if interest rates come down. I don't want a plug in because I'd have to rewire my garage.

If charging to the recommended 80% level, more like 10 hours.


https://www.greenlancer.com/post/charging-a-phev

https://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-models/plug-in-hybrids/plug-in-hybrids-require-special-home-wiring.htm

https://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-models/plug-in-hybrids/how-to-charge-plug-in-hybrid-vehicle.htm

And if you do run out of your grid-supplied battery, your internal combustion engine will charge it, and supposedly even then the whole thing is more efficient doing that then a regular ICE or something like that. As I understand it --

I broke the above block into 3 paragraphs.

Sorry if this is too much, and not enough, at the same time

I'm unclear if for a PHEV, all the wheel-turning is electrically powered, with the electricity supplied from the battery, or when the battery runs out, the gasoline ICE engine turns a generator to supply the electricity.

As opposed to when the battery runs out, the ICE turns the wheels like in a conventional ICE car



I suppose I can spend a few minutes more reading the unexplored links in the above material or do more Google searches and it will tell me. Or not.

What I like about a regular hybrid is that it's easy and you don't have to remember to do anything.

I thought a plug in hybrid PH-EV, seemed like a good idea, but, I think the hybrid would be less environmentally damaging. And that seems to back it up.

There is also a Prius AWD. The problem is it has low clearance, which has been a bit of an issue with my regular 2007 Camry.

I should add I live in Minnesota, so snow can be a real issue. I took off the bottom of my Camry by running over hard snow.

I think I saw the car you are talking about on the floor. It was cute and it looked high up.

That's devastating. You must have been really upset.

It's still hanging on 12 years later. It's just too low to the ground for me. They should have sold me a cross trek. You live you learn.

promoting conventional hybrids (i.e. non-plug-in hybrids) as a solution to the climate crisis is at best ignorant.

Unfortunately plug-in hybrids have their issues too . . .

Just like by far most people don't hypermile when driving their gasoline-fueled vehicles, it seems like most drivers of plug-in hybrids don't plug in their vehicles often enough to benefit from that technology.

We've been over this fossil-fuel propaganda piece of garbage Toyota ad before, sigh, most recently
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127175755
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127175807

But for those who prefer fossil fuels, here is an investment opportunity, sort of an anti-ESG ETF promoting fossil fuels
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DRLL/
(warning: they've very much underperfomed the S&P 500 over the past 1 year and 2 years, especially over the past year they've had a NEGATIVE 11.5% return compared to S&P 500's POSITIVE 25.4% return)

I’ve had two prius, solid cars…and I definitely use less.

EVs continue to be very problematic with many owners replacing theirs with hybrids or straight up gas powered.

Hoping that hydrogen powered cars will be the answer…we’ll see.

And the numbers show that most people who switch to electric don't go back, either. It really is a better way to drive.

And hydrogen? It's already failed. California is closing the few fueling stations they had. Because of that, Mirai owners are suing Toyota.

Refueling a hydrogen car in California is so annoying that drivers are suing Toyota
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-08-13/class-action-lawsuit-highlights-total-inconvenience-of-refueling-a-hydrogen-fuel-cell-car

Nightmare.
Where weather is mild….CA, probably a perfect fit…not so much in the cold.

First, this is unfortunately not a novel problem. We’ve known for quite some time now that extreme cold can freeze charging cables, connectors, and other critical components of a Tesla Supercharger (or any EV fast charger, really.) Ice accumulation, stiffening of materials, and increased resistance in electrical pathways may contribute to these woes. This, in turn, affects the efficiency and performance of electronic components, potentially leading to malfunctions or shutdowns, like the ones seen in Oak Brook.

https://insideevs.com/news/705057/chicago-tesla-stranded-ev-charging/

A personal experience for my daughter in Phoenix- rented an EV to drive to CA. Said it added 40 minutes each way to her trip for charging, and the car did not travel as far as claimed between charges. So, kinda like the charging of a hydrogen powered vehicle, the EV experience is not for everyone due to wait times, and cold.

Norway gets just as cold as the midwest and they're adopting EVs very quickly. If they can implement EVs, we can too.

Just 45 petrol cars sold in Norway in July as EVs hit 92 per cent of sales
https://thedriven.io/2024/08/15/just-45-petrol-cars-sold-in-norway-in-july-as-evs-hit-92-per-cent-of-sales/

Our biggest problem in the US is that we need better charging infrastructure. The technology is available and ready to go, we just need put in the effort to build it out.

