Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars
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Scrubbles
in reply to sexy_peach • • •Damn, the average efficiency of an internal combustion engine is <30%, with the best hovering around 40%. That's an insane waste energy, and does explain why they get so hot.
This is why the anti-EV propaganda is so bunk. Even if you plug an EV into a grid that is 100% dirty coal powered, you're still more efficient than hauling around a gas engine that has such a low efficiency. Turns out, power plants don't like wasting that much energy and do everything they can to squeeze as much power as they can out of it.
Then you add on that even the worst power districts in the US sit around 40% renewables and... yeah.
Ooops
in reply to Scrubbles • • •While that is true in general, combined coal power plants also only sit at about 50% on average, 65% with the most modern ones.
So burning stuff in a power plant, then adding some more loss in transfer, is not actually much better.
Which of course is not an argument against EVs but against coal and gas power plants. In the end they are still just glorified rather primitive steam machines.
Scrubbles
in reply to Ooops • • •Oh no doubt they're horrible. Just that when looking through the lens of propaganda where a huge argument t against EVs is that it's still hooked up to a per plant, that the pollution is not 1:1, that even the worst case power plant beats out an ICE vehicle.
But that requires critical thinking and nuance and Facebook commenters got no time for that.
JohnEdwa
in reply to Ooops • • •vorpuni
in reply to JohnEdwa • • •ByteSorcerer
in reply to Scrubbles • • •It's the renewables on the grid that have to make a difference. If you're powering an electric car purely out of electricity generated with fossil fuels you're effectively building a series hybrid with extra steps, with the combustion engine being outside of the vehicle. Or I guess you could also compare it to a diesel-electric locomotive with the generator outside the vehicle, which he also explained in the video would not be good for efficiency. And yes at the scale of power plants you can do some things more efficient, but it's not actually that much as the efficiency is mostly limited by similar thermodynamic processes than that happen inside an engine. A typical coal power plant also has an efficiency of 30-40% (so effectively a mediocre coal plant is similar in efficiency to a very efficient engine, and yes, some new ones can reach higher efficiencies, but the vast majority still use an old design, at least around here). But when you get the energy from a power plant you still have distribution losses on the grid, conversion losses when charging the battery and again whe
... Show more...It's the renewables on the grid that have to make a difference. If you're powering an electric car purely out of electricity generated with fossil fuels you're effectively building a series hybrid with extra steps, with the combustion engine being outside of the vehicle. Or I guess you could also compare it to a diesel-electric locomotive with the generator outside the vehicle, which he also explained in the video would not be good for efficiency. And yes at the scale of power plants you can do some things more efficient, but it's not actually that much as the efficiency is mostly limited by similar thermodynamic processes than that happen inside an engine. A typical coal power plant also has an efficiency of 30-40% (so effectively a mediocre coal plant is similar in efficiency to a very efficient engine, and yes, some new ones can reach higher efficiencies, but the vast majority still use an old design, at least around here). But when you get the energy from a power plant you still have distribution losses on the grid, conversion losses when charging the battery and again when discharging the battery, and the efficiency losses in the electric motor, while you do not have grid losses and charging/discharging losses and losses in an electric motor with a combination engine is directly driving the wheels.
That's why it's important to keep investing in renewables. You indeed don't need a whole lot of renewables to offset the efficiency losses of the battery and distribution, but you do need at least some of it. And you also should not just look at the grid as a whole, but at how the additional load of charging the vehicle gets handled. If all renewables on the grid are operating at maximum capacity all the time, and there is a coal plant that is used to burn extra coal when extra capacity is needed, then any additional load can be considered to be running on pure coal power even if the grid contains many renewable sources. But if you live in a neighbourhood where there is a constant overproduction of solar power while the grid and can charge your car at times of overproduction, then you effectively charge your car with fully green energy even if the grid contains a lot of fossil fuel plants.
You can consider electric cars to be the infrastructure that enables the transport sector to become more green, but we do also need to actively increase energy generations via green sources to actually make use of that "infrastructure".
Though I guess there is also some good news: Powering an electric car from exclusively fossil fuel energy sources puts the efficiency of the full chain somewhere between regular cars and hybrids. So it should at least never be worse than driving a regular car. Worst case it's just equivalent. But it does need investments in green energy sources as the demand on electricity increases to become significantly better.
