It is unfortunate that all this innovation is happening in China, and subject to all sorts of protective tariffs to protect the absurdly dumb and backwards thinking US automotive industry. If they can't adapt to the modern world and what customers want, they should be allowed to go bankrupt. But no, we have to keep subsidizing and protecting the ability to make yet more gargantuan SUVs.
So let’s play this out. Say China floods the US market and the US players go out of business as you suggest. What then happens to the US’s industrial base? What happens if there’s a major war (maybe even against china!) and no car factories to retool? You think a new crop of auto companies come up and then are able to compete against lower wage workers combined with gov financing?
This is the bit everyone misses. It’s not about protecting a backwards US or EU etc automotive OEM. It’s about stopping a government backed business models from Chinese companies wiping out the rest of the world’s auto makers in a way those companies simply can’t compete with … and then jacking up pricing in a couple of decades.
What people miss even more is that the insane defense budget is largely about maintaining the industrial base in the US.
Anyone who deals with manufacturing knows that China is dirt cheap and (nowadays) often better quality than domestic. Without the government propping up manufacturing, China could rug pull the US without even firing a shot.
I am not from US or China, and just trying to understand. Searching for car subsidies US gives out this, https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-off... . Wouldn't those grants and loans make the beneficiaries also in government backed business models?
This grants tends to come with strong rules on what you can and can’t do with the money, it’s hard for them to be used to prop up a company substantially, they are used to nudge an industry in a direction the market may not yet reward.
China’s support is an order of magnitude more and essentially allows their companies to be unprofitable and not worry about.
Similar to how American VCs enabled Uber to unprofitably wipe out many countries taxi industries in a way that those taxi companies couldn’t compete with.
> China’s support is an order of magnitude more and essentially allows their companies to be unprofitable and not worry about.
This is not at all the case in China's EV sector. The EV sector is China is extremely cut-throat. BYD is not living off of government subsidies. It's an extremely competitive company that has invested heavily in R&D and which has reduced costs through vertical integration.
Even with these restrictions, wouldn't it possible for a US company to move own funds/or loans from subsidied operations towards being more innovative? With this in mind, isn't this still a government backed business opportunity. Isn't using this opportunity or not on the company leadership?
Also doesn't this kind of thinking leads to an argument that says US govt does not want it's own companies to compete with Chinese ones with these grants by use of limitations?
And another question would be as USA is more of a private enterprise type of a country why wouldn't these VC's and car companies cooperate for this competition?
Their business model is still doomed if they cannot technologically compete. American automakers have repeatedly demonstrated their inability to keep up with anyone on technology and innovation.
I think this is half true. The innovation is there: GM's old Voltec hybrid drivetrain and the new Ultium EV platform are really quite good.
The issue is in getting the technology into the marketplace: between advertising, product positioning, dealerships, and consumer demand, that's where things fall apart.
If gov’t backed companies out compete “free market” companies, why are we saddling ourselves with an inefficient economic model? Capitalism is nice for capitalists and all, but it’s not without its problems. Setting aside its tendency to generate dangerous levels of inequality (which is a real problem we are basically ignoring), capitalism is kind of dumb or a least limited in its ability to integrate and act on information in a timely manner (see boom-bust cycles). It seems to me that given the massive advances in information sensing, storage, and processing capabilities of the last six decades, we would be better off with more central planning. This of course still requires political work to ensure just and equitable distribution of goods and services as well as protection of livelihoods, but we should be doing more of these anyway.
>If gov’t backed companies out compete “free market” companies, why are we saddling ourselves with an inefficient economic model?
I think that is actually a fair question, but it all comes down to what you optimize for. I think that the most efficient economic model could be some form of slave command economy.
That said, I think the bigger argument against central economic planning is that it further centralizes social and political power as well. This is prone to more drastic and oppressive failure modes.
Last, you talk about the speed of information, but that cuts both ways. Distributed systems can take advantage of this as well. Capitalist economies have booms and busts, but I would take them any day over great famines.