The average American almost twice that (14, 250).

That makes it hard to compare Norway's EV adoption to that of the US. Like you said, the US charging infrastructure isn't great, and with the average American driving twice the amount of the average Norwegian, it implies we need twice the charging infrastructure on a per-capita basis.

Any modern EV can handle that quite easily. Even with a slow home charger, adding that many miles overnight is not that big of deal. An American car might charge for two hours at home to add 40 miles rather than the Norwegian's one hour.

But yes, we do need infrastructure both for road trips and for those without home charging. That's not impossible, other countries are already doing it. We just need the political willpower to build out some decent charging networks here.

Personal experience.

Obviously you like your EV so why not go make an OP about it instead of trying to make this all about your EV experience??!Geez

And…America’s electricity, including home and public charging stations is still powered 40% by natural gas and 19% coal. So you to are still burning fossil fuels.

Specifically:

Simply not true. Studies show that, once people drive electric, the vast majority don't go back.

And to address your second point - you're pointing out a problem with dirty power sources, not the vehicles. An EV that plugs into coal power today could easily plug into a solar or wind power tomorrow. As the grid gets cleaner, the cars also get cleaner.

Someone driving a hybrid will always burn gas. They never get cleaner.

Surprising number of EV owners switch back to gas power, study says

The study looked at owners in California specifically and found home charging was a huge factor in people dropping the EV lifestyle.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ev-owners-switch-gas-power-study/

I’m done…you just like to argue.

Permanent hide

The problem isn't what's plugged into the socket. It's the dirty power sources feeding that socket.

As that power gets cleaner, everything supplied by that power source also gets cleaner, including EVs.

And yes, home charging is not enough, we need a lot more public charging. Other countries are already building out their public networks, we can do it as well. Biden has already allocated billions to do exactly that.

When the battery has some charge in it, then it's just like an EV as far as efficiency, maybe even better since it isn't lugging around as large a battery pack as an EV. A fully charged battery will power the car in fully electric mode for 40 miles (Chevy Volt). I didn't check the date of the article, but I think 50-60 miles is more common now-a-days for how long the battery lasts.

When I wrote my epistle, I was thinking that when the battery is exhausted, it was just like a conventional ICE car, or a little worse because of the weight of the battery pack requires some extra energy to lug.

Now I'm thinking that when the battery is exhausted, it becomes like a conventional hybrid car. I don't know why it wouldn't be designed that way. i.e. a PHEV is essentially a conventional hybrid with a larger battery pack and a cord and plug.

On complexity to understand - it's probably not hard, I just haven't found a good source. I don't think the people who wrote those articles that I excerpted at length really understood what they were writing about, so we've got this muddled garbage because I don't either.

On complexity to operate -- I think the only difference compared to a conventional hybrid or an ICE car is to remember for the best economy and least carbon emissions, is to plug in once one gets home (or has a couple or more hours of stationary time somewhere and a place to plug it in for a partial refresh). And that's it (I'm sure one won't forget to unplug before driving off, with the big cord there and all that, and I understand that some-or-most models won't let you start or move if its plugged in. And remembering to plug in - I would guess the dashboard would make one very well aware of the battery.

It seems to me it would be just one of the small adaptations one makes for environmental reasons. When I get done with a can of something, I remember to rinse the can and throw it into the recycle container in my kitchen rather than into the general trash basket. Back before recycling, I'd throw everything in the one trash basket.

Anyway, when the battery is exhausted, then I think it's just like a conventional hybrid (but a little heavier with the bigger battery pack so would be a little less mpg than a conventional hybrid).

I was hoping someone who really understands PHEVs would respond by now, but oh well.

Myself, I can very easily afford a car, but have made do without for more than 5 years. This in the middle of Golden Valley where transit is sparse, but I make do with what transit there is, and its only a dollar round trip (for age 65+ or age 6-12 or Medicare card holders, or someone who quailifies for low income assistance) if one starts their trip between 9 am and 3 pm and starts their return trip within 2 1/2 hours. Or $2 round trip if one doesn't return within 2 1/2 hours, as long as both legs are started within the 9a-3p time period. Otherwise $2 or $2.50 per leg in the worst case.

Details: https://www.metrotransit.org/fares

That page doesn't seem to cover the transit assistance program (TAP) (later: it does with a pull down at near the bottom of the page), so here's the link to that. Essentially they pay $1 even during rush hours.
https://www.metrotransit.org/tap-riders

And walking is good exercise which I very much need. My last car repair experiences weren't good, so I'm glad I don't have that hassle.

