and all it took was two decades and millions of spend in anti-EV lobbying before they finally gave in, huh
(also kind of wild to me that an EV focused blog wouldn't mention this a single time since Toyota is (was?) arguably one of the staunchest and most stubborn anti-EV manufacturers out there)
To be fair that's true of most manufacturers. Nobody wanted to go head to head with the Tesla M3, except Hyundai I guess but then they discontinued the Ioniq 6 IIRC.
It's true in the US market. Europe and Asia are seeing a flood of smaller EV cars from Dacia, Renault, BYD, VW, Fiat and far more. The US is getting left behind.
it's sunk cost on their hydrogen cell R&D - they want there to still be room for that instead of going with electrification but they have to diversify their portfolio to keep up with markets
"Toyota in particular has been vocal that they are uninterested in making ZEVs available in California. [...] Toyota has invested in hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles [instead]."
you read the articles, correct? the ones where they are actively supporting climate-change denying, pro-January 6th Republicans who are actively working on repealing CAFE, emissions standards, and other climate protective standards?
also the accusation of 'vested interest' is very funny to me as someone who is proverbially hiding all his liquidity under a mattress (ie bonds) until this AI bubble pops and whose sources are 1) a non-profit and 2) a Union of Concerned Scientists blog
Toyota was broadly right in their approach to EVs. They were pioneers in hybrids. They had excellent hybrid cars like Prius that have been around forever. Their low end cars are extremely fuel efficient too that making them hybrid does not really offer marginal benefits.
Now most companies have written off their crazy investments in EVs. Honda has discontinued Prologue and so on.
at first, sure, but they've since donated large amounts of money to climate-change deniers who fight hard against electrification and emission standards
[...] since Toyota is (was?) arguably one of the staunchest and most stubborn anti-EV manufacturers out there
Wait till you hear about German car manufacturers. It's not even that long ago that e.g. Mercedes said that their target audience doesn't want EVs and they will never (!) give in to that market. Now look at them. All of them.
I am with Toyota on this one. They have done more to reduce carbon emissions than any other automaker. Hybrids, particularly plug-in hybrids, achieve most of the benefits of EVs without any of the tradeoffs, and they make far more efficient use of our limited supply of batteries.
Public policy should not insist on one technology to the exclusion of viable alternatives.
Over the last three electoral cycles, Toyota has become the top auto industry financier of climate deniers[4]. It has helped to finance campaigns of 207 climate-denying congressional candidates, more than twice as many as Ford and nearly 50% more than General Motors, the only other automakers with federal political action committees (PACs)
[Toyota] is bankrolling an army of climate denying lawmakers and lobbying aggressively against emissions and fuel economy standards
and all it took was two decades and millions of spend in anti-EV lobbying before they finally gave in, huh
EVs are a stupid idea and will remain so for the foreseeable future. If you want to complain about their funding of climate deniers, complain about that. But don't criticize them for their justified dismissal of the EV mania.
I am disappointed Toyota is making EVs now. That doesn't mean I am a fan of the company; I don't even own a car.
You really do have to do the math using your local costs. I'm in a place with slightly cheaper gas but much cheaper electricity than California. Combined with cheap night time electricity I'm paying under $0.03 per mile for a large EV. I would need 150 mpg vehicle (assuming $4.50 gas) to beat that. However I'm cheating a bit - I'm on a plan which raises my day time electric costs a small amount in exchange for half-price at night, so they're getting some of that back, and I should amortize charger and electrician work ($1600 for me).
55mpg is nothing. I get 100+ mpg equivalent on my massive F-150 lightning and if you include cost in the comparison it’s probably a couple of multipliers more than that.
And that's just operating cost. PHEVs have a higher maintenance cost and worse reliability than pure EVs, typically. Certainly higher complexity and more parts.
why don't Japanese auto-makers embrace the super+ hybrid that was embraced by Chinese auto makers. having electric motors and a small engine to constantly charge / drive the motors.
Japanese auto makers are already good at hybrid power trains, small engines.
surely extended range vehicles - 1000km+/700mi+ shouldn't be limited to Chinese brands only.
As far as I know, such plug-in hybrids directly drive the car forward via the internal combustion engine, which is more efficient than using a (possibly smaller and simpler) engine to charge a battery which then moves the car via electric motors, which is what I understand the person that you're replying to to be describing, though I am not familiar with the specific Chinese cars in question, since those are not options available to me due to living in the United States.
In a pure series hybrid a gas engine acts a generator which charges a battery, which drives an electric motor, which provides power to the wheels.
In parallel hybrids, both the gas motor and the electric motor provide traction, sometimes simultaneously.
Parallel is more efficient if you're depending on gas often, as every conversion has losses. Toyota mostly sells hybrids you can't plug in, and the ones you can plug in are variants of the ones you can't, so they all share the same drivetrain.