No. It was a proxy war against the Soviet Union. China didn’t have good relations with the Soviet Union at that time, and they’ve had centuries of bad relations with Vietnam. Shortly after the US pulled out, China invaded Vietnam. They just didn’t make our mistake of engaging in a futile protracted war.
Substitute "china" for "japan" and roll back the clock a few decades. Even though Toyota, Nissan and Honda are top-selling brands, Detroit spiffed up its quality controls, and a bunch of those manufacturers set up factories in the US anyways.
As a Canadian, I agree with the premise that I'd rather see Japan gain power over China due to how they wield that power; but man, you have quite a pessimistic view when it comes to describing US allies.
Also, if Japan truly was a US puppet, would they be "allowed" to have a auto industry at all?
Not that China nor US should be controlled to their detriment, or uncontrollable to the detriment of others. But as a global south citizen, it is interesting to see the US really panic for the first time in my life with the rise of China. I hope they would rise up to the challenge and that the situation will not become violent.
Today it is. While not the existential threat to the US that communism/China are or perceived to be, Japan was very much a threat to the US in the 80s/90s. All kinds of concerns not just about the car market but manufacturing in general, how much real estate Japan owned, how much treasuries Japan owned, etc,
I know a few people who lost their collective minds when a Japanese guy bought Pebble Beach. Turned out to be a terrible move on his part.
Japan was very much a threat to the US back then. Maybe more perceived than reality but a lot of the same rhetoric/narrative you see today about China, was Japan vs the US back then.
Not great but let's play the other side out. Third party countries such as Australia already have over 80% of the EV market dominated by Chinese made vehicles.
If the US closes it's borders to imports it'll retain a market only fit for domestic consumption. It's cars will not be competitive internationally.
The only real way out is for the US to find a way to remain competitive full stop. Isolationism or just allowing foreign imports to dominate should not be options either way.
China’s domestic market has bordered on isolation for decades now. It’s what protected their companies from competition. They can’t expect to freely export without reciprocating.
I’m surprised that the trade wars didn’t happen sooner.
That’s just the auto sector. What about tech? Most of our tech companies are blocked. The airline and transport industries are blocked. Oil and other natural resource companies are blocked. The list goes on. Let’s also not forget that the CCP also requires a domestic partner and a tech transfer. That domestic partner will also inevitably become independent from the foreign company after enough IP transfer.
China was also the one who started decoupling first
Tech is actually one of the few sectors that is really blocked in China, and that's because of censorship, not protectionism.
> Let’s also not forget that the CCP also requires a domestic partner and a tech transfer.
Not any more. They used to, but that's been rolled back in sector after sector over the last 30 years or so. It was a transitional measure meant to protect Chinese domestic manufacturers as China began to open up to the world market.
> China was also the one who started decoupling first
This is just not at all in line with reality. China has been more tightly integrating itself into the global economy over time. The so-called "decoupling" began with Trump's trade war against China, though it's been remarkably ineffective at actually separating the US and Chinese economies.
> China started decoupling first by blocking out most foreign companies from their domestic market.
That's exactly the opposite of what China has been doing over the last 40 years. The history of China over the last few decades is one of massive economic opening to the outside world.
> Besides automobiles, most companies are still blocked from entering China’s domestic market.
You should just travel to China to see how wrong you are about this. Foreign companies are everywhere in China. Walk into any Chinese mall and then tell me, with a straight face, that foreign companies are banned.
Honestly, I think EVs are oversize RC cars. Their drivetrains are commodity tech. The Model 3's battery and overall drivetrain efficiency has improved by like 7-8% since its inception in 2017.
Tesla really nailed EVs the first time around, but they never had much of a technological moat besides fantastic promises.
Why would China flood the US market? Their advantage is that they can make stuff cheaper. The USA is the wealthiest country in the world, and has one of the highest median selling prices for new cars. I don't think an $10-$15k basic small car would be a bestseller there.
