I have all three ICE, EV and hybrid at home. I was hesitant at first when getting the EV because we already had the hybrid, but we needed a second SUV to carry kids. After two years with the EV it became evident to me the hybrid doesn’t make sense. It has some of the gas savings of an EV but you still deal with the inconvenience of maintaining a ICE. My EV has received zero maintenance other than cleaning the cameras. Brakes are still good for many more years and tires maybe need replacing in a year. No oil change, no brake pads, no spark plugs, fuel pumps, seals, plus all the time savings scheduling appointments and driving to the dealer. I do see some use cases where hybrids may actually work better, like very long daily commutes in a region lacking charging stations. I believe they are popular because there’s still fear of going full electric, but as many EV owners would tell you that fear is unreasonable and disappears after a few months owning an EV. I go out and run errands with 10% charge. The first days my hands started sweating when the charge dropped under 40%.
> After two years with the EV it became evident to me the hybrid doesn’t make sense
In some places in the US the hybrid can have lower energy costs per mile. Using the average price/kWh of residential electricity and the average price/gallon of gasoline in each US state as of maybe a year ago (I haven't updated my spreadsheet in a while) a Toyota Prius would beat my EV (which the sticker says is 129 MPGe city, 103 MPGe highway) on the highway in 15 states: Alaska, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont.
The Prius would win in city driving in 8 states: Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
For people who do not have home charging or cheap destination charging and have to rely on public DC charging stations the Prius wins in most states even with today's super high gas prices. If DC charging costs $0.40/kWh for example, the Prius wins on the highway if gas is under $7.33/gal and in the city if it is under $5.85/gal.
If anyone wants to check it for their particular electrify and gas prices, compute the ratio of gas $/gal to electricity $/kWh. E.g., if gas is $4/gal and electricity at your home is $0.20/kWh the ratio is 20.
The Prius beats an EV with the MPGe of mine on the highway if the ratio is under 18.325, and in the city if the ratio is under 14.625. To adjust for your EV multiply those thresholds by my MPGe divided by your MPGe. To adjust for non-Prius hybrids or ICEs, multiply the threshold by the other car's mpg and divide by the Prius mpg (56 highway, 56 city).
You can customize the costs for various thing and it has state level presests. You can also set PHEV utilisation factor etc.
I'm not sure how up to date it is, I see 2025 model cars listed but you can tweak gas cost, tax credits etc. if they have changed.
The very cheapest cars seem to still be ICE, not hybrid or EV but different state incentives/fuel costs varies it dramatically.
And you have to consider some other things like is the Nissan Versa ICE a comparable car to the Nissan Leaf EV? The former seems cheaper to run in the USA.
Wow -- Nissan TITAN and Chevry BLAZER doing their part to guzzle gasolina!
I used this to compare hybrid Camry v. RAV4 – both are clustered on the opposite side of the diagram.
Thanks for the neat link! I went from a turbocharged Subaru to a Toyota hybrid... and the performance is similar with 2.25x the mileage (and no premium gas)! It's neat getting 50+ mpg and still being able to accelerate.
> ... a Toyota Prius would beat my EV (which the sticker says is 129 MPGe city, 103 MPGe highway) on the highway in 15 states
I posted a not dissimilar comment in reply to someone else: I ran the numbers and in a country with high electricity the savings of an EV simply aren't that stellar compared to an ICE car. It's not clear at all if at the end the TCO is lower or not: basically the savings on gasoline / oil / brake pads may not be sufficient to offset the higher price and faster depreciation of the EV.
> For people who do not have home charging or cheap destination charging and have to rely on public DC charging stations the Prius wins in most states
I'm guessing you are assuming that either (a) your time is worth. $0/hour so that waiting time for charging costs you nothing or (b) you have a situation where you can charge while doing some other needful activity.
Filling with petrol is relatively quick and gas stations are everywhere. But still wastes some time.
Plug-in hybrids also have their interesting use cases. If you do live in an area with cheap electricity, that 20-60 miles of electric-only driving can produce savings.
You also get regenerative braking with hybrids.
Until charging times get better at most chargers, many people will prefer the convenience of gas fillups.
I think the problem a lot of non-Toyota manufacturers have run into is trying to have it both ways, like you said.
For better or worse (I say better), the Prius really committed to hybrid as its own form. Plenty of hybrids really are an electric motor and a ICE tacked together, and with that system, you're going to hit twice (at least) the problems of either one.
The thing I appreciate about the Toyota power-split device, is that it really manages to remove a lot of the ICE moving parts. You have no auxiliary belts, no alternator, starter motor, steering pump, etc, and for me and millions of other drivers, that's made getting to 200k miles a given.
