Unfort., bringing up true cost triggers calls of heresy & treason.

There’s been an article floating around for some time talking about how ‘youngers’/Gen Y would be the ones driving hybrids.

You failed to understand what you read.

Of course, that claim doesn’t pass the sniff test, at least based on my experience. There are a lot of hybrids around where I live and a lot of the drivers have grey hair.

Don’t forget that many light trucks are owned by businesses and businesses tend to pay a lot of attention to the bottom line. All those service/delivery trucks that scoot around town, they probably don’t drive much more than 30 miles a day. If they could plug in for 80% to 90% of their miles and still have the option to use liquid fuel for the long drives….

PHEVs should quickly replace hybrids once battery prices come down some. Toyota might get their hybrid Prius to 55 MPG but their PHEV Prius is likely to deliver >100 MPG (plus a small amount of electricity) to drivers. That’s the experience of Volt owners, many reporting 1,000 miles or more on a 9.3 gallon tank of gas. One driver is reporting 3,000 miles per tank.

How long we produce PHEVs will likely be a factor of battery cost. If EVs get adequate range and cost no more than a PHEV then the market will move away from any sort of ICE.

We don’t need 300 mile range EVs. The threshold, I think, is somewhere around 175 miles. With 175 mile batteries and 95% <20 charging one can drive a 500 mile day with only two short charging stops. Gasmobile drivers are going to stop at least once for fuel, food and peeing. The immense "fuel" cost savings will make the second stop a non-issue.

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I'm expecting the next five years to be 'exciting'. The world's economy is coming back, gasoline/oil demand is rising, cheap oil is being used up, and all we can expect is much higher prices at the pump.

At the same time we've got the Energy Secretary continuing to tell us that longer range and cheaper batteries are in our near future.

Right now a non-subsidized $32.5k Nissan Leaf is about $6k cheaper to own and operate than is a $20k 30MPG gasmobile. That's based on $0.08/kWh, $4/gallon gas and 12,000 annual driving miles.

At $5/gallon the much more expensive to purchase Leaf becomes $13k cheaper to own/operate over 12 years.

The monthly cost difference during the five years of paying off the vehicles drops to around $100. How many people are going to refuse to pay an extra $100/month when in a few years they will start saving $200 – $300 per month?

Please help end the torture. “The only thing to fear is fear itself” FDR