If you are implying that the Chinese can make cars that can satisfy the upmarket needs of US consumers, and do it significantly cheaper, then that implies the US automakers are gouging their customers or are simply incompetent. In both cases, protecting them amounts to putting shareholder interest before the interest of the common people.
A lot of what China does makes sense when you consider that their goal is not to make a financial profit, at least not in the near-term. No, their real goal is to go in and replace the local industries with their own; choking them out with Chinese goods so cheap yet still good enough that competition is impossible. The end result is the locals end up relying on China for industrial production, research and development, at which point China just won a war without firing a single shot.
Look at what happened with solar panels, lithium batteries, and indeed EVs. Most if not all industrial bases outside China were destroyed and replaced thanks to a flooding of Chinese goods. The red ink is no doubt immense, but the payout in sheer geopolitical power far exceeds it.
The Rust Belt and the collapse of American steel manufacturing is another example. Cheap steel from China and elsewhere led to the collapse of American steel, and we're now looking at it getting bought out by foreign interests (fortunately Japan rather than China, but the damage to American ego is beyond critical mass) as the final nail in the coffin.
The battle is not between US and China, it's between US companies, who want large profit margins and US consumers who want cheap, well made stuff.
Just look at BYD's palette - their $10k EV, is a tiny car, and would probably not sell well in the US despite the price because US consumers don't buy cars this small, except maybe as a novelty. (Besides, tiny, cheap cars always face a stiff competition from barely used models available at the same price)
Moving up, you have the Dolphin, a mid 20k compact car, it's affordable and good. There was a mid 20k compact car made by an US company - the Bolt. It was also affordable and good. Guess what - GM discontinued it, citing low profit margins. And they won't make another one. It's next-gen EV platform is decidedly aimed at a higher segment with a bigger profit margin.
Higher still, you have the Seal, BYD's Model 3 competitor. First, it's no longer cheap, and that segment of EVs is the most crowded. Second, it's nice, but I don't think it comes together quite as well as a Tesla. What it does have on Tesla is build quality (which is Tesla's weak point), with most people expressing interest in it being the ones who are fed up with Tesla's shitty manufacturing and service.
Based on all this, I don't think China could take the US market to itself, even if free competition would be allowed. This whole thing is about political posturing and enabling continued shitty behavior from US manufacturers.
And if you'd accuse me of being some China shill, personally, I wouldn't buy a Chinese EV, not until they have a proven track record, and service network.
The brutal fact of the matter is if the US needs to blockade Chinese cars lest the US automotive industry completely collapses on itself, the US has already lost. There is nothing worth protecting at that point; an industry that can't make first rate products can't create instruments of war that can win.
If we wanted Pax Americana to last, shit needed to change at least a few decades ago. Anyone who was paying attention to EV development would have foreseen China dominating the field.
You mean if China produces vehicles that offer tremendous value and consumers love them? Lots of happy consumers who can spend money on other things they want.
> and the US players go out of business
US automakers have been bailed out several times now and have been insulated from competitive pressures. It is inevitable that several of them will go out of business. This is not a bad thing. The valuable bits will be snapped up by other firms. (pension obligations will be another story). [^1][^2]
> What happens if there’s a major war...
Healthy trade between the US and China dramatically reduces the chances of a major war. China is not run by an irrational child, its policy is influenced by wealthy business owners and its large capitalist class. Those people do not want to go to war with their best customers. [^3][^4]
(Warmongering over China is coming strictly from US hawks who are attracted to the narrative to distract attention from tough times at home.)
> You think a new crop of auto companies come up and then are able to compete against lower wage workers combined with gov financing?
The US auto industry has been significantly bailed out several times. US auto industry workers are heavily subsidized by US government policies. [^5][^6][^7]
Surely the line is viewed by China as increasing security and the chance of peace. When there were multiple superpowers the US had areas of ocean that it was most concerned about the security of vs areas that it was less concerned about.
As China emerges as a superpower, of course it will have its own.
