By asharkyu @Shutterstock
UPDATE 8.8.23: U.S. News and World Report recently published an explainer on how hybrids work, beginning with a brief history of hybrid vehicles:
The world’s first hybrid car was actually a Porsche. The legendary Ferdinand Porsche built a battery EV with electric hub motors in the wheels called the Lohner-Porsche Electromobile in 1900, but followed it later that same year with Semper Vivus, with the hub motors, but also a gas engine that drove a generator to power the motors. That made it a hybrid.
The first modern hybrid was the Prius, which debuted in 1997 in Japan, and in the U.S. three years later in 2000. On the Prius, and indeed on all hybrids, a gas engine works with an electric motor to produce seamless power without the need to plug in. Some hybrids have marginal electric-only range, but the more sophisticated plug-in hybrids (with a bigger battery and a recharge port) can travel up to 30 or 40 miles that way. Hybrids were 5.5% of the U.S. market in 2021, and first-mover Toyota has a majority of global hybrid sales, selling 2.6 million of them internationally in 2022.
Some analysts predicted that hybrid cars like the Prius would be unreliable because of the complicated electronics and the two drivetrains, but that has not proven to be the case. Hybrids are among the most dependable cars on the market. “Most are reliable and have high owner satisfaction ratings, and many drive better than their nonhybrid counterparts,” said Consumer Reports.
Originally posted on July 20, 2023.
Who would have dared to say that? Someone in government? Really …
How about Chris Atkinson, the Ohio State University sustainable transportation guru “the best use of a battery is in a hybrid”—was a key official in the Obama Energy Department.
Holman W. Jenkins has cited Mr. Atkinson often in the WSJ. Mr. Jenkins notes, U.S. policies do not exist to incentivize carbon reduction. They exist to lure affluent Americans to make space in their garages for oversized, luxurious EVs. That way Tesla can report a profit and other automakers can rack up smaller losses on the “compliance” vehicles they create in obedience to government mandates.
Lost in Translation
Mr. Jenkins was told recently, “a wheelbarrow full of rare earths and lithium can power either one [battery-powered car] or over 90 hybrids, but, uh, that fact seems to be lost on policymakers.”
Don’t Let Facts Get in the Way
- Mining the required minerals produces emissions.
- Keeping the battery charged produces emissions.
Only if a great deal of gasoline-based driving is displaced would there be net reduction in CO2. But who says any gasoline-based driving is being displaced? When government ladles out tax breaks for EVs, when wealthy consumers splurge on a car that burns electrons instead of gasoline, they simply leave more gasoline available for someone else to consume at a lower price.
Sounding Good vs Actually Doing Good
In Joe Biden, alas, we have a president less likely than many to distinguish something that sounds good from something that actually does good. The press is not much better. Even when willing to acknowledge policy irrationality, it remains cloyingly committed to the electric car as a virtue signal.
EV policy fulfills only one criterion of policy sustainability—it transfers consumer and taxpayer wealth to special interests in ways that voters can be conned into supporting.
