Why aren’t there more hybrid vehicles before we go to all electric cars & trucks?
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There have been a good number of hybrid vehicles out there, but it’s a costly, more complex technology that offers limited benefits vs. electric. If the next step starts getting good enough, why keep making bridge technology vehicles?
How many more hybrid models would you like to see? [The list of available hybrid models](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hybrid_vehicles) is already pretty extensive, and just about every major automaker is manufacturing hybrids in some capacity.
How many hybrid vehicles do you want? I can literally name a dozen
Prius
Camry Hybrid
Corolla Hybrid
Sienna Hybrid
RAV 4 Hybrid
Fusion Hybrid
Maverick Hybrid
F-150 Hybrid
Escape Hybrid
Tucson Hybrid
Ioniq Hybrid
Elantra Hybrid
Santa Fe Hybrid
Do you mean why didn’t most cars on the road become hybrid before electric-only came into being?
Simple answer is because we didn’t have to wait that long. Hybrid was a crutch for a lack of scale for making electric batteries in bulk as well as for missing infrastructure to charge all-electrics.
It’s like asking why we don’t dim a lamp before turning it off or let food cool off on the counter before putting it in the refrigerator. It does more harm than good to keep producing hybrid vehicles vs all-electrics.
hybrid only really add anything in start stop traffic, going down the highway it is just more weight and complexity
For a conventional gas powered vehicle, you need the engine, transmission, rear end, etc.
For an electric vehicle, you need batteries, motors, charge controllers, etc.
For a hybrid, you need all of it.
All of it, means all the complexity, price, failure points, and maintenance costs of both systems, so overall it’s less attractive than just picking one or the other.
There are actually tons of hybrid electric options available. Most of the most popular gas engine vehicles are available in hybrid models. In 2013 they were about 3.2% of the total market and in 2019, about 5.1%. They just aren’t being adopted very quickly. The main problem with hybrid vehicles is that you are adding significant weight by having both a battery system, with a separate motor and related components, with a gas engine, with all of its moving parts and need for gasoline. You also get added maintenance costs/issues, difficulty with service, and more moving parts that can fail. The added weight means the benefit is reduced, since the hybrid nature only increases fuel economy by a relatively small amount. For example, the Honda CRV hybrid gets 40 mpg in the city and 34 on highways, whereas a non-hybrid gets 34 on highways (i.e., the same as a hybrid) and 28 in the city. Plus, they required fuel, so you aren’t shifting the primary power of the vehicle, just increasing efficiency by a bit. Hybrids just aren’t really revolutionary enough to draw enough market interest. Plus, electric vehicles are already being used in large scale with success. The main criticism of range and charging time has very much been overcome with the more recent vehicles being released now, with ranges of up to 500 miles and charging times of up to 20 miles a minute (10 minutes for 200 miles). It just isn’t a necessary stepping stone to get to all electric.
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.
There are a LOT of hybrid vehicles. Looking at the EPA website, you can find that just over 18% of the cars that a certified to be sold in the US are hybrids (and about 6% are all electric). That means 76% are diesel, gas, or flex-fuel (ethanol or gas) cars and trucks.
The conventional gas car is something that existing plants are designed to build. The materials and supply lines for them already in place. The automative engineers, already well acquainted with how to design them. All those things make them relatively cheap and quick to churn out, and people are used to driving them.
Hybrid cars are more complicated. You have both the standard gas car parts, but then you have batteries and electric motors, and you need additional parts to connect them together. Now, you have to cram all that into pretty much the same space. It makes them more complicated to design and build, and there’s more parts. This makes them slower to churn out and build, needs new tools and skills, more varied materials from more places, and makes them a bit more expensive (or, lower profit). They more or less drive the same, save for “drive modes” perhaps, so people are pretty OK with buying and driving them.
Electric cars are mechanically MUCH simpler. The engineering is just as much electrical and even chemical. Much different materials are needed, so new supply lines, and they are assembled much differently, so new plants and different skills to build them. Moreover, electric cars use a different fuel source and some drive much differently, which throws many people off. It’s only recently that people have really taken a shine to electric.
That said, electric cars require less maintenance, are cheaper to operate, can be fueled at home, tend to have more pick-up, are generally more efficient, and a far less polluting than hybrid or gas cars. If supply lines mature and battery technology improves, they are a very practical replacement for cars that rely on carbon fuels at point-of-use. Moreover, the sources of electricity get increasingly more renewable and carbon neutral with time, and there are no emissions.
One thing that hasn’t been mention is that, in the states, the incentives have shifted over to full EV. I think federal tax credits are only available to an EV. Another example- California gives special treatment to ‘clean air’ vehicles, like allowing them to use carpool lanes no matter how many people are in the car. For a long time, hybrids got this treatment, now it’s only available to EV
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