I'm not sure which hybrid you have (and of course, ymmv) but I really think that nobody has done it like Toyota, at least until the 2020s
I think the biggest reduction is that it essentially replaces the conventional transmission with the hybrid unit. (Planetary gear set and motor-generators.)
It drives like a CVT, but it is not a CVT in the sense people know as far as maintenance and reliability issues. It is just a "differential" and electric motor balancing out the ICE engine output to get a desired output drive effect.
This whole comment change is exactly what the video is about, how the Toyota hybrid system is actually a lot simpler than pure ICE, and mostly exists to make sure the ICE engine always runs at optimal efficiency
Ford has had a similar design (sharing patents with Toyota) since the first Escape Hybrid in '04. But they never stuck with a high mpg platform, they're using it to build 34mpg small trucks and SUVs, not 60mpg cars.
It's their ploy to game CAFE averages. High MPG cars don't offset their truck lineup. You can also thank the PT Cruiser for hatchback cars like the Mach-E being misclassified as trucks to enhance the gaming.
I have a plug-in hybrid and, although it was not my initial opinion, I came to think that it is the most adapted tech to my usage:
- I do 90% of my kilometers to commute to work: 2x40km / day
- I need my car to drive 7 hours roughly 4x or 5x per year
In my case, I can drive electric to commute to work, as I can charge sporadically (can't do it at home).
When driving long distance, I get to use the ICE while charging stations get jammed e.g. on peak traffic weekends. Consumption is much less than pure ICE.
Breaking pads are spared by the magnetic brake as well.
I used to do that, however depends on where you live.
In Germany the amount you have to pay not to worry about every little scratch from a few mm, means I rather have my own scratches.
Then on the Mediterranean islands usually rental is the only option, unless one likes to pay taxis all the time, and most rentals take advantage of non locals as much as they can get away with. Yes some do have buses, if you want to be stuck in the main cities.
Maybe I could cope with the inconvenience of queuing 45 min to get a car from a leading rental brand that, although they see me regularly, always need to re-enter my documents in their system (go figure...).
But the main reason is that those 4-5x/year are when everyone goes on week-end or vacations. Therefore prices are sky-high and availability is not guaranteed.
So hertz can report your car stolen after you return it, landing you in jail?
Renting a car comes with extra worry, even taking that extreme case out of consideration.
You’re driving around a break in magnet, advertising that it contains suitcases.
It comes with highly restricted rules - technically it violates Avis’s rental agreement to pull off onto a dirt median even if you have a flat tire or ever need to drive on a dirt parking lot - strictly anything unpaved like a national park campground site’s parking.
And you’ll reserve one particular car type, who knows what they’ll actually give you. And the tires may be sketchy too (had that)
And they’re be trying ti upsell you all sorts of horrible deals when you reserve and then pick up
Most of the available rental cars are crap. Even if you make an advance reservation there's no guarantee that they'll have what you want in stock when you show up. For solo business travelers that doesn't matter as much but I wouldn't want to take the risk when planning a family road trip.
Another consideration is your local climate. It can get down to -40C here. Both ICE and EVs pay a range penalty in those conditions, but it compounds the problem with charging station density that EVs have + the time it takes to charge. And at least with an ICE, all that engine heat can be put to good use trying to keep the interior warm.
These problems are (imo) vastly overblown for the way most people drive. The only time the cold temperature reduced range / reduced charge speed are relevant is for long road trips where you’re driving > ~200mi at once. Otherwise, you just charge up at home overnight and easily recoup any normal driving range you used during the day, regardless of the temperature.
Norwegians have apparently figured this out. Despite being pretty damn cold, they’re buying EV’s almost exclusively now (97%).
Around 38% of new cars sales in Finland in 2025 were EVs [1], so they apparently have figured out how to make them work. PHEVs were another 20%. Gas cars were around 39%, and diesel cars were about 4%.
EVs work in cold weather, just the range is reduced.
If it is a second car in the family, used for short range commuting ... or if your lifestyle does not involve frequent long-distance trips, EV is perfectly suitable even in Finland.
In those countries most people own a house so they can plug in every night.
Where I live it's all apartments (without parking because they were built before cars existed) and there's maybe one charging station on the street per 300 spaces or so. A few more in parking garages but you pay hundreds a month to access those.
I don't think an EV will work here until every space has a charger.
Sounds like you might live in a sensible place where you probably don’t need a car at all. That’s the ideal! Unfortunately, much of, e.g., the U.S. (outside of ~4 cities), “cities” are built around individual car ownership. There, where a car is pretty much necessary, and you likely already have a dedicated spot to store it, it often makes sense to choose an EV version.
