There is a zero hassle to find a charger for most EVs. The car tells you where to go, it is generally built into the navigation. You would not need to limit yourself to places to stay with a charger.

I would have to stop once for 10-15 min to cover that 400-mile round trip in my EV (Hyundai Ioniq 5). I've driven 900-mile days, in the winter, through snow, without issue, in the same car. It takes marginally longer.

> It also performs far better than any EVs or ICEs I’ve seen anywhere close to its price point.

My own anecdote is that I vastly prefer driving an EV on road trips. The lack of noise and gear shifts, regen braking, etc., all make it a much less draining experience.

> This “everyone should just have an EV” thing really reads like a modern “let them eat cake.”

This is a very different story for countries that don't have high import tariffs on Chinese vehicles. EVs there are fast becoming the cheaper option.

I agree it's a bit privileged to expect people to start converting over to EVs wholesale, especially with the current political climate that's disincentivizing new EV production and charger networks. Moreover, as others point out, if you can't charge at home, the math and logistics stop being quite so favorable towards EVs.

However, as someone who made the jump to an EV a few years ago, if you can manage it it's more reasonable than a lot of people think. I too live in the Triangle of NC, and my current EV cheerfully gets me to the beach every year and up to visit family in Virginia without breaking a sweat. This year, I used ABRP (A Better Route Planner app) to plot out the beach drive and it was as smooth an experience as I've had making that trip. Yes, we had to stop for a charge (because I hadn't charged fully before we left), but I had the chance to grab a snack and stretch my legs for fifteen or twenty before setting out again, so I honestly didn't mind. A lot depends on where people need to go, but thus far I haven't found a lot of places where the chargers are so sparse I really had to worry about it.

I don’t commute and I use the EV almost exclusively for trips, including a few countries over, but my EV also isn’t replacing the unique US model of “I spend half my waking hours driving a tank around 3rd world charging infrastructure”, so I can’t relate to some of the answers here.

> It also performs far better than any EVs or ICEs I’ve seen anywhere close to its price point.

Curious what you're using for comparison for "performs better." There are lots of 300-400+ HP EVs when you consider the cost of a RAV4 Prime ($41.5K-$50K USD)

In Tokyo however you have literally one of the best Public Transit systems in the world. So why buy car?

If you're in the city a car shouldn't even be a major consideration (ideally).

   > robotic garages are everywhere

Robotic WHAT? That's crazy, if it's what I'm imagining. Is Tokyo that much crowded?

Unlike bumfuck nowhere, Tokyo offers decent public transportation. Right?

As others have noted, you have a very low range EV. It's really not what anyone is suggesting now.

What EV? I have a 2020 Model 3 and in six years I've never had an issue with charging, even when driving around rural Montana & Idaho in the winter. I've never had a supercharging station be out of commission. Sometimes an individual stall or small group of stalls will be offline, but the car tells you which ones are broken so you don't waste time trying to charge at one.

A cheap diesel/gasoline generator might do like 5kW, which is enough for overnight charging but not for range extension or powering the wheels. There were several pretty good range extended EVs (plugin hybrid with larger battery and smaller engine), like the Volt and BMW i3, those had small engines that mainly acted as generators for the battery, but with enough horsepower to at least keep you rolling on the highway. A $300 modular generator ain't quite gonna cut it.

I believe there's also a bunch of Chinese vehicles with similar design, entirely electric drivetrain with gas generators for range extension. Most of these will need to kick in before the battery is empty so that there's some stored energy buffer available for acceleration.

> for rare needs of longer range.

Hmm. Supposing we need a 6 hour drive at 20 kWh per hour (eschewing specific speed/distance figures), and a generous "smaller battery pack" can provide 3 hours (60 kWh). Then the generator must supply the missing 60 kWh during the 6 hour interval, i.e. a 10 kW generator.

Google says those cost from 1k to 5k USD, and they seem rather beefy.

(Just doing the math out of curiosity, otherwise agree with you.)

Why not towable gas generator trailers that you can rent for long trips.

Hook it on, plug the connector up and attach your license plate to the back (or use eink).