I can’t but read your comment as anything more than sarcasm. Confusing international waters and the nautical territories of weaker nations as your own territory is all but asking for war.
Some may recall before the fall of the Soviet union when Soviet citizens were forced to buy Soviet-made cars that were laughably unreliable compared to vehicles manufactured elsewhere.
The US is entering this territory of absurd protectionism that benefits the few at the expense of everyone else. We now have 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs and surely with the rate of innovation we are seeing, they will be 200% before long.
Tesla is bizarrely focused on gigapress and making the EV high-end when the economics of a vehicle with many fewer moving parts and a simpler design should be leading us toward sub-$10K cars and trucks.
As usual, Chinese firms seem to have better engineering chops and much better practical understanding of what the market wants.
China massively subsides its automotive OEMS. To the point that the whole thing might as well be considered a public sector endeavour. The only way the US can counter this is with tariffs or subsidising way beyond what they currently are. If US customers stopped buying SUVs OEMs would stop making them.
Wouldn't that be an argument for Americans (and others) to buy _as many_ Chinese cars as possible? Unless China is imposing export tariffs/taxes/etc. on them, this would basically be draining the subsidized money from their economy - every purchase is a chunk of that subsidized money escaping.
That’s fair but China will get that money back in the future when they’ve removed the local market competition and start cranking up the prices. They want these cars exported so that’s the subsidies working as far as they are concerned.
They’ve done this in other, less consumer facing markets, like steel and magnets.
I think geopolitics plays a heavy hand here. I don't see how the US government could negotiate or even allow Chinese EV to be sold on US soil -- and even allowing them to open factories is not a popular move -- not to say that opening factories in the US is expensive.
The more likely outcome is that the US government would seek ways to force the EU governments to remove Chinese brands from the EU market, or at least imposing a very heavy import tax, like 200%. This, of course, will deal a heavy blow to the EU car makers themselves too, but I believe the US does have enough strings to pull.
That just means the US and EU are in collective isolationism. Will they force third party countries into this agreement to spend more on EU/US cars over Chinese ones?
They can also push other Five Eyes countries to follow up, and Japan too. Korea might be difficult to persuade but hey we have a military existence over there.
After all, Five Eyes + EU + JK is pretty much THE non-China market out there. The others are not rich enough.
Since Australia was mentioned, let an Australian tell you something about the history behind Australia economic policies.
Australia experienced boom times after WW2. It has a strong manufacturing industry. It's not well remembered now, but back them agricultural machinery designed and made here was regarded as some of the best. But we aren't a big country, so economy of scale did not work in our favour.
We responded by raising tariffs. It saved the manufacturing base, but that's the only good thing that could be said for it. Every other economic indicator was going backwards. After a few decades of that a politician named Paul Keating famously (well, it was famous here anyway) said the policy was turning us into a banana republic [0]. We made him Treasurer, and later Prime Minister. During that time he tore down tariffs, and removed other non-tariffs barriers such as the one our bank system hid behind.
The policy had a rocky start, climaxing in the recession in 1991 Keating said we "had to have" and interest rates hitting 18%. Unlike the USA where fixed interest rates are common, in Australia that means everyone is paying 18%. I remember it well. The memory still hurts.
It's 33 years later now. We have not had another recession. 33 years of continuous growth. The free trade policy is pretty much set in stone now. We dismantled what was left of our car manufacturing industry a few years ago. Everything we do have to be world competitive, or it goes. Did you know Google maps is Australian? There were do satellite mapping companies at the time. Google bought one. The other one, Near Map, is still turning out better satellite maps than Google.
Anyway, the point is if someone pushed Australia to close it's economic borders they would get one mother of a push back.
Although I don't disagree with you (considering my knowledge of Australian economy is very little), I do think that national security would override pretty much everything else in the next few years. The golden boat has sailed.
But again it is interesting to observe what will happen in the next few years. I hope my prediction is wrong.
