Why aren’t there more hybrid vehicles before we go to all electric cars & trucks?
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Well, for one thing, hybrids have been around for over 20 years. The Prius and the Honda Insight we’re both introduced before the turn of the century.
So, we’ve been doing the bridge approach for longer than many new drivers have been alive.
Another thing is that hybrids have a lot of trade offs. They are more complicated than being either purely electric or purely petroleum based and have to shoehorn two motors into the same amount of space as other vehicles reserve for one. This typically means the motor is smaller or less powerful than it would be if you could use the entire engine bay for just one or the other.
Hybrids are heavy. You have all the normal petroleum burning equipment plus huge batteries. But combine that with a less powerful motor and you actually lose fuel efficiency. Hybrids work great in city. But fuel economy drops fast once you get out of stop and start situations. Where hybrids excel is that less of that energy used in slowing or stopping a car is wasted. Some can be recovered to use later..except, if you are driving on the interstate for hours without stopping you may not be doing that very much. So, unlike most traditional gasoline vehicles, hybrids lose fuel economy on freeways.
Hybrids also don’t have as much market appeal as you might think. If people want a car with really good fuel economy they can buy a much cheaper economy car that has similar fuel economy to a hybrid for a fraction of the cost. If they are worried about emissions, a hybrid may not be the best choice there either as that smaller engine under a heavy load may be working harder. Plus if you are willing to consider electric hybrid, full electric isn’t much further to go. People who are concerned about power or speed will also not often choose hybrids as they are perceived as a slower and underpowered vehicle.
We’ve been making hybrids for over 20 years and, according to the Bereau of Transportation Statistics, in 2021 they managed to capture only 5.5% of the market. That’s bad. Electric cars make up 3.2% but affordable electric cars are also a more recent technology.
In many ways, electric cars just make more sense versus a hybrid. Electric motors are more efficient. They can last longer than gasoline powered motors. They can produce a lot of power and speed in a smaller package. They are also more easy to adapt to potential future technologies. If in the next few years someone makes a breakthrough in solar cells or hydrogen power adapting a traditional internal combustion engine to use this technology can be challenging. For an electric car you just have to make the new technology generate electricity and then it can be almost immediately adapted. Most hybrid cars are still internal combustion with a bit of electrical recovery when braking. Most of the time they are just a heavy vehicle using a gasoline engine.
For right now, the big appeal of a hybrid is that it gives some of the advantages of electric but without the range anxiety. A person can drive for a long distance without worry about charging stations and use the existing fuel infrastructure to extend their range. This is preferable to people who are worried about needing to look for a place to stop every 100 miles or so and then taking a half hour to recharge. However, as range improves and the speed of recharging gets faster, the range anxiety crowd is being won over to the all electric side.
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