Hybrids face an uncertain future.
In his new report on electric vehicles (EVs), the Manhattan Institute’s Mark Mills notes that nearly one-third of the electric vehicles sold globally in 2022 were hybrids. But hybrids, writes Mills, “by definition, use combustion engines that policymakers are eager to ban.”
Writing in the latest Capital Letter, I argued that their opposition to hybrids was telling:
Climate policy-makers ought to back a technology that reduces emissions and can act as a bridge to consumer acceptance of “full” EVs. That they are not is reminiscent of the opposition by anti-tobacco policy-makers to vaping, an almost infinitely less lethal pastime than smoking. In both cases, the purported policy objective (whether saving lives or saving the planet) comes second to the insistence on absolute purity that is often the hallmark of a certain kind of fanatic.
This is especially so when it comes to plug-in hybrids (PHEVs). For some background, a “full” hybrid relies primarily on an internal-combustion engine. To oversimplify, the electric motor is mainly used to provide extra power in ways that improve fuel economy. Full hybrids can generally operate on their electric motors alone, but only for very short distances. By contrast, a PHEV (which, of course, also has an internal-combustion engine) has bigger onboard batteries that by themselves can give it a range of 30 miles or, possibly, more.
Hybrids face an uncertain future given climate policy-makers’ preference for an all-electric approach, but among those pushing back has been Akio Toyoda of Toyota (he was the CEO and is now the chairman). There’s some self-interest there, of course (Toyota has sold more hybrids than any other manufacturer), but his concerns are valid enough (and are shared by others in the auto industry). As I noted last month, they include Toyota’s claim that:
The amount of raw materials in one long-range battery electric vehicle could instead be used to make 6 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles or 90 hybrid electric vehicles. . . . The overall carbon reduction of those 90 hybrids over their lifetimes is 37 times as much as a single battery electric vehicle.
Exaggeration?
Well, here’s Peter Coy, who believes that “climate change is an existential crisis,” writing in the New York Times a few days ago:
“Toyota’s claim is accurate. We’ve crunched the numbers on this,” Ashley Nunes told me. He is a senior research associate at Harvard Law School and the director for federal policy, climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank. He testified on the topic in April before the House Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing and Critical Materials.
I’ll speed through his points. Electric vehicles consume huge quantities of lithium and other materials because they have huge batteries. And they have huge batteries because customers suffer from “range anxiety” and won’t buy an E.V. unless it can go for hundreds of miles without charging — even though the vast majority of trips are short.
Partly because of ever-bigger batteries, E.V. prices have grown on average, not shrunk as predicted. They are down a bit this year because of sales and lower chip prices. But they’ve been trending higher, and the cars remain too expensive for many buyers. Some people will keep driving old [ICEVs] because they can’t afford an E.V. And those ICE-mobiles will continue to be major emitters of greenhouse gases.
The production of electric vehicles produces more greenhouse gases than the production of cars with combustion engines. So E.V.s have to travel between 28,000 and 68,000 miles before they have an emissions advantage over similarly sized and equipped ICE-mobiles, according to Nunes. That may take 10 years or more if the E.V. isn’t driven much.
Then there’s the problem of where to get all the minerals.
Coy notes that the proposed EPA rules (effectively mandating manufacturers to sell more and more EVs) are an admission by the Biden administration that it “clearly doesn’t trust electric vehicles to win over the buying public purely on their merits.” It is also a statement that the administration believes that it knows better than auto manufacturers what they should be making, and better than car-buyers what they should be buying, a conceit of a type once thought buried with the Soviet Union.
An economist from a think tank dedicated to “improving both environmental and economic outcomes” tells Coy that PHEVs help alleviate range anxiety, consume less metal than EVs (although more than full hybrids), and are more affordable. The latter is an argument that ought to weigh more heavily than it does for an administration supposedly devoted to “social justice.” Environmental “justice” may well mean poorer people being forced off the road.
She also tells Coy that:
if drivers recharge their plug-in hybrids frequently, they’ll be able to run on battery power almost all the time and emissions will be almost as low as with an all-electric E.V. That will tend to happen as more charging stations with faster chargers are installed. “As long as the battery ranges of plug-in hybrids are reasonably long and the electricity prices are low, consumers would voluntarily charge them rather than relying on gasoline,” she wrote. (That would only work for short trips, though.)
Coy’s conclusion:
Getting to the destination of all-electric for all will take more minerals, better battery chemistry and more and better chargers, among other things. That’s a big project. For now, hybrids seem like a valuable part of the vehicle mix.
The question is whether they will be allowed to be. To which the answer will be “no” in the U.K. and the EU, where bans are coming. California will permit PHEVs after 2035 but not full hybrids, and New York will follow suit. In both states, PHEVs will be capped at 20 percent of new-car sales, ensuring, almost certainly, that they will no longer be a cheaper option:
Hey mama,
Look at me,
I’m on the way to the promised land.