jlsoaz
Well-known member
LeftieBiker said:I agree that what happened with the earlier adopters is happened on a larger scale now: having gotten that taste of EV driving with their PHEV, many people are going on to full-fledged EVs for their next vehicle, now that the range is in most cases at least adequate.
Yup, agree with this pretty strongly. I knew better than to go this long way around, but somehow I ended up as an example. Got into a Leaf in 2012 (I knew it was a lame short range BEV), and then out of the frying pan and into the fire in a Volt in 2017. Finally bit the financial bullet and made it (barely) into a (barely) adequate used long(er)-range BEV in 2020.
These are still (very) early days and the readability of the situation is made harder by the special nature of the hold-back that the automakers have been engaging in, en masse, and with the markets, particularly in some regions, not really being fully competitive in all ways. So, it's not a piece of cake (in my opinion) to diagnose what will happen, and with multiple motives and factors at play:
- Is it easier for manufacturers to make PHEVs? And does making good PHEVS help them (financially and in strategic market position) to prolong the situation (rather than hasten toward BEVS)?
- Just as short range BEVS were not (at all) "the good stuff", so too shouldn't we understand that short EV range PHEVs are not the good stuff.
- Will decent zero carbon drop-in replacement synthetic fuels in time to make an unexpected difference in the path to BEVs? Or does none of this matter and the advantages of BEV just blast through the market and that's that?
I am sometimes struck by the comparison case of compact fluorescent bulbs: a transition technology that was flawed (especially since they contained mercury, so as a transition they were not good because they would be hard to get rid of once the even-better technology (LED Bulbs) was ready. It seems like CFLs were regarded as an answer, or as a transition answer, in at least some of our society, for awhile, and then no. I don't hear much any more about difficulty in transition to LEDs In fact, last I looked, I was unable to find any sort of decent widely-accessible data and charts on penetration of efficient LED bulbs worldwide. It's as though the transition to the final tech happened, or was on its way (including policy support of banning the old tech once the new tech was ready) and discussion of the old tech, and the transition tech, and of the issue really, were reduced. So, I don't really know fully how it worked out. There are plenty of factors that make this a not-great comparison to ICV/PHEV/BEV, but I still think at times it is worth asking if PHEVs be somewhat akin to CFLs.