American auto industry has had several reset chances since Japanese automakers began wiping the floor with them and each time they have found themselves behind within 5-10 years. It’s pretty incredible.
Germany goes the same way and instead of supporting EVs and infrastructure drastically, they discuss how to roll back the phase out of combustion engine cars.
Sad to see how a country, which is so proud of their car industry, fails so spectacularly.
They are so huge, they should all try at least. The race is lost for now, though.
Volkswagen announced they want to produce a cheap model (20k€) it'll be there....2027. I guess by that time, people will already accept Chinese cars. I see them quite often here in a big German city.
I've seen this shared a few times... and I'm not sure I get why.
I think driving range is an important metric for fully-electric vehicles since recharging isn't easy everywhere in the country.
Otherwise I think MPG is the right metric.
Not sure why driving range of a HYBRID would be a relevant metric, that would be a factor of a lot of things, like gas tank size, which doesn't pertain to efficiency/environmentalism.
Gallons per hundred miles would be a better metric, since it would make it clearer that improving gas mileage of inefficient vehicles makes a lot more difference for gas consumption.
My favorite demonstration of this is that increasing your mileage from 10mpg to 12mpg, from 20mpg to 30mpg, and from 60mpg to 1,000mpg all save the same amount of gas.
So moving from 10-12mpg saves 1.67 gallons per hundred miles. Moving from 20-30mpg saves the same. At 60mpg, you're only using 1.67 gallons of gas, so there's no improvement to MPG that will save more than that. Nearly all the gains to actual fuel consumed will come from increasing the worst offenders rather than e.g. trading in Corollas for Pruises.
Also a good demonstration why the CAFE standards and other government fleet minimums are actually pretty effective at lowering fuel demand.
If I had a car that could go over a thousand miles between fill-ups, I would never fill it all the way. I’d rather not haul around half a tank of gas that I won’t need, and which marginally hurts the mileage. I also wouldn’t want to have gallons of gas sitting in the tank for months, which is what the result would be if I filled it.
Of course, this line of thinking is why I’d never buy a vehicle with this capability. I’d rather buy one with fewer features, a smaller gas tank, and/or a smaller battery.
If your current car tripled or quadrupled its mileage, would you also stop filling it up? Seems a silly idea to me as you never know when you're gonna want to go a little bit further than you normally do on a tank.
I drive so little that I only fill up about monthly and I could fill up weekly to 1/3rd tank to save a little bit of weight penalty, but that would be silly and a waste of all that gas station time when the gas in the tank does just fine for a month (a year might be different.)
There’s a difference between going from weekly to monthly and going from monthly to semi-annually. For one thing, (AIUI), it’s not good to have gas sitting in your car for more than a few months.
Also, it’s possible that during a given week you don’t go near a gas station (from where I live, if I hop on the freeway and head to the city, I don’t pass any). But it’s unlikely that if you drive for a month you’re not near a gas station at a convenient time to stop. So getting rid of the annoyance of weekly fill-ups is different from dealing with monthly fill-ups (which is not especially annoying).
In my experience, driving ranges of electric cars are heavily cherry picked with the best possible conditions and even then they are very generous. We'll see if someone independent can see what the driving range really ends up being
They are inaccurate, but it's not simply that they are cherry-picked. It is just extremely difficult to give an estimation when one of the main factors is grade. No matter how much grade you pick to use for your benchmark, it is going to be wrong for a lot of people.
Epa standards for MPG have had the same problem for many years. It definitely improved for most people when they stopped using a completely flat area and started having some grade changes, but it is still just a matter of where you fall on the averages for where you live and drive.
Unless we know the details such as battery pack size and capacity of gas tank, it’s hard to imagine how big of an innovation this is. If you add Prius’s range of 550+ on 11.3 gallons gas tank and BYD’s battery powered car range of 400+ - that’s about a 1000 miles right there.
Nonetheless, if they are able to keep the cost down and gain a 30% efficiency- that’s still pretty good.