As others said, Norway isn't that cold - the ocean is pretty warm. That does mean, however, that the temperature varies greatly with how far you are from the sea. Go far enough inland and it can get cold. -30C or, even these days, some places much colder, though only for shorter periods now (global warming).
Most places are barely as cold as -10C, which isn't much of a problem for batteries. And it's often a bit warmer.
The cold problems are not as overblown as most people who live outside of these environments think. Yes, for most commutes the reduction in winter (sub-freezing temperature) range when home-based charging is available is not significant.
For my anecdote, my (occasional) commute distance is enough that I need to change my driving habits to have enough range/safety margin to make it back home during this cold period. In these conditions, my EV gets roughly 175 miles of range while driving 60-65 MPH with some (resistive) cabin heating. This makes my 150-mile roundtrip not exactly an afterthought like it is during the summer when I have 240-mile+ range ignoring the speed limit. If I couldn't fully recharge at home every night, preheat the car (even garaged it's still bitter cold)
Statistically maybe these edge cases are all irrelevant... But it is a hard limit on what you can and can't do with an EV that ICE vehicle users do not have to ever think about. Maybe once we start getting commonly-available and affordable EVs that come standard with ICE-like range - 300 miles all-season at the minimum - this will change.
Your 150 mile daily commute seems like a much bigger factor in this dilemma than the cold temperature range reduction. That’s over 3x the average American daily commute distance! For the huge majority of Americans, the cold weather thing just will not be a factor at all. And yet, it’s probably the #1 fact they know about EV’s.
> ..that ICE vehicle users do not have to ever think about.
Well.. the comment you replied to said "-40C" (which is about -40F too, AFAIK), and, back in time before global warming really hit, a friend used to live and work in an area where it was -40 nearly every day, from late October till March. At least that year I visited that place. I and friends arrived at nighttime and he picked us up at the airport and brought us to where he lived. His car was a small utility car he used for work.. a diesel car. When we unpacked and went inside, he didn't turn off the engine.. when asked, he said he had done that mistake in October (this was now late February), and had to tow the car to a garage, as the diesel fuel had all turned into wax (and this was diesel with cold-weather additives). So, since then, he never turned off the engine. It ran 24/7, for months at the time.
(These days it's much much warmer there, not cold at all, so the above is an anecdote from back in the old days, by now).
at -40C you need to start plugging a block warmer into the ICE when you park, something that an EV doesn’t need, although it can benefit from the same plug for the block warmer into Fairbanks parking lots.
Lithium batteries perform terribly at that temperature and cannot be charged at all without permanent damage. They basically need to have a block heater hooked up to the battery if you ever want to charge.
You just keep it plugged in when you are gone, what’s the issue?
This reminds me that in Yakutsk, you put your car in a big sock while it’s parked and the car will occasionally start on its own to keep the block from freezing (they don’t have plugs outside, so no block warmers, no EVs). If you leave your car parked long enough, you’ll run out of gas and your engine will probably be hosed.
It says a lot about the viability of ICEs in really cold temperatures though. You are just trading one problem for another. An EV can be kept plugged in while idle and the cold weather tech can probably manage better than an ICE would, especially with what the Chinese have been developing in Harbin and Mohe.
Cold soaked batteries are definitely less ideal but if you can plug in at home, planning your charge times and pre-conditioning the car while plugged in significantly reduces the range effects (and preheats the cabin for you!)
The number of cars that experience -40F(C) in a year is something like 3% of all cars. In the US that number is more like 0.5%. And even within that 3%, the average number of days where cars experience that temperature is on the order of a 3-6 at most. We spend a lot of time worrying about edge cases.
Yep. I put a heat pump in my house last year. It doesn't function at all below "only" -30C and doesn't make economic sense vs my natural gas furnace until around 0C. I got it instead of a plain air conditioner only so I had a backup to my furnace.
How many miles in that two years? I put about 14k miles per year on my ICE and have only needed oil changes for 5 years. I know I have a big 200k service coming up but if I only look at the past five years it’s just oil every 7k and tires. Not THAT different, yes?
If you want it to last you should also be flushing the coolant and brake fluid, changing the transmission oil, air filter and at some point serpentine belt, rad hoses , spark plugs and leads
“Just get an EV” is the “let them eat cake” in disguise.
If I had a house and could charge EV at home, and had 1-2 kids, I might consider Tesla.
Public charging has iterated roughly to what gasoline costs (because that’s what people are willing to pay), and once you need 5 full seats, there is just a handful of options, and they (eg. Kia EV9) easily costs 3x more than lightly used MPV of a same size.
