4-Time Tesla Owner Opts For New Toyota Prius Prime Plug-In Hybrid-Electric Vehicle

That is a tired argument. There is zero room for doubt anymore. The research has been done over, and over, and over... YES, BEV has a smaller footprint. No doubt. Yes. The answer is yes.

And really, that argument is only even plausible vs. ICE. For a PHEV, you have the footprint of the gas AND the battery production.

Hey John. I think you need to look a little deeper. Plug-in EVs having "EV only" mode is a farse, or at the very least a dishonest portrayal that leads potential owners to future disappointment. You say "primarily as EVs" and owners may believe that to be true, but only because they aren't really keeping track. Beyond joining forums, I have done a lot of research into the subject, because I really wanted to believe PHEV to be a genuine option for someone looking to nearly eliminate fossil fuel usage. On the surface/marketing, a PHEV is the best option to many because they perceive BEV as being too limiting and they BELIEVE a PHEV can be EV-only when not being used for an extended trip. It just isn't so.

There are a few reasons for this:

1) severely restricted range. The Prius plus and its 25 miles simply isn't enough (particularly when combined with reason #2 below) to functionally operate on EV only for most people. The few that do, still need to refer to the reasons 2, 3 and 4 below.

2) winter. That 25 miles becomes 10 to 15. There's no way around this, and some PHEV (see Chrysler Pacifica) have programming to simply not allow EV usage below a certain temperature. OK, some people are blessed to live in perma-spring. They can see #3 and #4 below.

3) conditions. Almost all PHEVs are designed to operate such that the two powertrains complement each other for performance. Hills, extra weight, a heavy accelerator pedal... these all engage the gas engine "unnecessarily" and depending on the model you may not have any control over it at all. Yes, the car still relatively "sips" the gas and yes that's "better" than an ICE, but it isn't EV only. Alright, you never haul anything, you live in a flat area and you drive like a granny... you still have to consider #4.

4) "maintenance mode". Whether it is a genuine need or a marketing deal with the oil companies, I couldn't say... but all PHEVs, whether admitted to in their manual or not, burn fuel periodically to "maintain" the gas components and/or prevent the fuel from gelling. For some (again Pacifica, I'm looking at you) this is quite considerable. Those that have tried to use it as a genuine EV-only have seen some astonishingly high fuel consumption figures. Others, like the Prius plus, you aren't going to engage it because you have such low range that you're going to use the gas engine regularly anyway.

PHEV had its place for about a minute 5 years ago. Prior to that they weren't good enough. Now that they're good enough, what's the point? BEV is just better. This whole concept of "range anxiety" is in most people's heads and nothing more. As a fully electric household (no "backup" ICE vehicle for roadtrips, etc), I can confidently say that "range anxiety" stops within 2 months of owning one. True, there are some theoretical places that I can't feasibly get to, and for those my "backup" would theoretically be a rental car. But I'm going on year 6 and I've yet to rent a car even once, and we've done plenty of trips in the Teslas. The Bolt, not so much. Tesla's charging network is just so vastly more convenient and the car is more comfortable, so it is the obvious choice... but if the Bolt was all we had, it would be fine too.

Gas should be firmly in society's rearview already. That day is coming at an accelerating rate. Buying a PHEV now, in my opinion, is just holding onto a safety blanket for most people. For those that really need it, just be aware that you'll be burning fuel more than you think if you've done the calculation and determined that your commute is within you model's "EV-only" range.

One thing though Tesla uses emmc chips but recently changed how that works. It's a storage device to log data but it was at one point needed for most thing I like turning on ac or other stuff in the car.

Those emmc are only 16gb and soldier on the board which cost thousands to replace since board has to be replaced.

They could have used a ssd instead for data logging and could be accessible to replace for cheap

Emmc cost around $10 just for part while ssd solid state drive are around $100.00
But they work better for wear and tear and last way longer.

We are ditching belts and such but what quality are the parts being inside.

Western Digital Green M.2 2280 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive for $50.00 which can be replaced by anyone since it's not soldier to the board
If they use that then the 16gb emmc for $10.00

Not only cheaper in long run but cheaper to repair as well since there last the cars lifetime

Another problem for EV expansion is that for now at least, apartment dwellers generally cannot charge at home, charging stations are infrequent in many (most???) parts of the country, and if EVs catch on, crowdng may become a problem. This could change with a lot of investment. We'll see.

Unless you explain how you acquire your money to buy vehicles to begin with, you have no business telling people what's a selfish purchase.

Not to mention that buying an older used vehicle is like recycling on steroids. People who are willing to reuse what someone else discarded for something newly made are generally far from being selfish. You need to look in the mirror to see how wasteful your lifestyle really is before criticizing others for theirs! I'll be willing to bet you haven't taken into account the totality of it all.

By the way, battery power is the oldest technology of all if you want to get technical. Batteries will be nearly useless in another 30-50 years or so because it's about the worst form of electrical energy storage there is. It's a chemical energy storage system that needs to go through electrochemical conversions within the battery, which is itself a wear item and requires an excessive superstructure for containment given a cell's small form factor. It's an incredibly wasteful way to store such energy, when you could just store chemical energy externally or even use something like a flow battery.

The problem with ICE isn't the carbon-based fuel, it's the inefficient way that combustion is converted into mechanical energy and the byproducts thereof, which cannot be recycled. There are far better ways to store and release chemical energy in a closed loop process that is efficient enough to run things that don't require wheels and paved roads. It's mind boggling how closed minded people have become these days as if battery electric vehicles are really the long term future of transportation when that's about as old a technology as it gets. It's nothing but a stop gap until a truly revolutionary technology takes hold. Unfortunately, we haven't seen major investment into revolutionary technologies for about 50 years now, which leaves us with nothing but tiny evolutionary improvements that don't add up to much.

What happened to thinking big? How long has it taken to get almost nowhere in quantum computing, artificial general intelligence, robotic locomotion, distributed trust, etc? We have inefficient quad rotor drones starting to do actual work only because there was no real investment in robot locomotion. I don't even know how old that tech is tbh but I remember drawing up plans for such devices over 20 years ago because I didn't like the RC helicopters of the time. And we have the useless wasteful Bitcoin because nobody bothered to invest in distributed trust and intelligence, which would've made blockchain and proof of work obsolete from the start. I had already personally rejected the idea of a globally synchronized ledger when I was working on plans for a distributed cryptocurrency some 15 years ago because that obviously won't scale or allow for the micropayments needed for an intelligent IoT economy. There are so many better ways to accomplish that but again most people seem to lack any vision...