As EVs die on the vine, hybrids will become the new compliance cars. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
Don’t be fooled. They are still coming after your car. More accurately, they are still determined to use the regulations that are forcing electric cars to be the only kinds of new cars available as the vehicle to reduce both car ownership – via the cost – and driving – by limiting how far you can drive and more-than-quintupling the amount of time it takes to be able to resume driving.
They’re just going about it a little more subtly – and slowly – and hoping you won’t notice. Like the frog in the pot who isn’t noticing the water’s getting warmer.
The much-in-the-news dialing back of the forcefulness of the regs that are forcing the car manufacturers to build more rather than fewer electric vehicles generally touts – and omits – a key tell everyone interested in this business ought to know about.
That tell – or clue – being the resurrected up-talking of hybrids.
Of partially electric vehicles.
Not that there is anything wrong with them. Or at least, not that there is everything wrong with them – as in the case of entirely electrically-powered cars.
Hybrids work because they aren’t entirely electric. The onboard gas-burning engine cuts the tether to the power cord and eliminates the wait for electrical power that renders EV ownership an endless exercise in planning around how much range is left and how long it will take to instill more. A hybrid refuels just as quickly as a vehicle with just an engine and typically goes much farther than a vehicle with just an engine before it is necessary to stop for a few minutes to get more fuel.
These are advantages many are willing to pay extra for. As opposed to the deficits of EVs that people must be paid (as via tax credits) to overlook.
It’s a trap!
I almost feel bad for lumbering land whales who won’t be able to bike or walk to the Happy Burger for another 5000 calorie fill up.
Might be time to dust off some old skateboard decks and pick up riser pads, trucks, bearings, wheels, grip tape.
The handy fat tire bike will burn off 5000 calories while rolling over everything like a tank.
And it is still freedom in action when you can hop in your jalopy and head to the other side of the country.
The video is priceless, if only as an exposé of the general decline of the younger generation in their level of intelligence, education, capacity for coherent expression and their ability to employ rhetoric.