Ulrich
in reply to Scrubbles • • •I have 3 counter-arguments for this "dirty coal" nonsense:
banause
in reply to Ulrich • • •Jul (they/she)
in reply to Scrubbles • • •Not quite, but it definitely could if the technology could get some funding to advance it. The batteries, chargers, and electric motors still waste a ton of energy that needs to be considered for overall efficiency. But it usually gets overlooked because it's harder to quantify without access to a lot of proprietary data.
If we're talking only moving the car and in optimal weather (EVs have a significant disadvantage in the cold), the combustion engine is still significantly more efficient at creating the kinetic energy from raw oil than an EV from any type of power plant's fuel. You have to consider all the stuff that happens before the gasoline or electricity gets to the car as well as idle waste. Gasoline in a proper tank evaporates much more slowly than idle batteries lose energy.
If we're looking at air conditioning and other electrical stuff, the engine and alternator system is probably not quite as efficient at charging the battery as the power grid and EV chargers are. It's at least closer.
But more efficient batteries and chargers (especially the fast ch
... Show more...Not quite, but it definitely could if the technology could get some funding to advance it. The batteries, chargers, and electric motors still waste a ton of energy that needs to be considered for overall efficiency. But it usually gets overlooked because it's harder to quantify without access to a lot of proprietary data.
If we're talking only moving the car and in optimal weather (EVs have a significant disadvantage in the cold), the combustion engine is still significantly more efficient at creating the kinetic energy from raw oil than an EV from any type of power plant's fuel. You have to consider all the stuff that happens before the gasoline or electricity gets to the car as well as idle waste. Gasoline in a proper tank evaporates much more slowly than idle batteries lose energy.
If we're looking at air conditioning and other electrical stuff, the engine and alternator system is probably not quite as efficient at charging the battery as the power grid and EV chargers are. It's at least closer.
But more efficient batteries and chargers (especially the fast chargers) would probably close the gap. But not likely to happen until the oil industry collapses so the tech gets some real funding. One day it will get there. Combustion tech has no real way to improve efficiency without significantly sacrificing safety. But EVs have lots of room to improve.
sexy_peach
in reply to Jul (they/she) • • •Your estimations are very incorrect. Just refining a gallon of gas uses 5kwh of electricity, an electric car will go 25km with that...
theinvadingsea.com/2025/05/07/…
We burn energy to make fuel — and then burn that too? | The Invading Sea
James Brock (The Invading Sea)Mirror Giraffe
in reply to sexy_peach • • •This is probably over simplified, a refinery produces anything from plastic to jet fuel and lubricants from the same crude oil batch so while the number might be correct for gasolines part in the mix, removing it from the process would likely cause some efficiency loss in the processes, and those 6kwh would not be reclaimed in full.
With that said, we need to lower dependency on all oil products.
Jul (they/she)
in reply to sexy_peach • • •This is using energy already in a brand new battery under ideal conditions, and no inefficiencies of commercial fast chargers if you commute as much as the average in the US, and no average over the life of the battery, no average of climate effects on efficiency, or any of the other real world implications of EVs fully replacing combustion engines.
Plus it's comparing the energy used to produce and transport the oil to gas process to the energy used to make an ideal EV car move. What about comparing the energy used to produce, transmit, and store the energy for the car. And it's not taking into account degradation of efficiency over the life of the vehicle which, if both are well maintained, reduces much less in a combustion engine vs a battery. Plus many small cars can go more than 25 miles on a gallon of gas if that's what we're comparing. I know mine can.
I believe with some relatively small investments in implementing various current technology into EVs and the battery and charging infrastructure (like tech used for preserving the life of cell phone batteries for
... Show more...This is using energy already in a brand new battery under ideal conditions, and no inefficiencies of commercial fast chargers if you commute as much as the average in the US, and no average over the life of the battery, no average of climate effects on efficiency, or any of the other real world implications of EVs fully replacing combustion engines.
Plus it's comparing the energy used to produce and transport the oil to gas process to the energy used to make an ideal EV car move. What about comparing the energy used to produce, transmit, and store the energy for the car. And it's not taking into account degradation of efficiency over the life of the vehicle which, if both are well maintained, reduces much less in a combustion engine vs a battery. Plus many small cars can go more than 25 miles on a gallon of gas if that's what we're comparing. I know mine can.
I believe with some relatively small investments in implementing various current technology into EVs and the battery and charging infrastructure (like tech used for preserving the life of cell phone batteries for example), we could get to the point where the average could get to the point where EVs could replace nearly every type of vehicle under nearly every condition combustion engines are used in and be more efficient. That's not at all what this article is even close to talking about, but it isn't out of reach, just too many power struggles right now.
Scrubbles
in reply to Jul (they/she) • • •Its like reading straight from the fossil fuel propaganda.