Isn't a hybrid better between the two because it uses less gas? I asked because you were very down on hybrids. A new, or new used, car is a major expense for me. My current car is a 2007 combustible, but it's to the point where I have to sink $2000 bucks into it, and I just don't want to.

The point I was making is that both the conventional (non-plug-in) hybrid and an ICE car get 100% of their energy from fossil fuels, and this is not the path to zero carbon emissions which is a necessary and soon according to the IPCC to avoid catastrophic climate impacts that make what we've been seeing the last 3 years a veritable Nirvana in comparison. From everything I read about climate and how much of U.S. energy is fossil fuel (about 83% IIRC), we're in dire straits, and making far too slow progress. Similarly on a world-wide basis. And actually not only net zero carbon emissions but we need NEGATIVE carbon emissions, as OKIsItJustMe has posted in an excerpt about a month ago. https://democraticunderground.com/1127175258 #12 and #14 and #16 (edited to add the #12 and #14 and #16) (And by carbon in the above I mean carbon and other greenhouse gasses like methane, or "carbon equivalent" ). Making incremental improvements in our fossil-fueled cars' efficiency is just not going to cut it. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 (and methane) is not only increasing, but increasing at an increasing rate (accelerating).

Back to the consumer level -- the conventional hybrid will be somewhat more expensive to buy than the equivalent ordinary ICE car. I believe that most people drive enough so that the conventional hybrid will be cheaper in the long run due to its considerably better mpg than the ICE car, overcoming its initial purchase cost disadvantage. (ICE car meaning gasoline or diesel fueled "Internal Combustion Engine" without any kind of electrical assistance beyond that provided by the 12 volt battery for sparking the spark plugs and lighting the lights and dashboard. Like what all cars were 30 years ago and many decades before that.)

(and the last paragraph is about plug in ones)

What Is a Hybrid Car and How Do They Work?
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a26390899/what-is-hybrid-car/
What Is a Hybrid?
How Does Regenerative Braking Work?
Parallel Hybrids
Series Hybrids
Blurred Lines
How Hybrids Benefit You
Other Types of Hybrid

Everything in the below is my own words, unless its shown in quotes or by a gray excerpt box.

It's important to understand regenerative braking, since that's the main way a hybrid is fuel-efficient. When you press the brake pedal (not real hard, rather, like one normally does to slow down or slow to a stop), the cars wheels becomes attached to an electrical generator and start turning that generator. Turning that generator is hard as heck to turn because, well generating electricity is hard work (think of an ordinary bicycle's electric generator that you engage to connect to the bike's wheel that feed's the bike's light -- its a lot of work to light that light! (I suppose most bikes these days, as in the past, use a couple of D battery cells instead to power the lights).

Or in the mini-museum that was in the Mpls Central Library years ago, there was something like an exercise bike that one pedalled to light an ordinary 60 watt bulb, and it really took a lot of pedalling effort to make that light glow strongly and stay lit.

Well, back to our hybrid, that effort coming from the car's wheels that is generating the electricity to feed the battery is a lot of effort and that slows the cars' wheels down (and the car slows down of course). And the battery is charged some. Its a small battery in a hybrid (the article says about 1 kwh), but nevertheless its a useful amount of energy that is being captured and stored by the battery. And that battery energy is then used to get the car going again.

And that gives the hybrid a big efficiency advantage over an ICE car (traditional Internal Combustion Engine car), where all braking is done by squeezing brakepads against the wheel's rotor and all that energy is lost by heating up the brake pads and the surrounding air. Whereas the hybrid utilizes that energy by charging up the little battery, rather than totally wasting it like an ICE car does.

Next, lets skip to the Series Hybrids topic which is conceptually the simplest. The generator and battery and electric motor move the wheels at all speeds. The internal combustion engine never engages directly with the cars wheels, rather, it always engages with the generator to turn it to generate electricity which in turn powers the electric motor to turn the wheels. IOW, all the force (torque) to turn the wheels comes from the electric motor supplied by the electric generator and battery.

the article says, "Series Hybrids - This type is less common, but popularity is increasing."