You might be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended-range_electric_vehicl...

It's not exactly what you're describing, but I think it will become more common as battery technology growth slows down.

I’m not sure why you’d offer a drop in option if you can just build it into the car. Extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) / Range Extender Electric Vehicle (REEV) do exist on the market already.

A more practical solution is to just rent out a small generator on a trailer.

Unless I’ve completely misunderstood what you’re getting at.

I thought this but after 3 years I can say it is unfounded. the only reason I ever think about my state of charge on the city is when I need it to be low so I can use street parking that requires me to charge.

Is the hybrid car then just a social cover for “I want gas savings, but where I live doesn’t have EVSEs?”

It almost reminds me of mechanical alarm clocks from the 70s, where they are designed to look like an electronic model but are just driven by AC motors (1).

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zWqweWjsbU

Are they though? I mean you also don't have a gas station at the curb but you get by. Maybe you just need to charge at a public charging point. Just because you have an EV doesn't mean you absolute NEED to charge at home for it to make sense.

Driving hybrid still burns gas, generating CO2 which is destroying the world. Why would anyone pick it when EVs are available is beyond me.

Typically the driving distances are pretty short in a city, so you don't have to charge that often.

The smaller size of an EV would be more useful in most European cities, at least.

Glad you discovered the gem he is! What made me appreciate his expertise first? Most people use a dish washer wrong. His video will break it all down to help one understand how to use the typical dish washer in the right practical ways in which it was engineered.

One of the best channels on YouTube.

You will not be disappointed if you like dishwashers!

TFA is exactly that...

I think it's also because EREVs need a performant generator that isn't much different from the drive motor. So you'll have a full ICE+EV drivetrain on top of an EV as its battery for it to work, which is not ideal.

Compared to that, other hybrid systems like the motor-clutch combo packs that sit between the ICE and gearbox, as well as the fixed gear Toyota systems, can have motors that are weaker, lighter, and cheaper than the ICE, while being able to be additive to the ICE power output. That makes more efficient use of steel and copper than full serial setups.

BMW i3 had such EREV option, but it apparently used a cheap OEM bike engine(not like a BMW Motorrad engine) and also could not overcome power draw of the EV drive motor. So it literally just extended the range, not allowing it to run indefinitely at highway speeds with just refueling. Nissan e-POWER system is powerful enough to do that, but then the readers of comment will have to back to the line 3.

That is exactly what ePOWER is, that configuration is called a series hybrid and is more commonly seen in heavy industry like diesel trains or trucks in the mines (for better or worse).

More recently effort is also going into series hybrids for public road haulers, which I personally think is a great application for it since you can potentially put a lot of the equipment into a hot-swappable dolly.

I drove a Nissan Note (Nismo esition) with ePower and it could happily spin the wheels when taking off, not something you normally get out of a tiny economy hatchback. I think it has 140kw electric drivetrain? 140kw is pretty sporty when delivered instantly.

Range extender EVs made a lot more sense a decade a go when batteries were much more expensive, and fast chargers were not yet ubiquitous. Then range extenders were more affordable than EVs and could go to places EVs couldn't.

Now these EREVs are mostly luxury niche of big cars (where extra space taken by two power trains doesn't matter) for people who don't want to spend 20 minutes at rapid chargers on that yearly long trip they do. Or for people who live in some global warming ignoring backwater[1] that hasn't built out rapid charger yet.

[1] even China has ubiquitous fast charging network now

What you are referring to is usually referred to as an EREV (Extended Range Electrical Vehicle). The reason legacy manufacturers market their less efficient plugin hybrid and non plugin hybrids (100% of the power comes from petrol) instead is because that's what they have and want to milk for as long as possible. In terms of drive train these are more complex to manufacture and more costly to maintain than an EREV. EREVs typically have slightly larger batteries than a typical PHEV as well. Typical electrical ranges are at least 80-100 miles or more in some cases. Usually the cars are available as without the range extender as well. This is less common for PHEVs and hybrids. Though of course some legacy manufacturers are still trying to push compromise cars. Like Nissan in this case.

