, and that all their gas savings vanished in highway driving.
All of that is wrong.
What they are is a different tuning of internal combustion engine that gets much better gas mileage but has terrible acceleration. Hybrids augment that acceleration intelligently with an electric motor so it’s not so noticeable, removing the big complaint you’d otherwise have with one of those engines in your car. And the gas savings are actually most dramatic in highway driving.
I used to think hybrids must be more complex because they’re gas + EV. And more complex usually means less reliable.
I just learned very recently that that’s not the case — for Toyota, anyway. Their hybrids are actually generally considered more reliable than their traditional gas cars, these days.
They deleted the starter and alternator. And the transmission, an e-CVT (which is nothing like the shitty CVTs that many people are familiar with), is dead simple and more reliable than even a manual transmission.
Also, I find brake pedal very interesting, because it actually feels completely normal and UNinteresting.
My only experience with regenerative breaking before was when I drove someone’s Tesla. Letting my foot off the “gas” pedal felt like braking, and the brake pedal was only needed for hard, emergency braking.
In Toyota hybrids, the gas and brake pedals feel absolutely normal and familiar, despite most of the braking actually being regenerative 🤯.
There’s probably more cool engineering that I have yet to discover. I just bought my Toyota like 2 weeks ago 🙂
(Note: Many manufacturers make hybrids differently, and there are plenty of shitty ones. Also, plug-in hybrids are pretty different, and generally less reliable.)
Not tone deaf, and not competitive. Saying you hear the demand for something does not mean you can do that thing.
“GM - Electric Vehicle Pioneers - We’d Rather Sell Highly Polluting Combustion Trucks but We’re Not Tone Deaf”
M’eh … I’ve seen better slogans.
WE’RE NOT TONE DEAF…
We’re not tone deaf, but we also can’t hold a tune and generally don’t really care.™️
And muh trucks, muh SUVs. Gotta have more of those.
We need electric trains. That’s what we need. Fuck cars.
The main reason public transit is what it is in Europe is because of how WW2 ravaged the continent. Maybe WW3 will do the same.
Never heard that theory but it makes sense. I just assumed they were denser and liked digging tunnels more.
We better get flying trains after this one
All trains are pretty much electric. Perhaps you mean we need trains with batteries or fed by grid electricity directly.
They meant move away from diesel-electric and I think you know it, this is highly pedantic even by railroad nerd standards.
Most people don’t know this.
I agree with you, I recently explained it to a group of engineers and techs.
Not tone deaf. Just greedy and don’t actually give a fuck about their customers. Which is why they tried to kill the Chevy bolt, got rid of car play in the EVs and possibly other vehicles, have prioritized large trucks and SUVs because they get better profit margins. And that is just off the top of my head. I’m surr I could come up with more.
have prioritized large trucks and SUVs because they get better profit margins
And we have tariffs to thank for that, in no small part.
Well, you don’t exactly get huge govemrnent bail outs by being competent. All us car manufacturers have in one way or another been propped up by the government. And before I see anybody comment about Ford not getting a bail out, please remember what vehicles are at every police station, fish and game, and other assorted government entities. Us car manufacturers would not exist without the governments safety net to save them from their gross incompetence.
Greedy and incompetent.
Why does America do the wrong thing before doing the obviously right thing?
“Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
- not Winston Churchill, and remains to be seen if it holds true
Money money money, Baby!
The U.S. doesn’t need more hybrids, it needs electric cars that cut out oil dependency and a corresponding increase in renewable energy production.
any EVs that can reliable go along the alaskan highways in the winter?
“Sorry, best I can do is a 100% tariff on cheap, performant Chinese EVs” – Biden
Biden implementing Trump’s dogshit policies is good actually
-lemmy libs downvoting you, probably
I’ll never understand the tribalism with America’s two parties. They’re both trash. One is obviously treasonous and far worse.
