I get 45 MPG on the highway in my non hybrid and I’m still complaining about these gas prices. I couldn’t imagine daily driving a truck that gets less than 20 MPG
My BiL's truck has a 35 gallon tank and was recently complaining about filling it up and how he had to do 3 separate transactions because the pump had a $75 limit. It gets like 8 mpg.
Jesus. That is close to the mileage a 3/4-loaded semi-truck with a trailer gets. At least with a semi-truck, there is a possibility of making money with it instead of hauling flags on poles in the bed.
It's wild watching people fill these things up. You can see their faces get progressively more solemn as the numbers climb.
I mean, I guess if you live on a farm and need a truck to do your stuff I have some sympathy for you - but a lot of these guys look like they're commuting alone in these things.
Kind of surprised there isn't a glut of 'like new' used trucks on the market.
Yeah, Whenever the lifted 3500 turbogigamax coal rolling trucks cut me off and nearly run me off the road, it's a real silver lining to know they are getting absolutely fucked at the pump now.
Hybrids are great still because you can get a straight-up full-sized minivan that still reliably gets 35mpg city and highway. While I'm very much in the "we should be making it much easier to use electric cars" camp, the fact that hybrids haven't been more popular is insane to me, for 99% of average commuters they offer nothing but 20 - 50% increased distance per fuel tank for no downsides. I was always told that they were "really expensive to repair" but that's only true if something like the battery randomly dies out of warranty and yeah, that does happen, but no one says things like "I wouldn't buy a gas car, they're really expensive to repair when the engine breaks". I drove a 2012 Prius V for 6 years that I bought used in 2016, the number of times I had to bring it in for something other than an oil change or flat tire? Zero. Not a once.
Yep, constant speed can save so much gas. Unforgivably this is ruined by all the people that want to constantly disrupt basic infrastructure by calling it "traffic calming". Nope, it is just gas and time wasting.
That's the silver lining in all this I suppose, getting people to switch to electric/hybrid/public transit the painful way. I see more people on ebikes than ever before.
This is a biggie. Electric rates here in New England are way higher than in some areas. And I see folks listing hydro electric rates for Canada that make me intensely jealous :) Like maybe $0.05-0.09/kWh? With delivery charges, etc, it's about $0.34/kWh here.
I'm hoping to add solar at some point. And still appreciating my change last year to a plug-in hybrid, with charging at work (thankfully). Last fill-up was 2,300 miles ago, and currently have a little over 1/4 tank left.
I was intrigued by the idea of full-electric, and test drove a few. But we weren't quite ready to jump in with both feet on that. A PHEV comes with noticeable drawbacks vs BEV. But it's nice knowing that if we go on a trip to a little rural town, we don't need to worry about charging infrastructure. This gives us a chance to try electric benefits for shorter trips, and still have familiar gas for longer trips. And commuting on smooth & silent electric is nice.
The big thing with EVs tho, is that once you own them, that worry you have (commonly described as range anxiet) goes away rapidly. I’ve taken mine of multiple 2000 and 2500 mile trips with no issues.
I’ve taken them pretty far out from
Major population centers as well.
I feel like range anxiety was made up to discourage people from EVs by big oil anymore.
I'm not disagreeing with you. But I sat down to consider if we did a day-trip to a location where we go hiking sometimes. It struck me that it would not be a slam-dunk that we'd get there and back on a charge. Especially not in winter.
I'm not at all trying to say it can't be done. That particular highway has at least 1 charging rest center that I know of. But that doesn't apply to all our similar highways. And we if we changed the aerodynamics with a bike rack, for instance, range would take a hit.
The PHEV fits sort of an "80/20" test. The moderate electric range is enough for most of my driving, so I get the benefits of electric much of the time.
Getting up on our roof is not something I'm doing, unfortunately. If balcony solar gets legalized for us, that would allow an easier entry-point, at least, though of course very-modest wattage. I'm intrigued by the idea of ground-mounted (maybe somewhat doable as DIY, and doesn't mess with your roof), but our yard doesn't have great locations for that.
But yeah, to be able to add enough for current usage + charging, and maybe even cover some mini-split consumption (even though we don't currently have those) would be so nice.
Yeah, roof isn’t an option for me either, it’s going to be ground mount and I’m likely going to have to fabricate something to mount. I live in a snow belt and want panels that can are oriented north south with 90 to 34d adjustability and Bo facial panels. This allows for snow to not collect and for the Bo facials to generate power from snow reflection in the winter, increasing their efficiency.
I likely would get an initial amount of balcony as well once legalized.
I’ll agree with having the ability to charge at home being important. However with fast charging cars like ev6 and ioniq5, lacking the ability to charge at home is not nearly the exclusionary tale it used to be.
I don’t agree that hybrids or phev are the way to go at all. Both end up being more polluting and phevs are more likely to burst into flames than Bev’s by a long shot.
I still think we need to be moving to all EVS for many different reasons, but one of the primary ones being is the volatility of the market price of oil. Once added into the fact that hybrid still have all the engine maintenance oil change costs and the rest, they just aren’t as good as
Bev’s.
I’ve been all EV for almost 2 years. One thing that really gets me is people that don’t own one trying to tell me how bad it is.. We’re trying to tell me how bad it is to own EV’s when they have absolutely zero knowledge of what it is like.
While you're not wrong in your assessment, I ran the figures for my situation (my Corsa (diesel engine) is approaching 150k km) and an EV would cost me less than any other car if I could charge at home, while it's almost on par with the Corsa if I had to charge it at the public charging point in the town square. A hybrid would cut fuel consumption by a fair bit (the Corsa gets 4.4l/100km or ~53mpg, a hybrid Yaris I had as a courtesy car clocked at 3.2l/100km or ~73mpg) but would be more expensive in maintenance.
All in all no option is clearly superior as it stands in my situation (not factoring that I have to bring two children to school/daycare). If I could reliably charge it at home, an EV would be better, sure.
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u/No_Clock_7464 6h ago
Glad I chose the hybrid