Nissan has been really struggling for the last few years, this new hybrid engine doesn't look like it will turn things around for them to me.

EREVs are an idea that is not new and also relevant in shipping and aviation. Many modern large ships (oil tankers, cruise ships, etc.) are already EREVs effectively: an electrical motor drives the propeller and a generator powers the motor.

And there are are a few plane designs that are using small batteries + generators to power flight. It makes a lot of sense: electrical motors are a lot simpler, lighter and cheaper to maintain. Engine maintenance is very costly in aviation. And so is fuel. The recently announced X1 is a good example of a plane that does this. There are a few other manufacturers working on this as well. Early days but the potentially large fuel savings probably ensure this is going to happen one way or another.

There’s a lot of good replies here but I’ll add mine too:

The simples reason is this. What you’re describing is having a gas motor spin a thing (the generator) -> charge battery -> discharge battery -> spin a thing (the wheels) to make car go. Each of those steps has efficiency losses.

That’s why most hybrids are parallel hybrids, where both the gas engine and the battery+motors can spin the wheels more or less directly, even at the same time.

you still basically get the engine spinning at a more constant rpm, and the battery kicks in for acceleration (and charges on deceleration), and now highway cruising doesn’t have any lossy conversion steps, while acceleration and braking uses the advantages of the electric drive chain.

Yes, but it doesn't mean the overall system is better because of losses during the power conversion. It's usually better to have the engine driving the wheels directly which is possible with a continuously-variable transmission (CVT).

Now add a gas-powered range extender to that Bolt EV and it could easily be the only car that a person would have to own, subsisting just fine on 120vac charging most of the time and requiring a top off of fuel any time an unexpected errand comes up or a road trip is tendered.

We had the X-Trail AWD version of this. The plus side was getting around 850km to a tank of petrol. However, the EV-only range was very poor and the engine was quite harsh sounding when it spun up. Super happy to get rid of it and switch to BEV.

> it isn't recognised at all as hybrid vehicle in Germany

You surely mean that it is not recognized as plug-in hybrid vehicle.

>X-Trail e-Power AWD a while ago, and fuel economy, while not spectacular, was still great

10L/100km on highway, worse than cheaper comparably powerful ordinary diesel. Seems like a pointless car, X-Trail 2.0 dCi M9R was better in every possible way.

I am always a bit confused by this argument. You have to drive to a gas station to get fuel but it's not okay to drive to a specific place to charge. Most of the gas station where I live already have a few charging points backed by a big battery. Maybe that's not everywhere but I am not sure they are as rare as they are made out to be.

> EV charging in mechanical parking system is still an unsolved problem

I'm not familiar with this; don't you just plug it in?

Not OP, but I'm going to guess:

- Nissan's petrol engine is the crossbow, a well optimised generator for onboard battery

- Every other brand's EV is the machine gun. About 4 times as energy efficient as a petrol car when you take into account the lifecycle of the vehicle, so probably more when you talk about a hybrid car.

I think they mean they're polishing a turd.

Why bother going to all this effort for an internal combustion engine (crossbow)? Why not spend that money researching 100% EV (machinegun) drive trains?

Its pretty obvious where the future is headed for personal vehicles (yes yes yes I am sure I will get loads of responses where people need to drive 750 miles a day non-stop every day, both ways, towing a boat, up a mountain etc).

It surprises me that these manufacturers like Nissan and Toyota and Honda seem incapable of reacting and changing their product line-up. You can get 100% EV porsches, mercedes, BMWs - hell even Range Rover now and yet these guys are dithering and have basically got only very very half-hearted efforts in EV offerings while apparently trying to pretend its not happening and relying on hybrids.

Meanwhile, at least here in London, I am seeing more and more and more EV BYDs & Jaecoos & MGs etc... so if you care about outward appearances you buy the merc/porsche/etc EV, if you just need a car and don't care what people think you buy the cheap & decent Chinese EV. Toyota, Honda et al don't compete at the luxury end, and they've got nothing to compete with against Chinese EV brands who seem to be taking over the lower end where Toyotas and Nissans etc used to be popular.

Your point? In some countries it's easier to get a cross bow.