Look around you in traffic. It may be a bit different where you live, but here in Northern California, I guarantee you that you can hold your breath
until you see an electric car and pretty much not interrupt normal
breathing.
Yes, being an area full of
highly-educated people, early adopters and where they
make Teslas stacks the odds a bit, but even on our nine-day camping trip that took us through remote areas of Utah and Colorado, not a day went by that I didn't see a Tesla Model S or Model 3, a Nissan Leaf or a Chevy Bolt.
But what if you’re not quite ready to take the all-electric
plunge?A plug-in hybrid is a great way
to go---in fact, I think PHEVs are the underappreciated gateway to electric
mobility for the majority of Americans.
Publisher's note: Normally, the cars you read about here at TireKicker are loaned to us by the press fleets of the various manufacturers for several days. Seven is typical. Occasionally, we'll get a longer period of time, and sometimes it'll only be three or four days. Our "30 Minutes With" series features cars we spent half an hour driving during the just-concluded Western Automotive Journalists Media Day in Monterey, California. Needless to say, these are quick drives and brief impressions that we hope to be able to flesh out with a full review of the vehicle at some point in the near future.
Media Days is a driving program, with journalists taking cars from the staging area at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley over Laureles Grade and back or off-road on the acclaimed Land Rover Experience on the grounds of Quail Lodge. My eighth drive of the day was the 2019 Range Rover HSE P400e.
We've said a couple of things consistently during the 11 years that TireKicker has been in existence. One: The true value of a hybrid is in a larger car, where the fuel economy gains will be greater than they are in small cars. And two: A plug-in hybrid, done well, is a better alternative (and will be until range and charging issues are fully addressed everywhere in this country) for many people than a pure electric vehicle.
And really, the Ford Fusion Energi, doomed as it is (Ford is phasing out passenger sedans and the Fusion Energi may not see the 2021 model year), is the best of them.
"A man's got to know his limitations." ---Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in "Magnum Force", 1973
I wanted to like the 2019 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) GT S-AWC. And, in a lot of ways, I do, and have for some time.
Two years ago, the gasoline-powered version of this machine got me over Donner Pass (and back) in a snowstorm. Even then, I acknowledged the Outlander's age (despite a new one in 2014, this is very much a 2010-era machine), but the value equation---surefootedness, a reasonably powerful V6 engine and feature content including a 710-watt Rockford Fosgate audio system for less than $35,000---won the day for the Outlander.
After a year of being a California-only, fuel cell-only vehicle, Honda has expanded the Clarity model lineup to include a pure electric and a plug-in hybrid.
The fuel cell model, running on hydrogen with a range of 366 miles, is of limited use even in the state of California, since once outside the metropolitan Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento areas, hydrogen filling stations are few and far between. The pure electric is limited by a range of just 89 miles. This, at a time when the Tesla Model 3 can break 300, properly equipped, the Hyundai Kona EV is good for 258 and the Chevy Bolt 238. The latest generation of the Nissan Leaf now boasts a range of 150 miles.
The Clarity Plug-In Hybrid is, then, the one of the most usefulness to the greatest number of people, since it can be bought outright (the fuel cell and pure electric are available through lease only) and boasts a combined range of 340 miles.
The Ford Fusion will probably be the last conventional four-door sedan the Ford Motor Company builds. By now you've likely heard the news that over the next two years, Ford will end production of most of its passenger cars. The Fiesta, Focus and Fusion are goners. Market forces at work. The trend is sharply away from three-box (hood, passenger compartment, trunk) cars.
The Ford portfolio in North America will consist of the F-150 and larger (F-250, F-350, etc.) pickups, the Expedition SUV, crossovers, a crossover variant of the Focus called the Focus Active, and the Mustang.
Word is the Fusion will outlast the Fiesta and Focus by a few months, making it the last one out the door. But it will go with head held high. This generation Fusion is the best, and I'll go so far as to say the best sedan Ford has ever built.
Last year, the big news from Hyundai was the introduction of its Prius-fighter Ioniq Hybrid. Now, for 2018, there's a plug-in version---and we like it better than the original.
I am rapidly becoming a fan of plug-in hybrids. Here's my reasoning:
Pure electrics can leave you stranded, or at the very least, unable to get where you need to go as quickly as you could with a gasoline-powered car.
Gasoline-electric hybrids use gasoline and pollute the air for at least part of most trips.
A plug-in hybrid gives you a certain amount of pure electric range before switching into hybrid mode...meaning it's at least possible, depending on your commute and other trips, to not use a single drop of gas or put a particle of tailpipe emissions into the atmosphere for days, weeks or longer.
With hybrid sales in general---and the Prius' in particular---down, it might seem like dark days for this segment. But the Toyota Prius Prime is a brilliant vehicle.
I said it about eight years ago on this very eight-and-a-half-year-old website: The market for alternative power (hybrids, plug-ins) is not in little boxes that get great fuel economy with a gasoline engine. It's with larger cars that experience a big jump in mileage when you apply the tech.
Case in point: The 2017 Ford Fusion Platinum Energi.
Quick. Name a car George Bush (either one) owned before or after the presidency. How about Bill Clinton (okay, an El Camino with Astroturf in the rear bed is kinda hard to forget)? Ronald Reagan? Jimmy Carter? Gerald Ford?
Obama's previous car choices have sent mixed signals. His last car before becoming Commander In Chief was a Ford Escape Hybrid (also a recent Bill Clinton choice)...but until he announced his candidacy in '07, Senator Obama drove a Chrysler 300C...with a Hemi...leading us to believe he might be lusting in his heart (to borrow a Jimmy Carter-ism) for the new SRT8.