But in a functioning democracy, people should absolutely be pissed when they’re betrayed by their leaders. Doing Elon Musk’s bidding and keeping EVs more expensive than global warming machines is what Biden chose. Along with the EU. They can all get fucked.
Also a functioning public transport system, but that’s a little harder to do than sell a few cars.
I’ll argue for both. Electric cars for when cars are necessary (sometimes they are, especially outside the context of urban environs), electrified public transit for the other 80%.
I bought and needed a hybrid. I had a 212 mile round trip to work when I bought my Volt. Today I have a quarter tank of gas I’m afraid will go stale. Winter is coming, though, and I’ll need the engine for heat and because the mileage drops to about 20 — less if I get on the highway.
I’m still leery about range and heat issues, but at least my wife bought a Tahoe so we have distance trips covered. That frees me up to buy an EV next go round and I guess if the heat sucks it’ll be a decent fair weather car.
Make sure your next EV comes with a heat pump, then heat should not be an issue. Although I don’t know how common EVs with heat pumps are in the US. Here in northern Europe, most EVs are offered with heat pumps nowadays, but in other European markets with milder climates, I think they are still much more rare too.
Upvote for the heat pump. That was actually a deciding factor for me that EVs were mature enough. I live in New England and the heat pump has no problem keeping up, although I’m getting spoiled with pre-heat. EVs tend to lose range when it gets cold, but I’ve seen stats that heat pumps cut the loss in half, and I’ve never noticed an issue.
My other criteria was 300 mile range. I don’t drive much so I might only charge once a week (in my own driveway!) up it’s enough to make road trips easy. My kid is at school two hours drive away, and range is sufficient for a weekend round trip without charging.
But is that only the Tesla model y (in the us)? It’s been several years, so you’d think others would have followed by now, but i haven’t read of it
The 2025 and later versions of the Kia and Hyundai EVs use heat pump technology, as do some or all Subaru EVs. At least they do in Canada. I’d be unsurprised if more did. I bought an old Leaf, which has a number of limitations, but does well as a second car or a city car. If I can convince my wife to replace her SUV with an electric, heat pumps will be part of the reason why.
I know you have good intentions but I would say the US needs drop in hybrid motors to convert older vehicles. I can’t afford a new car for the next 10-20 years even if I sold both of my cars.
I’d rather have a multi-fuel hybrid for emergencies; something that can run petrol, oil, diesel, ethanol, propane, kerosene, and wood gas. There are times where something like that is needed. Like powering a fridge and AC when a disaster takes out the power grid. I can tell you it wasn’t fun not having power for two weeks. I really liked the EV car idea of powering your house but what happens after you drain the battery? And look I live in a place that’s dumb enough when the power goes out, there’s a mandatory shutoff box for your solar panels in these events.
“We know what our customers want: huge, expensive, highly profitable hybrids that will line our pockets forever.”
Theres a hybrid here in China, Geely Emgrand, that gets 104 mpg hwy and costs 13K USD.
A plug in hybrid and for a certain distance, I’d presume. You can’t really get 104mpg on a highway with a normal hybrid. I at least can’t really imagine it exists.
It does, and its not a plugin.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2SyONV_EruQ
Tldr, the ICE engine produces barely enough torque to move the car from a standstill while producing enough hp to charge the batteries, and letting the much more powerful electric engines do the work, whereas previous hybrids don’t go all-in on efficiency, letting the engine provide an appreciable amount of torque to the wheels.
That’s pretty insane and awesome. I’m surprised I missed this. I love “driving 4 answers”. That guy is awesome.
With the US government deep in Detroit’s pocket, we’ll never have anything close, here.
i think it’s more like the US populace is deeply brainwashed by Truck and SUV marketing. If we (collectively) wanted efficient vehicles and purchased based on that, that’s what they’d make. But they make sure that’s NOT what we want.