Absolutely untrue. All of it. It might have been true 15 years ago but not anymore.
My EV loses about 20% in the cold at its worse. We charge every four days instead of every five. Hardly "significant".
bruh the entire video you're commenting on here is a 40 minute in depth explanation on how inefficient gasoline engines are at kinetic energy and why hybrids are literally filling that gap
... Show more...This is such an edge case. "Hey if you let your vehicle sit for months on end that energy may go unused". Not only have I not experienced this, and I'm highly skeptical of this claim, it is overwhelmingly outweighed by how you haven't literally been burning gasoline the entire life of the vehicle.
Its like reading straight from the fossil fuel propaganda.
Absolutely untrue. All of it. It might have been true 15 years ago but not anymore.
My EV loses about 20% in the cold at its worse. We charge every four days instead of every five. Hardly "significant".
bruh the entire video you're commenting on here is a 40 minute in depth explanation on how inefficient gasoline engines are at kinetic energy and why hybrids are literally filling that gap
This is such an edge case. "Hey if you let your vehicle sit for months on end that energy may go unused". Not only have I not experienced this, and I'm highly skeptical of this claim, it is overwhelmingly outweighed by how you haven't literally been burning gasoline the entire life of the vehicle.
Probably? Tell me how the alternator which is a mini generator is "not quite" s efficient as the industrial generators whose job it is to literally do it 24/7.
Dude we're already there. We already did close the gap. Literally everything you said was provably false and straight from what big oil wants you to think.
I own an EV personally. I have personally debunked absolutely everything you have said and everything else that has been hurled at me for why they are so horrible. It is by far the easiest vehicle I've ever owned, the most reliable, and I will never go back to an ice vehicle. My entire "fill up" equivalent price is $6 of electricity. Total. The total amount of driving to offset the mining/initial construction offsets was about 12k miles, which we are well past. The battery keeps a charge now just as well as the day it rolled off the lot.
So please, feel free to keep throwing more basic "they just won't work" excuses because I'm literally driving proof every day that they're wrong.
Onsotumenh
in reply to Scrubbles • • •Jul (they/she)
in reply to Scrubbles • • •If I was going by oil company propaganda, I'd say EV tech wouldn't get there for a generation, but I'd say it could take only a few years (assuming reasonable levels of funding).
And, as an engineer, I say "significant" as in the literal meaning of the word not as an emphasizing word sometimes used to mean "a lot". I mean an amount that is enough to be mathematically worth including in a calculation.
As for the alternator comment, I said probably because I dont have data to say 100% for sure, but logically based on the tech it makes sense. Probably means likely.
I think you're looking at an edge case, which is generally the current market of the majority of EVs, and then comparing it to real averages of efficiency across all types of another technology's use cases. That's not fair. So it may be more efficient for some and in specific cases, but what does that matter in the long run except that it's exactly why the market stopped growing when it sold to the majority of people in those situations. Obviously, that was not the vast majority.
As I mentioned you
... Show more...If I was going by oil company propaganda, I'd say EV tech wouldn't get there for a generation, but I'd say it could take only a few years (assuming reasonable levels of funding).
And, as an engineer, I say "significant" as in the literal meaning of the word not as an emphasizing word sometimes used to mean "a lot". I mean an amount that is enough to be mathematically worth including in a calculation.
As for the alternator comment, I said probably because I dont have data to say 100% for sure, but logically based on the tech it makes sense. Probably means likely.
I think you're looking at an edge case, which is generally the current market of the majority of EVs, and then comparing it to real averages of efficiency across all types of another technology's use cases. That's not fair. So it may be more efficient for some and in specific cases, but what does that matter in the long run except that it's exactly why the market stopped growing when it sold to the majority of people in those situations. Obviously, that was not the vast majority.
As I mentioned you need to consider the average driver and what they use cars for.
If you have a high efficiency slow charger and don't travel and have below average commutes, then yeah, you (as a market) may have mitigated some of the efficiency issues with fast chargers, recharging cycles, etc.
And if you live in a mild climate and only experience extreme cold periodically and/or always charge in a relatively warm garage, that might be somewhat mitigated for you. The heaters for the batteries and drive trains drain quite a bit of energy while in use and charging a cold battery in a parking lot is less efficient. It takes more energy to charge them to the same level and the battery will hold less energy. But as I mentioned the energy inefficiencies of things like air conditioners might swing the balance if you live in primarily hot conditions.
