NY Times: Study Says Big Impact of the Plug-In Hybrid Will Be Decades Away

That's a fairly pessimistic article. 20 more years to gain "meaningful numbers?" What are meaningful numbers? I'd argue ten more years to give rogue car companies time to completely retool, the people to wear out their remaining ICE cars, and fossil fuel prices to get real nasty. The balance scales will tip eventually so shoppers won't consider anything else. Govenments will kick in with incentives/subsidies (round 9, say, of a clunker program) to help out.

Trucks will probably need the HP of ICE for several decades more.

If the authors (who really should be reading PriusChat) are correct and the 2030 time frame becomes reality, we won't be talking about cars as much as we'll be choking to death from exhaust fumes and mostly posting in the Environmental Discussion forum.

 

The source material from the NRC is not available, yet. Worse, it is about an area where 'stuff is happening.' So I think it makes sense to smile and then turn back to our tasks at hand.

A recently as January 2008, European academics were claiming the Prius is 'marketing hype' and does not make a profit. Two of the $15 SAE papers I bought this year revealed one had a significant data error and the other was math nonsense. I don't regret the money but rather bemoan the absence of correction.

Compared to ordinary sources, I'll start with an academic paper or book BUT I use their claims to check my assumptions and measurements. Like my drill instructor used to say, "A grain of observation outweights a pound of BS any day." History is sprinkled with academic papers that were later embarressing.

I think it is premature to make such predictions.

Bob Wilson

 

I know what will drastically increase the numbers of plug in hybrids: $6 / gal fuel.

 

Hi All,

The fact that this article was written says more about the US Anglo-Saxon sociology than anything about hybrid cars. In the UK there is an attitude that engineering is a lower-class profession. While not as apparent here in the US, you will see occaisional negative things said about engineers, engineering, or the fruits of such work. Think about it. The news is full of stories about miraculous medical work, but then there is just a small disclaimer that it will be decades before such work is main-streamed. I have never seen an article such as "The Doctors have all this stuff they can do, but unfortunately YOU are not going to benefit from it for 10 years!" .

 

I'd suggest that the underlying message of the article is true for electric vehicles made and sold in the next couple of years. Right now, the batteries indeed will cost enough to significantly increase the electric car's cost (unless sold at a loss or gov't subsidized). The person who pays that cost premium in the next couple of years will have to wait quite a bit of time for payback, though the exact time required will vary with the price of gasoline.

But, in -- say 2015 -- the equation should change because the cost of the electric car should be starting to come down. Buy today -- bad. Buy in a few years -- maybe good.

What that means to me is that the Prius is the right car for me to be in right now ... I can figure the payback period for $3,$4,$5,$6 gas etc. And, I think that gasoline cost is going to go up significantly in the next several years. And that doesn't reach the possibility of scarcity leading to defacto rationing. (As China, India and other "second world" countries see their economies expand and their citizens see rising incomes, they are going to want cars ... and that will add a lot of demand to the supply-demand equation for oil and gasoline.)

If I think about replacing my Prius in, say, 2015, I expect that the plug-ins will be much more advanced than what we have today or next year ... and that the cost premium will have come down.

For now, I like my Prius, and think that buying it in 2009 was a good decision ... I knew the Volt and similar cars were coming, but don't try to sell me a Volt now unless someone else is paying for part of it!

Nonetheless, I'm glad they're introducing electric cars, as that will be the springboard for getting them right and getting them down on cost. I just don't want to pay for that process by paying a premium for an electric car right now.

 

PHEV performance (150 mi range) will significantly change when fuel goes to $20 gallon. See: Steiner, Christopher. (2009). $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better. Grand Central Publishing, 288 pp.

 

I agree with the article but I agree more with your post. $6 gas will provide a lot of heretofore unknown incentive to pay for battery-driven vehicles. I saw it and I benefitted from it when gas went to $4-$5 a gallon in 2008.

But absent that I also see that the buying public has a lot of inertia to maintain the status quo. ICE-only vehicles are cheap and effective there is little, every very little, demand to move away from the old tried and true. This I see all the time, every day.