Yes and no? The reason for that marketing is that they can sell pickups and SUVs at way higher margins because they’re seen as luxurious. Because they have higher margins, every non-pickup sold represents a pickup or SUV not sold to the car company and dealerships. This is dumb as shit, but its how business types think.
The SUV version with the same engine gets 50 mpg, but costs 60% more.
Official dealership lobbying.
Too bad American car companies. I already learned my lesson buying your cheap junk. Never again.
Cheap junk?? American cars are very expensive junk.
Say what you want about GM, they didn’t have to put the same V8 into pretty much everything, and now that they don’t, how are teenagers going to get their hands on a 4L V8 so detuned it makes the same power as an engine 1/3 the size for like $4000 that was only ever driven by grandma?
Had a Grand Cherokee once. That experience put me off US cars for good.
American cars are very expensive junk.
$135,000
4L V8 does not exist in America. The $4k cars have 6.2L V8s with like 160HP and literally 3 gears
My first car’s engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northstar_engine_series#L47
Unfortunately there are still at least 10 northstar V8s still functioning and driving out on the road today
It was fine when all cylinders felt like firing.
I take cheap to mean poor quality and/or cheap for them to buy or produce (versus the customer).
Assuming you’re esl:
Cheap doesn’t mean low quality, it means low price, which can imply low quality, but it doesn’t work if the thing’s not also cheap.
You could call US cars cheaply-made junk.
I’m a native US English speaker and use both definitions. I’m on a Swiss instance because I don’t like hosting my data in 14 Eyes countries.
If I think your product is shit, I’ll oftentimes call it cheap — especially if it looks like you manufactured it cheaply and then sold it for a high price for a huge profit.
An expensive product can’t be cheap. It can be cheaply made, but a cheap expensive thing is an oxymoron.
It can still be cheap junk even if you overpaid.
You don’t have a monopoly on the English language.
Nobody would say “I wouldn’t buy a Cybertruck, they’re so cheap”, if they did, you’d probably go “Haha they’re like 6 figures new!”, thinking the person assumed that because Teslas look cheap they actually are.
Oh for fuck’s sake. If you manufacture something cheaply it’s cheap for the manufacturer. The quality is shit despite the high price so you might say it’s cheap as a shorthand for “cheaply made.”
I literally see and hear this usage everywhere. I’m not sure why it’s suddenly a mystery.
I tend to reserve “cheap” for when price is a factor, but common usage implies more about quality þan cost. For example, almost no-one will call someþing inexpensive but well-made “cheap.” Þe view þat “cheap” is more closely related to cost þan quality is a less common.
Þe
Shouldn’t this be an eth (ð) and not a thorn? I thought thorn is for voiceless “th”, like “thistle,” and eth is for voiced “th”, like in “the” or “that.”
A lot of people are attacking GM for all of this. Some of that is valid, but it’s overlooking a critically important detail: People, GM’s customers, are the ones choosing to buy gas cars. GM is simply responding to that desire.
There’s an old saying, “The customer is always right (in matters of taste)”. GM’s EV offerings are, for the most part, comparable to their gas counterparts. IOW, it’s not like they’re intentionally kneecapping that segment just to force people to gas. Even when the incentives were still in full swing, more than half of the people buying a new Blazer opted for the gas version.
Focus on the demand, and the supply will follow.
Every where else the demand for electric vehicles is on the rise but here in Idiot America and in China where the ownership of EV’s is already relatively high due to cheap, good range, decent EV’s available and they’re still pushing for even more adoption.
There’s no demand here because Americans and their leadership in both government and corporate who actively hamper adoption and the refusal to actually meet the demand of having a cheap EV that can get decent milage.
In Australia we consider the Donald Trump is the greatest gift to EVs. Since he closed the Straight of Hormuz sales of EVs have skyrocketed. People now see EVs as a viable option rather than an early adopters plaything. The market has moved with the cost of fuel.
When the US collapses, at least these cars will help secure some African warlord’s fief