This combined with the news that Tesla is shrinking its supercharger team is a tremendous competitive advantage. Maybe US automakers will need a 200% tariff on Chinese EVs to compete.
While that sounds interesting on paper, what sort of problem is this solving, exactly?
Even during my childless-with-gas-car days, the most we'd drive without stopping was maybe 3 hours. I would think even professional truckers would stop once every few hours for bathroom breaks and such.
Maybe it helps people that don't live near a charger, so they'd have to charge less often?
But even then, charging a battery up to 1,300 miles would take FOREVER even on the fastest chargers.
Consider that there are still regions where rapid EV chargers are not ubiquitous, this solves the problems of range anxiety and trip length.
For a weeklong trip to a location where there are no chargers, you can have the confidence of making it there, tooling around for the week, and making it back to a place with a charger. You might not need this in your region, but I am familiar with regions in the US where this would come in handy.
Note that it's a hybrid. So the 1,300 miles isn't just electric. In which case, I think the problem of range anxiety is less relevant since refueling the gas engine is likely relatively easy just about anywhere.
>Even during my childless-with-gas-car days, the most we'd drive without stopping was maybe 3 hours. I would think even professional truckers would stop once every few hours for bathroom breaks and such.
....?
Limit is a 30 minute break every 8 in a work period. I believe it's 11 hours driving time per 24 hour period in the US. 13 hours in southern Canada and 15 hours in the northern Canada. Then another limit being 70 hours every 7 or 8 days.
IIRC it was set after studies showed that the probability of crashing increased after 11 hours of continuous driving or so, but don't quote me on that.
Honestly I think a fundamental misconception about Chinese EVs is that people tend to view them as a monolith, and often talk about unfair government backed and funded push to destroy Western carmakers.
The reality is that there are more than a dozen serious Chinese EV brands and they are in a cutthroat competition even for their own domestic market and most of their production goes to domestic customers. I don't think subsidies in this context should be a considered a weapon of international trade.
In a perfect world where we had an unlimited supply of batteries, charging infrastructure, and all-renewable electricity, BEVs would be best.
But we don't live in that world. Plugin hybrids with smaller batteries are likely the best path until we can scale the battery and charging infrastructure.
While I'm not the commenter that you are replying to, I do drive a plug-in hybrid.
I find fuel economy is worse if you don't heavily utilise the electric side, and on-the-road cost is more than a straight petrol engine version of the same car, with less boot storage space as well, as the battery takes up space (and space where a spare tyre now cannot be), although it can make economic sense due to some taxes being less. (e.g. BIK tax rate of ~8-10% vs ~25-30%).
You'll only really get good fuel economy if you are plugging it in to charge every night, and doing a correspondingly suitable amount of daily miles.
And if you're plugging the car in overnight every night... you might as well just get a full BEV anyway.
The whole plug-in hybrid thing just feels like a tax dodge (either because it take advantage of perverse incentives, or works around low emission schemes), or a halfway house for people who aren't yet ready to make the jump to a BEV.
For me, even driving one (for the aforementioned financial considerations), I feel the reasons to buy/drive a plug in hybrid don't really make sense from any other point-of-view, and at this stage my next car is most likely to be a BEV.
That doesn't make much sense. Hybrids literally have much better MPG figures and that takes into account that you can't run off battery to cheat these numbers.
Regenerative breaking is a huge MPG win and you can't do that without being Hybrid.
I entirely agree with you, on paper they should have better MPG.
But I don't find those figures reflected in my actual on the road experience.
Edit: That may say something about my driving style though! ;)
Edit2: The situation may be different for PHEV vs normal hybrid (more battery weight for PHEV), and may change with quality of hybrid power management implementation.
This is useless. No one wants to (or should) drive 20 hours without stopping. Car manufacturers could also start selling gasoline cars with a 200L tank but they don't, because there is no use for them.