In my experience it is that mom and dad both sometimes need to have all the kids and there is no good car swap in between. I drop the kids off for their before school jazz band practice, then my wife picks them up from their after school practice. I really want a tiny car that handles well, but that won't allow the above so I'm driving a SUV that is barely big enough and not fun at all.
My kids are soon to reach driving age and that means they can drive themselves - but only if I have another car.
I wish I lived where transit existed, but that is a different rant.
Oh god just reading the other responses to this thread I am glad I don't live in the car-dependent place (I did grow up in one though).
Me and the wife just got a baby and we were like "oh my god I am so glad I live walking distance to everything we need, including daycare and pediatrician". To be fair that is not the average where we live either, but kids are already taking themselves to places around 6 years old and most after-school activities are around the school.
In fact we were complaining that now that we have so little time available it is just so boring to _only_ be 3-5 blocks around our home and never go anywhere else. My wife sometimes just take the bus to go anywhere else to walk the baby rather than just doing it around our area.
You don't need any of that, obviously. It really is best to save that word and you'll better appreciate that you can have things way, way beyond what you need rather than living in this eternal state of "barely getting by". It's all in your head. It's completely up to you if you want to be rich today.
Need is almost always relative; if your house is next door to a 24 hour gas station you don’t meed to have a bathroom in your house as you could walk next door and use the gas station’s - but most everyone would feel this was a bit insane.
It might be more instructive to discuss what missions a particular vehicle or vehicles enables.
I'm willing to bet they didn't mean to carry kids that don't fit in two SUVs. Probably meant that logistically, they need two SUVs available. If you aren't American—or are, but don't have kids—you might not be aware that even two kids past 10yo and a sedan is a pretty bad experience. And I'm saying this as someone who loves his sedan, hates large cars, passionately hates SUVs, and definitely never wanted one.
I have three kids under 10. None of them can legally ride in the front of my sedan. So they had to be in the back. Three of them in one bench seat. Physically possible, and we did it for a while, but it's just non-stop screaming and fights, and with very little space for all their after-school stuff. I threw out my back trying to make their sports and music stuff fit with my baby's stroller and diaper bag etc.
And this is the kicker if you aren't American: everything you do in life has to be done with a car, which means even at two kids, you might be transporting loads of gear every day.
I always thought, like my experience growing up, my kids should learn a musical instrument and play a sport. So if a kid picks cello and the sport is tennis, your entire trunk is filled now. And that's not even with a stroller for your third kid that is not self-ambulatory yet. Forget about a tire inflator, jumper cables, or any other standard stuff you should be carrying in your car at all times.
So with three kids (extremely common in the US), a sedan is practically unworkable. (Again, I'm saying this as someone who would only drive sedans my whole life if I could. I hate big cars and think they're a needless risk and expense for most people and wish we could heavily restrict their ownership.)
Now what if one parent is in charge of the morning stuff then works late, but the other parent is in charge of afternoon stuff because they get off work early.
Now you need an SUV for each parent just to manage three kids with a completely normal set of childhood activities.
I drive a ID.Buzz now, the LWB so it seats seven. Life is immeasurably easier. Perfect timing, too, with the gas price situation, and I keep the car at 80% charge every day, a few hours of charging off one 120V plug while I sleep, everything's gucci.
*edit* One thing I forgot to mention is that carpools to kid events are common here. So extra space to be able to drive one of your kid's friend to the after-game hangout is a of high value. Increases community, etc.
I am not American, and I have had two kids (now adults) and had a hatchback for many of those years. No problem fitting everything in. Split folding seats help a lot.
The biggest car I have had is probably a Citreon Xsara Picasso (small by American standards, I think), and that only for about three years. It was nice to have the space but not essential.
I can imagine needing two cars, and some people I know do, but more than two in all (say one big, one small, and not small by American standards) is rare.
I posit the ideal is three (often used, room for them notwithstanding):
-sedan for commutes
-suv for bench seats/cargo and typical awd/4x4 secondary
-truck for towing toys, bed hauling the things your wife made a deal for at a garage sale, going to the dump, firewood, bla bla bla, going for rides and looking cool when the weather’s nice
Two cars are always available if one breaks down, or bad weather, whatever. Can trade space and hassle for money if you’re willing to deal with repairs if the used rigs are old.
I strongly dislike SUVs but due to transporting the kids around and their friends, my wife and I have switched vehicles during the week: she drives my sedan, I drive her SUV.
Being able to transport my oldest's friends around has resulted in improved relationships for both the kids, and the parents.
