GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles • Hacker News Board

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#181

Post by toyg » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #12

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

To fully electric. As the article says, both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles. Now they're shifted that effort over to electric because the incentives are better for them. The only companies trying to make hybrids for real are Toyota and Honda. Everyone else is just pumping out low effort compliance vehicles. It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful. I'd lov…

> both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles. At one point I was completely fascinated with the Fiat 500e. Here was an electric car that was stylish, quirky, and could be had on the used market at a great price. But as I got further into it I realized that FCA hated producing this car. Its only reason to exist is to allow them to produce more pollutant vehicles as a regulatory balance. And if it…

Volkswagen has had a similar attitude to its electric range. They are forever unavailable for this or that reason, and dealers just ignore them. Considering their typical timescales, even if this cut of hybrids actually results in better work in fully-electric, we won’t get to see it before 2020/2021 anyway.

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#182

Post by toyg » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

NikkiA wrote: post #86

tlb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things made as a result of cynical box-ticking are never good. It's better to fill your life with things designed by people trying to make something great. Even if they didn't fully succeed, you can appreciate the effort. Whereas something made grudgingly will depress you with every detail. > What counts as a trick? Roughly, it's something done with contempt for the audience. For example, the guys designing Ferraris…

> Things made as a result of cynical box-ticking are never good. The original versions of the Fiat 500 itself, the Morris Mini, the Beetle, and the 2CV would disagree. Ok, you might have a point on the 2CV, but it's owners loved it.

How was the original 500 “box-ticking”? It changed the company.

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#183

Post by aaomidi » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #119

aaomidi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon you'll be able to. Range anxiety goes away with time and planning. Fast DC chargers are going to be everywhere in the near future. They're already on every major highway except i94.

No offense, but deep in the mountains or out in rural northern Ontario, etc. where I'd like to go... will be the last place that DC fast chargers will go. I'm a big fan of the EV movement, I'll own a BEV someday, but I feel that GM and EV-boosters in general have thrown the Volt-type range extended EVs under the bus. It is an amazing technical achievement and with the right marketing and product development could tak…

Electricity is everywhere. You'd be surprised at how many things are already using that capacity right on top of the mountains. It'll eventually be built out there too. Especially with the declining price of equipment needed to set it up there too.

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#184

Post by spenrose » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

oakesm9 wrote: post #166

spenrose wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, my 2015 Leaf still goes 90 miles on a charge.

How does that compare to when it was new?

Identical for effective purposes. I don't make the same ~85 mile ride often enough to detect whatever small losses there may be.

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#185

Post by cr0sh » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #62

rconti wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter to you, as the consumer, that FCA hated producing the car? It's still cheap to buy and operate.

Because I want them to do better. As an environmentalist this vehicle goes against my ethics. It exists to allow them to sell more pollutant vehicles in California. It's all sizzle and no steak. There are better EVs out there. Most car manufacturers will take customer feedback to incorporate into newer models. FCA is having none of that with the 500e. They aren't interested in customer feedback just government CAFE r…

You should probably be angry at the CAFE regs too. It's what (supposedly) had prevented all the manufacturers from selling a small pickup, which is why Ford stopped selling the Ranger. They basically switched to making the F150, then making it larger (actually, I have suspected without proof that what they did was move models downline - sometime post 1990s, the F150 became really larger - the size of that era's F250, and the F250 became the size of the F350 - Ford's re-introduction of the Ranger? About the size of the 1990s F150...again, I have no proof of this).

Lots of people want a small pickup like the Ranger (Toyota also followed along - compare sizes of the Tacoma of the 90s vs today - I suspect they all changed in size), but they can't buy one. It has something to do with CAFE rules, plus some weird calculation of area - so the larger the vehicles footprint, the more it'll pass or offset or something; I'm not sure how it works.

But something changed in the 1990s - and now we have this.

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#186

Post by gambiting » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

zepearl wrote: post #164

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

To fully electric. As the article says, both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles. Now they're shifted that effort over to electric because the incentives are better for them. The only companies trying to make hybrids for real are Toyota and Honda. Everyone else is just pumping out low effort compliance vehicles. It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful. I'd lov…

I have just noticed that the Volvo V60 twin-engine (hybrid) is not listed on their US nor UK sub-websites - I wonder why...? (it is listed e.g. on their Swiss and German sub-sites) https://www.volvocars.com

Volvo's selection of engines in the UK has always been lacking. Tbf it could be due to an actual technical issue with adopting the drivetrain to right-hand-drive car, but in general I see that many manufacturers just pick a few engines that they think the British customer will like and that's all you can get, while people in France or Germany get the full choice of all drivetrains. UK vs US is even more funny because it's extremely common to see cars which are only available with a diesel in the UK, but only available with a big petrol engine in the US. Again, it's based on what the customer supposedly wants.

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#187

Post by yumraj » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

To fully electric. As the article says, both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles. Now they're shifted that effort over to electric because the incentives are better for them. The only companies trying to make hybrids for real are Toyota and Honda. Everyone else is just pumping out low effort compliance vehicles. It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful. I'd lov…

> It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful.

Why do you say that they haven't been successful? At least in CA they, especially Prius, has done very well.

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#188

Post by kube-system » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #72

50 years from now we'll look back on hybrids as a brief transition phase in the history of automobiles. They're much more complicated than ICE cars and vastly more complicated than electric cars. Once good enough, cheap enough batteries happen (i.e. now) there's no reason for hybrids to exist.

Not necessarily. There's the added complexity of having an additional electric powertrain, but many this enables many hybrids to concurrently remove the transmission that a conventional ICE car would have.

Prii didn't get their reputation for reliability by being unnecessarily complicated. Of course EVs are obviously simpler, but I'm not sure I'd say a Prius is more complicated than many ICE vehicles of today. Twin turbos and 10 speed autos aren't something exotic anymore -- those are available on the base trim of the F150.

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#189

Post by scandox » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

yumraj wrote: post #187

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

To fully electric. As the article says, both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles. Now they're shifted that effort over to electric because the incentives are better for them. The only companies trying to make hybrids for real are Toyota and Honda. Everyone else is just pumping out low effort compliance vehicles. It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful. I'd lov…

> It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful. Why do you say that they haven't been successful? At least in CA they, especially Prius, has done very well.

That's a Toyota which he explicitly excludes

Re: GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

#190

Post by esotericn » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #124

gwbas1c wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point: There's basically a point sometime in the 2020s when an electric vehicle becomes cheaper than a gas car. We just don't know that date yet. The biggest cost of an electric car is the battery; and the cost of batteries is dropping very fast. Everything else is significantly cheaper in an electric vehicle except for the cost of the battery. (Tesla used to say there's a "Moore's Law" of battery…

>> sometime in the 2020s when an electric vehicle becomes cheaper than a gas car. Maybe, but the limitations of electric vehicles still mean it is an apple and oranges comparison. Electric cars are still a long way off in terms of range, towing capacity, utility and winter performance. They might seem great in California, especially as a second car, but they are still a long long way off from replicating how many non…

I drove 1000km in my Tesla in one day last week in Europe.

It took approximately 12 hours in total with approx 1.5-2 hours of charging time.

"8 hours of battery logistics" is something you've just made up.

It's more like you're in range of a rapid charger and it's a non issue, or you're not in which case you cannot do more than a full charge in a day (a European 230V outlet takes more than a day for a full charge, American 110V is slower).

Granted it won't do that in winter in the mountains whilst pulling several hundreds pounds worth of stuff. That's something that, like, 0.5% of car owners actually do. The emissions from that sort of activity are probably less important than stuff like tractors.