Now scrolling up to "Parallel Hybrids" which is the most common but is more complicated. When the car starts moving, the battery-generator powers the electric motor to turn the wheels, just like described above. As it speeds up, or the little battery becomes exhausted, the internal combustion engine engages directly with the wheels (well to the transmission system that then turns the axle really, but I'll just shorthand it to say the engine is turning the wheels) to turn them. So now we're in plain ordinary ICE car mode - a gasoline engine turning the wheels.

Now excerpting from the first topic, "What is a hybrid?"



So the interesting part is that the regular internal combustion engine is frequently starting and stopping and starting and stopping again and again during city driving.

I don't understand the very last part of the excerpt where it says "This makes a hybrid's city fuel economy much higher than a nonhybrid's, not to mention its own highway economy.

The bold part (I did the bolding), befuddles me. As I understand it, on the highway, one is almost always in internal combustion engine mode. In the parallel hybrid, the ICE engine is directly turning the wheels, just like in a conventional ICE car, so I don't know how it can be more efficient than a conventional ICE car (particularly with the added weight of a dual motor system plus the 1 Kwh battery in the hybrid's case).

Well, I suppose, in highway driving, we're often doing a little very gentle braking now and then to adjust our speed downward a bit at times, so the hybrid's regen system captures that and uses it (rather than wasting it like an ICE car).

In the series hybrid, in highway driving, the ICE engine is constantly turning the generator that feeds the battery and electric motor to turn the wheels. It would seem to me that this is not particularly efficient -- some of the energy from the ICE engine is lost in converting to electricity and then from electricity to the electric motor to the wheel -- whereas in an ICE car it's direct from the ICE engine to the wheel (by way of the transmission system etc. as always).

And, ta-dah, plug-in hybrids

2.0L 4-Cyl. Hybrid Engine / 194 horsepower Continuously Variable Transmission with intelligence and Shift Mode (CVTi-S) with All-Wheel Drive

https://smartpath.toyota.com/inventory/details?source=t1&dealerCd=22030&vin=7MUFBABG8RV050262&type=new

in one try, it just game me a toyota home page

in two other tries the page didn't load.

On the home page, I didn't see any search box where I could plop in the description above, so I clicked on "Search Inventories" and it was just a listing of various models, and no search box to plop the description in.

Anyway, about all I would be able to tell you if I found the page is whether it is a conventional hybrid or a plug-in hybrid (I very much suspect the former as I think in a descriptor like that they'd have specified plug-in if that was the case). As for "Continuously Variable Transmission with intelligence and Shift Mode (CVTi-S) " i'm definitely way out of my tree on something like that and whether it is good / bad / whatever.

The last time I seriously shopped for a car was 1988. I'm just trying to educate myself on hybrids (conventional and plug-ins) mostly because I'm trying to learn more about energy and the environment and global warming and all that, and the debate about what kind of car is part of that.

I don't know if you saw NNadir's post#32 where he concludes the conventional hybrid is the best of them all as far as lifecycle emissions, based on I don't know how many assumed annual miles. His #32 doesn't have the graphic embedded (he has a link to it), but anyway in my post#33 I embedded the graphic, the last graphic in that post.

https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/corolla-cross-hybrid
It's the Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid

It's the only subcompact hybrid suv that I'm aware of.

It loaded this time:
2024 Corolla Cross Hybrid XSE
45/38 est mpg*
etc. etc.

I wish I can look that list over and tell you what's good and what's missing and all that, but I don't have anywhere close to the knowledge.

I was wondering if you could tell if it was parallel, series, etc...?

...but one would simply be relying on self deception.

A study of the carbon intensity of electric cars vs hybrid cars as a function of the grid on which they operate has been published.

Cleaning up while Changing Gears: The Role of Battery Design, Fossil Fuel Power Plants, and Vehicle Policy for Reducing Emissions in the Transition to Electric Vehicles Matthew Bruchon, Zihao Lance Chen, and Jeremy Michalek Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (8), 3787-3799

I covered the paper in this space: A paper addressing the idea that electric cars are "green."

There is no such thing as a "green" car - despite much delusional bull that the car CULTure can be sustainable - but that said:

A graphic from that paper:



The caption:

You see the red regions in the graph. This is low carbon and reliable electricity, not dependent on the weather at a time the weather has been vastly destabilized by the unrestricted brown and black regions promoted by antinukes. And let's be clear again, the "bait and switch" game is what is promoted by people claiming that hydrogen is "green" and batteries are "green." What they're selling is fossil fuels.