"Last minute sleepover after the game? No problem, I'll take your son and his gear in my car. We'll also pick up a pizza on the way back too. Drop off his toothbrush and pajamas at your convenience, after your other children are fed and bathed."
That's a briefer version of the exchange I had with a family last week, and their response was an audible sigh of relief, many thank yous, and an invite to dinner this weekend.
The Sienna is a great rig but doesn’t look cool, which is rule 1 /s
As long we’re talking driving on roads, the AWD Sienna is basically an SUV. It is not, however, something that speaks to guys who want a specific look or fantasy from their rig.
Is anyone even selling those in the US these days? Obviously there's a (dwindling) supply of used ones, but I can understand wanting to put your kid in a new car for safety reasons.
not OP, but apparently all it takes is 2 kids that are independently into multiple sports + both parents being actively involved in the clubs/work schedules that allow us to regularly make every training session and game means we're regularly playing taxi for multiple families and having to split ourselves across locations when fixtures clash. Also all their kit just takes up a heap of space too. I wanted a sedan when we upgraded one of our cars late last year but it just wasn't going to work given all of the above.
> I do see some use cases where hybrids may actually work better, like very long daily commutes in a region lacking charging stations.
That's exactly it, and why hybrids are very common in China outside the urban areas. Here in Japan there are still a lot of hybrids, and I and my spouse drove one (a rental) for a few days, in an area just like that - no charging stations, and, as we were basically tourists, no home charging options either. It was like any other car most of the time, except for the display showing how the battery got recharged whenever braking.
The interesting part came when we were finished with the trip and, as one has to, filled up the tank to 100% on the rental.. and it was almost nothing. Just had to top it up a little bit, that was all.
Just to qualify "log daily commutes", hybrid is really most beneficial, compared to ICE, for "city" driving. Long in duration with lots of speed changes and stopping, rather than as a highway cruise.
If you include the other efficiency tweaks like aerodynamics, wheel choices, etc., then an ICE car can also do very well in those highway conditions. But, the optimized or "right-sized" ICE for highway cruising may feel underpowered in some conditions. The hybrid also helps here, much like a turbocharger, by boosting power output temporarily to mitigate this.
Definitely different than raod tripping in an ICE. We road trip in our Model Y and end up stopping often regardless of charging for snacking, stretching, walking the dogs, etc.
I remember talking to a coworker would couldn't accept taking 10 hours to drive somewhere instead of the 8.5 hours you can make it in an ICE. But then again we are definitely people who puts on road trips.
The ratio has been way worse than that in my experience, especially in cold weather. Could easily turn a 3 hour trip from Seattle to Portland to 5-6 hours during winter, when mileage plummets on the freeway.
Obviously part of that is that the EV wasn't fully charged when we started, but that's the thing -- being low on gas for an ICE car barely affects travel at all.
Hybrids do make sense, but like everything else, for specific use cases. I do a lot of road tripping, so a hybrid is ideal. Charging is still way too slow to do multiple times per trip.
This is the reason why I got a hybrid. Many of my trips are on routes that don’t have good charging access and charging is just too slow for the length of trips.
Also, I bought a rav4 hybrid which is one of the most common cars on the road here and therefore mechanics have a lot of experience working on these vehicles.
> No oil change, no brake pads, no spark plugs, fuel pumps, seals, plus all the time savings scheduling appointments and driving to the dealer.
ICE here, goes to the dealership, what, once a year? 13 years in and 135 000 km done with the car (which I bought used, when it was 4 years old).
I ran the numbers yesterday: savings on gas when moving to full EV really aren't that stellar in my case (about 10 000 km/years now: I drive a bit less than I used to) and I have a gas guzzler. Electricity in my country is one of the highest in Europe.
Instead of paying, say, 2000 EUR / year in gasoline I'd pay 1 000 EUR in electricity (much more if using the pricier supercharger).
So I save 1 K EUR / year on gas. OK, but car depreciation? EV vehicles prices apparently do fall like a very hard rock.
Not only that: apparently EV prices do fall even faster than ICE and morever brand new EVs tend to be, compared to a similar brand new ICE car, more pricey. So the fall is even harder.
So as for now I'll keep the yearly dealership trip to deal with those "pesky" oil changes, spark plugs, brake pads, etc.
I mean: it's not as if since my parents (the boomers) and my grand-parents we didn't have ICE cars ownership pretty much figured out. And some of the modern ICE engines are proven to be extremely reliable (so if you DYOR you can buy a used ICE car and be pretty reasonably sure it'll be a good workhorse).
The "you'll save money" argument seems dubious. Your "no oil change" argument seems a bit light too.
I understand the "you'll save the planet" a bit more but I'm a "show me the money (savings)" person.