This is a plug-in hybrid car. If you can't charge at home, realistically it is just going to be like any other hybrid car just maybe with a bigger gas tank and slightly better MPG. What routes are people routinely driving where they need 1,300mi between recharging and refueling?
You are assuming that people like stopping to charge and waiting 45 minutes at a supercharger station (currently the best possible situation with a Tesla)
It's not terrible, but it is currently the only option. Consider how much more money the long range Teslas cost compared with the base model. This is because extra range is very very nice to have and ads a LOT of value
> It's not terrible, but it is currently the only option.
It isn't the only other option. I've never waited 45 minutes at a public charger even on road trips. I don't even normally stop at public chargers other than the ones at my office or the mall if a spot is free. There are also other plug-in hybrid cars out there. Once again, its a plug-in hybrid car. Not a 1,300mi BEV.
Did I mention it runs off petrol? And thus not like a Tesla?
You re-energize this while out and about by going to gas stations, not to DCFCs. Because it is a hybrid, not a BEV.
Soon enough gas stations and charging stations will be in the same location. It’s surprising that gas stations haven’t put in a few super chargers already since they already have the good locations.
Your point seems to me to be about a small detail that isn’t really relevant. Drivers focused on range don’t necessarily care whether it’s hybrid or pure electric, etc.
Your point was people didn't want to stop and charge for 45 minutes often while on road trips and that many people don't have chargers at home so having 1,300mi of range is potentially useful. This car wouldn't stop and charge and have you wait for 45 minutes unless you're just into that. It runs off petrol. People would stop and pump gas for several minutes and be on their way. Maybe if you go someplace with free level two charging you might take advantage of it, but outside of that you probably would never charge it in public. Just use gas.
You directly stated waiting to charge for 45 minutes at a supercharger "...is currently the only option." But it is not. Hybrids, and plug-in hybrids like this, have been an option for a long time. The idea that one can quickly "recharge" on the go at a gas station is not a new concept. Gas cars have existed for a long time. This is a type of gas car. It takes gasoline and burns it in an internal combustion engine to get that range figure. Nothing about this technology is really new, just that it has better MPG than some of the other competitors and has a large enough gas tank to make that range figure really high. And it largely gets that high MPG by pairing it with a much lower power motor than what many US consumers would like (99hp vs 160hp in the Prius Prime).
Charging at home is also pretty irrelevant here, save for the fact it is a plug-in hybrid. Then I'd wonder why bother buying the plug-in hybrid with a larger and more expensive battery if you're not planning on actually keeping that battery charged often. The pure-battery range of this is still pretty tiny compared to an EV, so if you didn't have the ability to charge at home this is just a normal hybrid car like the Prius, albeit with better MPG due to being much more anemic.
But then the main benefit isn't that it has such immense range, the main benefit is that it supposedly has a pretty high MPG compared to most hybrids on the market today. So why not lead with that in the article instead of sharing some odd range statistic. A Jeep with a few jerry cans strapped to the back can also have a pretty large amount of range. Pickup trucks with massive gas tanks can also have pretty high range as well.
So practically every point about charging time, charging at home, and comparison to Tesla is immensely irrelevant. Tesla doesn't make hybrids. The comparison is to pretty much every car maker that makes hybrids. This is because, once again, this is a hybrid and not an EV.
The point of "this isn't an EV, so concerns about home charging and charging wait time" aren't mere details. It is a key part of the car and directly addresses your main points of why you imagine 1,300mi of range would be important and valuable to the consumer. I do agree, 1,300mi of range on a BEV with the current state of charging would be useful. This isn't a BEV, its a hybrid. The state of charging networks doesn't really apply. Practically nobody takes 45 minutes pumping gas.
How is it useless? When the main complaints about ev driving is the mile range? Nobody is saying you have to drive 20hours continuously. It’s for when chargers aren’t available
Stopping at a gas station or charger is just pure overhead. It is never something I want to do, it is just something that I have to do to keep the car running.
Maximizing the interval between these refueling stops, where I have to pay to keep my car running, is a net win to me.
