Don’t Buy a Hybrid, by Eric Peters

The money sentence: “Hybrids, in sum, are kind of like the crutches a mafia thug hands you after he breaks one of your legs.” From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Every vehicle manufacturer is hybridizing its vehicles in order to deal with the problem of electric vehicles – which is that most people don’t want to buy one. Hybrids have the dual advantage of being both useful and compliant.

It is not necessary to plan around how far you can’t drive – and how long you have to wait – because it is not necessary to plug a hybrid in – although some can be plugged-in. Most people who own one don’t, of course – because why would they when they can just drive, which is kind of the point of owning (and paying for) a vehicle. Not being able to drive – while the vehicle charges – is the main reason most people do not want to buy an EV. It probably wouldn’t matter if they were able to reduce the time it took to recover a full charge to “only” ten minutes as that would still be double the time people are used to spending at gas stations.

“Full” is italicized to make a point often avoided by EV-peddlers when they talk up “fast” charging. You only get a partial charge – about 80 percent – at a “fast” charger, which means it’s deceptive to compared “fast” charging with fully fueling-up a gas-engined vehicle. With the latter, you leave the station with 100 percent after less than five minutes. An honest comparison of refueling vs. “fast” charging times would use full as the basis for comparison. To get there at a “fast” charger would take at least an hour, because once the battery is charged to about 80 percent, the charging gets slow.

Those who rationalize this loss of time (or range, your pick) are like Parsons, the character in Orwell’s 1984 who eagerly touts how Big Brother has increased the chocolate ration when everyone understands it has actually been reduced.

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