“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.”
$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.