“GM is currently assessing potential future investment,” GM spokesperson George Svigos said in a statement, adding: “No final decision has been made. GM is committed to an all-EV future globally. On that pathway, we continue to study consumer preferences and powertrain options, to ensure we best respond to customer demand and comply with an uncertain, complex and increasingly stringent regulatory landscape for 2027 and beyond.”
Volt PHEV is one of the better PHEVs that’s ever been offered. They were way ahead of the curve on that. PHEVs with a 50mi all electric range without an atrocious power dropoff are the sweet spot right now. They’re watching Toyota sell every Prius Prime they can make and feeling some regret right now.
It seems that all the major manufacturers underestimated the challenges of making battery packs at scale. Bolt EV Chevy had to replace a ton of batteries, so they felt those growing pains there. Ultium has been slow to scale and IMO may be a fundamentally flawed platform if they can’t make low cost models on it. Toyota can’t even make enough batteries to support its hybrids much less make a real push into BEVs.
And honestly why should they? A 50mi range BEV with an efficient onboard generator makes a lot of sense for many people. Maybe they’re right to make this move.
Are they? Battery costs keep falling. When you go from a Model 3 to a Volt, you save on batteries but you gotta pay for an engine, transmission, fuel tank, and a bunch of other things.
At current prices ($120 per kwh), a Model 3 battery is maybe $6000-7000. A Volt battery is probably at least $1000-$2000, since you need the full power from it, if not the full capacity. And then you gotta pay for the engine, transmission, catalytic converter, and all of that stuff. It is a painful way to save $4-5k.
You can kinda tell that Toyota is having regrets about the way that they do things, because all of the primes are being made in collectible quantities despite ample demand.
The pack level prices are much higher than $120/kWh. No one is offering replacements that cheap. Certainly not Tesla.
You also don’t need a traditional transmission in many PHEVs. The Volt included. You’re dramatically overestimating the cost of the ICE specific components, and underestimating the cost of batteries. BEVs are the more expensive option for a reason.
$9840 for the 82 kWh Model 3 battery using your price figure, versus $2160 for an 18 kWh PHEV battery. Which gives the Model 3 ~250 miles of highway range in mild weather, compared to more than double that for an efficient PHEV like the Rav4 Prime. So you’d need a $20k battery to match the range of the R4P, if a battery like that was small enough to be practical.
But, you say, you don’t need 500+ miles of range most days. That’s right, most days most people only need 40-50 miles of driving range…like a decent PHEV.
82kwh is 350+ miles of range, not 250. Your math is off by a shit ton. 250 is the 57kwh battery.
Real world highway speed range, not EPA range:
https://insideevs.com/news/692404/here-how-motor-trend-tesla-model-3-highland-70-mph-range-test-went/
But even if we disregard the range issue, a Model 3 LR battery is almost $8k more than a decent PHEV battery, using the earlier poster’s $120/kWh figure.
Real world (for me), is about 10% shy of EPA. I don’t own a Tesla (yet) but have used them for multiple road trips now and have no issues getting reasonably close to EPA range.
PHEVs batteries are way more expensive than they look, because they still need to deliver power. You might only need 1/5th of the range of a Model 3, but you still need all of the power of a Model 3 (or you can cheap out, I guess, but nobody wants anemic cars with a 0-60 time of “well, eventually, maybe, in favorable conditions”).
So we are generally talking more expensive chemistries and more expensive designs.
I have a PHEV with a weak 0-60 time in electric mode, but that turns out to rarely be an issue. In city traffic it’s fine, because the instant torque is better than many gas cars. And on the rare occasions when I need to get on the freeway on a short on-ramp, the gas engine can kick in to take care of that. Not the same as driving a fully electric vehicle, but it fits my driving style. Most people don’t need supercar acceleration for their daily driving needs.
A problem with the Volt is that it maxed out at 149 hp, because it wasn’t designed to combine gas and electric power sources to drive the wheels. The Rav4 Prime PHEV has 302 combined hp, and the Audi PHEV I’m driving has 362 hp.
In terms of overall production cost, PHEVs are in an odd spot between traditional hybrids and fully electric vehicles. They’ll probably fade away soon because of this, but for some use cases they still have a place for now.
Same! If they can make a black wing, we should also get a hybrid smaller RWD car. I’ll even take it in CUV form ( only if RWD is an option)
It’s a misconception that Toyota was a laggard or a dummy or otherwise incompetent when it comes to BEVs. Toyota chose the HEV path due to the inherent unbetterness of BEVs. Toyota is very conscientious. Toyota is very disciplined.
Many more (90x) Hybrid battery systems can be manufactured with the same quantities of battery material required to make a battery for one single BEV. Doing so reduces ~38x the carbon that would be saved from building a single EV. HEV is much more economical _and_ much more environmentally friendly. The multiplier is only 6x for the PHEV:BEV difference in battery materials required. BEVs are resource hogs.
Humanity is awakening from an episodic lunacy for BEVs.
Humanity is rapidly coming to embrace HEVs whole-heartedly.
Great, now face the reality that we have a battery glut and battery prices keep crashing.
One source
Is anyone selling stock in portable “personal massager” companies?
heh heh heh
I think having average round trip commute range on battery alone is kinda the sweet spot. So 5 PHEVs producing near zero emissions over lifetime versus one BEV.
That’s not very realistic. I’ve heard others who expressed similar thinking about PHEVs and commute range, and that’s the thinking that was being proposed by the PHEV-makers, but that’s not how people naturally are inclined to behave. People are inclined to do what they want and not feel the need to worry so much. That’s not unconscientiousness, it’s simply non-neurosis.
Committing at time of purchase to incur the extra weight and expense of PHEV in order to adopt a whole lot of ritualistic charging practices for very little benefit (which people tire of), along with the significant drop in efficiency relative to HEV for the life of the vehicle… PHEV just isn’t rational. Paying more to get a less good vehicle is what it is. Paying more to get a compromised hassle. Fortunately, with PHEVs, the option always remains to drive as if you had bought a HEV in the first place, albeit with the significantly inferior (to HEV) MPG and extra weight. See?