I am not innocent, as I am a participant in the car CULTure. This said, I do drive a hybrid car, a CAMRY, my second, as the first was destroyed in an accident when less than a year old. I routinely get, with judicious use of the cruise control, better than 60 mpg without using thermodynamically degraded electricity.

Last edited Sun Sep 15, 2024, 12:52 PM - Edit history (4)

that's better than 100% fossil fuel, as in the case of a hybrid or conventional ICE car. Something that promoters and owners of either might very well contemplate before they accuse others of being "fossil fuel salesmen". Sigh.

And there is some progress, and plans to reduce the grid's carbon intensity, but I'm not aware of any to reduce the carbon intensity of the gasoline that fuels conventional hybrids and ICE cars. I know that you don't think much of plans, given the "by 2030, by 2050" etc. and I can understand that. But nobody has plans for making gasoline net zero carbon that I know of




From: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143289137#post3

Edited to add: I'm aware that the increase in projected electricity consumption due to data centers and crypto-mining, and yes, electric vehicles and electric furnaces and water heaters etc. is likely going to end this small slow progress in reducing carbon emissions from the U.S. electricity sector, although I expect the CO2e/KWH will continue to improve /End Edit

More nuclear energy on the grid, will of course reduce the carbon intensity of the grid. But so far I'm not seeing it reducing the carbon intensity of hybrid and ICE car fuel that the fossil-fuel salespeople sell.

And I certainly don't think that any kind of car is "green". Or any source of power either.

I'm always impressed by your graphic of solar, wind, hydro resource utilization

Materials needed for different forms of power generation. Figure based on data from U.S. Department of Energy Quadrennial Energy Review 2015.



taken from this, that uses some of your other work:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219407847#post4

I'm not an "anti-nuke", by the way. Nor am I a "not-an-anti-nuke anti-nuke" either as you have characterized some others in past posts (or words to that effect). I was an electrical engineer in the nuclear Navy in the 1970's. And I'm impressed by your mortality posts of radiation deaths vs. air pollution deaths.

Edited to add I did look at your first link

I see that even if we managed to get electricity production greenhouse gas emissions down near zero, something that is decades off at best (or a hypothetical minimum case ), the various EV's are only marginally better than the ICEV and HEV (conventional ICE gasoline car and the conventional (i.e. non-plug-in) hybrid. Interesting.

Edited to add I wonder what the Dept of Energy's perspective is. Do they refute this? Have other data? Are bureaucrats in service of politicians? /End Edit

Myself I haven't had a car for 5 years, and manage with a lot of walking (need the exercise anyway), and occasional bus ride.

Another late late edit If I do get a car, it probably will be a conventional ICE, given that I would drive less than 2,000 miles a year, probably more like 1,000 miles. That would be greener (and cheaper) than the other options, since the various electric vehicles (and the conventional hybrid) have higher factory emissions (making the car and the batteries). I don't see in the graphic what they assume as far as annual miles driven, so that i can do some extrapolation to lower mileages of the gasoline production + vehicle use to match my situation.

The key to doing so was described in 2011.

In 2011, the late great Nobel Laureate George Olah proposed a closed carbon cycle to address the ongoing and accelerating tragedy of what was then called climate change and now should be recognized as extreme global heating:

Anthropogenic Chemical Carbon Cycle for a Sustainable Future George A. Olah, G. K. Surya Prakash, and Alain Goeppert Journal of the American Chemical Society 2011 133 (33), 12881-12898.

Of the two options presented in the paper, DME and its precursor, methanol, neither of which is mutually exclusive, were proposed as the fluid fuels, I favor DME for its low toxicity, facile elimination from water, and its excellent physical properties including a high critical temperature, a low critical pressure, and flexibility:

Quoth Dr. Olah and colleagues in an excerpt:

Dr. Olah's Nobel Prize was awarded for hydrocarbon chemistry.

Catalysts for the direct hydrogenation of CO₂ avoiding the MeOH intermediate are known. I have a rather large collection of papers in my files on this topic, coming under the rubric of "CCU," carbon capture and utilization. CCU is accessible by exergy capture using high temperatures.

DME also makes a fine, if flammable, refrigerant or heat pump fluid with essentially zero global heating potential, having an atmospheric lifetime of around five days

Such a program will not work, by the way, with wind and solar toys, but nuclear hydrogen cycles based, either, to a limited extent on steam (or supercritical water) reforming of carbonaceous waste, dry reforming using CO₂ as an oxidant of reduced organics to CO, or on a potentially far broader scale, direct thermochemical water splitting with the SI or related cycles will work. Currently most work along these lines is being conducted in China. The side product of this type of industrial production, would be electricity in a process intensification scheme; one can calculate potential thermodynamic efficiencies exceeding 70%, even approaching 80% for these types of intensified heat exchange processes.

