Key context: thermodynamics dictates that heat engines waste a lot of energy.
Credit: Karin Kirk
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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It's even worse when you take a bunch of the small percentage of energy the heat engine successfully turns into motion and then use it to heat up the brake discs.
Being able to recapture kinetic energy into a battery and reuse it later helps overall efficiency a lot.
Plug-in hybrid? Aren't they worse than both, because of the weight of motor and battery?
You also get to use a smaller lighter ICE motor which is augmented by nearly instantaneous electric power. My favorite car was a Prius C which is no sportscar, but feels much zippier than you would expect for getting 50 mpg.
Series plug-in hybrids that can run on battery (Chevy Volt, Honda Clarity, Prius 2024) are IMO better than both. They effectively operate like electric vehicles (regenerative braking and all), and one can drive them for months without burning gas. Their batteries are about five times smaller (~30-50mi range vs full EV's ~250mi range), and thus lighter, and the gasoline engine is usually a small, efficient one (~40ish mpg on gas)
it's a classic case of one implementation of a concept being really good, but for some utterly baffling reason everyone tries the shitty implementation of the concept instead and so everyone discounts the whole thing as a bad idea.
drinking water is a good idea, but for some reason everyone only tries drinking dirty puddle water and conclude that water gives you parasites.
Yes, unless your only metric is fuel consumption or range with a given tank. Then they're pretty strong.
Only 70% going out the tailpipe.