But let's take the Prez at his word. What kind of car is the Volt to live with and drive?
And TireKicker's unofficial "Green Week" (yesterday, the Nissan Leaf, Tuesday the Chevrolet Volt) continues with a car you can't buy yet. In fact, you can't even put in an order yet.
The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid goes on sale sometime in spring of 2012 in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. The rest of the country waits until sometime in 2013. Orders won't be taken until late this year, but Toyota, which has been running a demonstration program of 600 Prius Plug-Ins for the last couple of years, has begun putting examples into the hands of automotive journalists, and that got us a week at the wheel.
The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid's plug-in port.
Apart from the decal along the bottom of the doors reading "Plug-In Hybrid", that little door in the left front fender is the only obvious difference between a regular Prius and the plug-in. The Priuses on the street the past decade don't need to be plugged in. The batteries aren't allowed to drain fully and recharge through braking and other regenerative activity.
Charging the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid.
So what's the point of the Plug-In? Well, the standard Prius has extremely limited capabilities running on purely electric power...get above 25 miles per hour and the gasoline engine kicks in. Drive at most one mile on electricity alone, and the same thing happens.
The Prius Plug-In will operate in EV (electric vehicle) mode "under certain conditions" up to "near freeway speeds" for "approximately 10-15 miles".
The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid's range indicator.
That's a lot of maybes, but it does allow people going short distances at city street and freeway speeds to do it (under certain conditions) without using gasoline. And you have the gasoline engine when the battery decides the party's over.
Because the battery isn't being asked to propel the car for 35 miles like the Volt, or 100 miles like the Leaf (both those are manufacturer estimates...under certain conditions), the Prius Plug-In Hybrid needs less recharging time. And this is likely to be a big selling point. Both the Volt and Leaf need 14 hours (give or take) to fully recharge a drained battery on 120V household current. Toyota says the Prius Plug-In will do it in 3 hours. And if you use a 240V charger, that drops to an hour and a half.
With at least 60 days to go before orders are taken (maybe longer) and perhaps six months or more before the first owners take delivery, it's too soon to come to conclusions about the Prius Plug-In, its usefulness, and where it will fit in a rapidly growing field of alternative vehicle. Will the limits of its pure electric operation be too much of a compromise for green buyers? Or will its either/or concept and the promise of quick recharge be a game-changer?
It's a picture a lot of us have entertained in our brains...home for the night, having commuted without using a drop of gasoline, our new Chevrolet Volt sitting out front for the neighbors to envy.
But how realistic is that daydream? To find out, we borrowed a Volt from the good folks at Courtesy Chevrolet in Phoenix for four days, shorter than our usual tests, but enough to give us an overall impression of the car Motor Trend has named Car of the Year. First of all, the Volt isn't a purely electric car. It has a gasoline engine, too. But it's not a hybrid.
Hybrids blend the gas and electric motors in driving, switching between them as conditions warrant. The Volt runs solely on its electric motor, not using a drop of gas...until the battery runs out of power. And at that point, the gasoline engine (a 1.4 liter four) takes over.
Is the 2011 Chevy Volt running on gas or electric? Only the driver knows for sure.
If you can keep the Volt charged, it's possible to drive for days, weeks even, without using a single drop of gas. The range on pure electricity is 35 miles, according to Chevrolet (though we could never get the dashboard display to tell us more than 29 on a full charge). We managed it until day four, when the to-do list required about 55 miles worth of driving, and the car hadn't had enough time on household current to fully charge before the trip.
Still, in 122.9 miles, we only used 1.8 gallons of gasoline...an average of 65.1 miles per gallon. Not too shabby.
The 2011 Chevy Volt interior. Detroit meets Sci-Fi.
What's it like to drive? Very much like a Malibu...roomy, smooth...and, especially on electric power, quiet. There are some "future car" touches...like the gauge clusters (there are two...one which monitors charging, energy use and efficiency that shares the audio/climate control/nav screen, and the one in front of the driver) and the contrasting white center stack that replaces buttons for audio/climate/nav with a touch-sensitive surface. Oh, yeah...and the "whooshzoom" noises that accompany opening the car and starting it. A little too cute. You can turn it down or off (you can also set it to ear-splitting volume and fool the neighbors into thinking a movie with THX is about to start).
The base price is $40,280 and the one we drove had the leather trim package for $1,395, a rear camera and park assist for $695, forged polish 17-inch alloy wheels for $595 and a front license plate bracket for $15. Total price with destination charge: $43,700. But remember, there's a $7,500 tax credit for buying one...so the real bottom line is $36,200. And that is a fair price for what you get.
But should you get one? Well, the key is how much you drive and how often (and where) you can charge. The car comes with a 120 Volt portable charging cord, so you can plug it into household current...but fully drained, it'll take 12 hours to get to a full charge that way.
It's only 4 hours with a 240-volt charger, and Chevy will sell you one of those for $490. Want it installed? That'll be $2,000.
Ideally, there'd be a charging station near where you work, too...but they're not everywhere yet.
Still, our first impression is a good one: It's possible to not use gas or to use a lot less than you otherwise would, and if you have to drive farther than your charge allows, you've got a gasoline engine that can take you 344 miles further (again, according to Chevrolet...we couldn't get the gauge to promise more than 231). That's a nice safety net to have and makes the Volt practical as your only car.