I am continuously pushing my son to think about refractory materials in nuclear engineering. He is getting excellent preparation in his program for doing exactly that.

These processes have been understood for a long time, but intellectual and commercial laziness has failed to embrace the potential. This is hardly surprising. Doing the right thing will cost money, and usually when the choice is between doing the right thing by spending money and making money by continuing to do the wrong thing, the wrong thing being represented by the status quo, making money by doing the wrong thing wins.

We could do away with a lot of lithium and cobalt mining, and for that matter fossil fuel mining, if we really wanted to do so.

As for all the stupidity and danger connected with hydrogen as a consumer product being marketed here, I will not under any circumstances refrain from stating I inflexibly regard this as nothing more than the promotion of fossil fuels. It often includes a little dishonest evocation of a "solar and wind" fig leaf barely obscuring the nakedness of the act. It's called "bait and switch." I will not be dissuaded from calling the rebranding of fossil fuels as "hydrogen" as anything but a fucking marketing ploy by the fossil fuel industry. I will never apologize for identifying fossil fuel salespeople as, um, fossil fuel salespeople because it represents, clearly to me if no one else, a tautology obviated by an equivalence.

I stand by every word I wrote in this piece: A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.

It's funny to see how the fossil fuel salespeople here rebranding their product as "hydrogen" love to drag out antinuke rhetoric, including insipid whining about Fukushima. The explosion of the Fukushima reactors was a hydrogen explosion, with the hydrogen having been generated by the steam oxidation, when the heat sinks were removed, of zirconium metal (zircalloy) with the concomitant reduction of the steam to hydrogen gas. (Nuclear fuels with cladding to avoid this reaction have been designed and are now undergoing testing.)

I propose the utilization of nuclear heat to generate hydrogen for uses as a captive industrial intermediate (as it is currently used in the ammonia and petroleum industries), in a controlled fashion, obviously not involved with zirconium.

In any case, nuclear energy, and only nuclear energy, has the potential to eliminate the fossil fuel industry. I firmly believe the fossil fuel industry knows this very well. They manage some very smart people into being malignant smart people. They must love the antinuke industry which often works on their behalf for free; I very much doubt they don't.

As you seem to have some familiarity with my writings, you may have seen me post this ad, from Exxon, which I love to post, baldly stating the source of this filthy and dishonest affectation, the lie about there being "green" hydrogen. It's great marketing.

Exxon rebranding fossil fuels as hydrogen:



The dishonesty of the ad borders, or resides completely, in the realm of astounding, but I concede slick lies work, in politics as in 2016, and in energy today.

Have a nice evening.

I love them. And it's fun to see the expression on my coworkers' faces when I announce "I've filled up for August".

Actually a tank lasts me about 3.5 weeks. So, I fudge a bit.

The Prius' 93MPG hypermiling might seem good, but most typical EVs get well over 100 MPGe in normal driving (without hypermiling.)

MPGe means they use the equivalent energy of a gallon of gas. That energy could be whatever was used to generate the power anything from solar to wind to coal. And as we go more towards cleaner renewables, the EVs also get cleaner.

That's not the case for that particular Prius, it will always will burn gas. A plug-in Prius is a bit better, but still switches over to gas after a few dozen miles.

It’s gutless by most standards at 116 horsepower, but I routinely get in the neighborhood of 70 mpg or better in town.

I have come close to 85 mpg in warm weather at about 60 mph as well.

It’s about $7 dollars a gallon here in Germany, so I’ll gladly take the hit in power.

I don’t pretend that hybrids are somehow the perfect solution, but I also don’t want to give the Saudis any more money than absolutely necessary.

two services besides the usual oil changes and new tires.

At age 12, I had to replace the 12v GSM battery for $200 and shortly after, had to replace the tire pressure sensors for $150.

So, not only great mileage but inexpensive maintenance.

Just bought a Ford Maverick hybrid pickup for light farm work, and I'm getting 43 mpg so far!

The 2012 Prius with 190,000 miles will be our spare for 2 yr until my daughter gets her driver's license. I'm hoping she can take it with her to college.