And if your batteries are relatively new, the inefficiencies there might be mitigated for some time. Used EVs tend to have significantly diminished efficiency, capacity, and lose energy while idle at a faster and literally significant rate. Combustion cars constantly sitting in the hot sun in extreme climates similarly will lose more fuel to evaporation (otherwise the tank would be over-pressurized and be unsafe). In those cases, an EV may have a leg up.
But I'm talking average car usage and vehicle condition excluding poorly maintained vehicles as those outliers would skew things too much. The efficiency numbers that are generally used for combustion engines cover all of this as well as things like use of the alternator to power a fuel pump and other parts that are essential to operation, but not things like air conditioning use, so that's why I made that distinction previously.
Of course I've only analyzed data from the US, and I'm using averages. So in a country where average commutes allow for going both directions on a single charge and thus using more efficient home chargers only may shift the balance as an example.
Fast chargers of any kind of rechargeable battery both waste more energy (which is why the EV chargers need the huge heat syncs in parking lots but not at home) and with repeated use reduce the life and thus the efficiency of the battery much more quickly. Same happens with cell phone batteries which is why modern phones trickle-charge at night when it's likely you don't need a full charge right away and only fast charge when needed. Many of the commercial chargers don't even have this basic technology to allow the user to slow charge if they want (again one more reason just a few years could easily sway the balance with existing tech implemented for cars).
I could continue, but if you are not willing to consider the average use case of a vehicle and not the average use case of the EVs currently in use, it's not really going to matter except to disappoint people who use their vehicle in an average way (average for the US anyway).
sanzky
in reply to sexy_peach • • •like this
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const_void
in reply to sanzky • • •sanzky
in reply to const_void • • •AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version)
in reply to sexy_peach • • •I wanted to get an EV when I bought my last car, but I was planning to retire and do a a bunch of road trips. Yes, you can do cross country in an EV, but it's harder in a lot of places and my friends have told me horror stories of getting to to charging stations and finding them broken, getting stranded.
My hybrid get 50 mpg highway, 43 city. That's not as efficient as an EV, but it's not terrible for a midsize sedan.
Ulrich
in reply to AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version) • • •Its an unfortunate reality. My first BEV was a Chevy Bolt. The unreliability of charging infrastructure caused me a lot of pain when traveling. Got a Tesla in 2021 and that pain evaporated. Charging stations are abundant and work perfectly 99% of the time. The other 1% you just move to a different stall.
Fortunately they are slowly opening this charging network to other OEMs and I think the reliability in general has improved considerably. But it does still require some research when traveling.
If you have a multi-vehicle family it makes a lot of sense to have 1 BEV and 1 PHEV.
AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version)
in reply to Ulrich • • •Even my friend with a tesla had issues. Not so much with a lack of stations, but making his way to one and finding someone had damaged it so it wasn't usable. Plus even though the charge times are down, having to wait 20 minutes for the car to charge when you have kids or whatever is obnoxious.
The infrastructure will get better. I bought in 2023, and a hybrid made more sense for me then.
Ulrich
in reply to AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version) • • •Not going to discount their experience but I feel like mine should be equally valid. I take 3-4 road trips/year with nary an issue other than 1 or 2 stalls being down or a short wait during the holiday season at a packed charging station, over the last 4+ years.
After 4+ hours of driving, I am more than ready for a short break. I will typically stay stopped for longer than it even takes to charge while I get something to eat.
AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version)
in reply to Ulrich • • •Kratzkopf
in reply to AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version) • • •AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version)
in reply to Kratzkopf • • •Vodulas [they/them]
in reply to AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version) • • •Fortunately that is becoming less common. If you don't know about it (or your friends don't), check out plugshare.com/
You can filter by charger type and see if a station is operational. Super helpful tool
PlugShare - EV Charging Station Map - Find a place to charge
PlugShareAFK BRB Chocolate (CA version)
in reply to Vodulas [they/them] • • •MachineFab812
in reply to sexy_peach • • •yessikg likes this.
GandalfDG
in reply to sexy_peach • • •Such a huge fan of what Technology Connections is doing, especially more recently with his "we have the technology to be more efficient already" angle and just under the surface political rage.
I know my prius isn't as good as an EV for most of the driving I do, but it's way better than any other internal combustion system on the market. When my wife's beater kicks the bucket we're definitely replacing it with an EV and keeping the prius for long hauls.
cecilkorik
in reply to GandalfDG • • •Sina
in reply to sexy_peach • • •sanzky
in reply to Sina • • •like this
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https://aussie.zone/u/shirro
in reply to sexy_peach • • •like this
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