I think they have, though not as much as they should have.
I have a Sienna minivan that is hybrid and gets 36 MPG which is at least 10MPG more than everyone else using a beefed up version of the drivetrain the Prius created. (I can go 550-600 miles on a tank)
I also got RAV4 Prime which is a plugin electric that uses the same drivetrain tech and can go full electric, hybrid, or full power with both for over 300hp which is fun.
They achieve the best efficiency by using an Atkinson cycle engine which is more efficient but less powerful on the Sienna and Prius. What has confused me more is that things like the Grand Highlander still have a traditional cycle engine in their hybrid setup so you don't get the maximum advantage.
Didn't Toyota bet heavily on hybrid, only to realise that no one really wants them. You have to have a specific daily drive for them to make much sense. You're carrying two engines and to fuel/power sources, so mileage is terrible on gas and battery.
Hybrids make a lot of sense, they just have a lot of the same costs as building EVs and most buyers in the US weren't willing to pay an extra $5k to increase gas mileage by 15%.
Toyota is currently seeing record sales of their hybrid models and has made multiple models hybrid-only as costs have fallen.
Plug-in hybrids with larger battery packs are a harder market fit. They cost more because of the larger battery (often more than full EV equivalents) and are not saving you any extra money unless you can plug it in daily. If you have that extra money to spend and a place to plug an, an EV will probably work fine for you and save you more money over time.
"Hybrids make a lot of sense, they just have a lot of the same costs as building EVs and most buyers in the US weren't willing to pay an extra $5k to increase gas mileage by 15%"
It's more-so the "I don't want that over-complicated crap" mentality, which is hilariously out of date. The first-gen Prius ended up being the single most reliable car ever made by almost any metric you can name.
That's a factor, but as you say many hybrids are actually very reliable and actually simplify many parts of the drivetrain over a conventional ICE.
Cost is a huge factor, and now that hybrids are a small cost increase, or even the default option on some models, sales have increased substantially. Basically half the cars that Toyota sells are hybrid or EV at this point.
"only to realise that no one really wants them" - 1 of every 6 new cars sold in the US are hybrids
"You have to have a specific daily drive for them to make much sense" - You'd have to have an extremely specific commute for an ICE car to potentially beat a hybrid (flat highway driving with zero traffic). Even then it's doubtful as hybrid engines can be designed to optimize more for efficiency since the electric torque can augment to make performance acceptable. Try to find an ICE car that gets better EPA ratings than equivalent hybrids.
"You're carrying two engines and to fuel/power sources, so mileage is terrible on gas and battery." - The corolla hybrid LE weighs 100lbs less than the ICE LE, in part because hybrid transmissions are quite simple in comparison to a manual/automatic required in an ICE car. In either case, hybrids have a huge advantage in the types of driving where weight matters (stop-and-go/hills) because they can reclaim that energy rather than losing it as heat.
Part of that is that we are reaching the point where a plug-in hybrid is actually more expensive to produce than an EV.
Go to Toyota's website today and you'll see that a Rav4 Plug-in Hybrid is more expensive than the bZ which is the equivalent full EV.
Going to an EREV layout (a series plug-in hybrid where the gas engine cannot drive the wheels mechanically) doesn't really save any costs directly, but allows sharing the platform between EV and EREV models.
Range extender motors should have been easy to rent and much cheaper for long trips than a full car rental.
It would be very interesting to me to have a small sedan BEV with a rear charging port and an optional flat trailer with a large battery and room for luggage/furniture. The battery would be plugged into that car while driving. I'd want the trailer rentable from the dealer for occasional long trips. BEVs seem to have powerful motors, there must be something else with the economics why this isn't a thing.
At this point I’d pay a significant premium to the dealership and brand that will:
- A. make me an accessor to any datasets (and derivative reports that include my data if you want an extra poisonous pill) that include my data as a full dump and access log of my records and ‘admin’ activities.
- B. Tear out the telemetry hardware, or let me send it to my own endpoint. No satellite access needed. No thanks, driver cam. Who needs LoJack when we have Flock?
- C. Sell a car that’s built to be owned and operated by a human, not an auto brand. If they want to subscribe to some sort of remote assistance subscription, that would be an aftermarket 3rd party device. Open software and hardware within safety protocols increase the value proposition significantly. I would think this is the lowest TCO option, with standard, locally milled parts.
electric cars also produce way less brake dust particulates
Depends. Compared to a competent driver in a manual transmission, I doubt it. Manual transmission cars can brake with the engine instead of brakes. You also may be on the order of 1-2000+lbs lighter.
Then there's tire dust particulate considerations with the heavier EV with all that torque.
I think that's what Edison Motors is doing but only for trucks? I don't know how they're getting on now. Maybe they already failed.
You could be the first to make one. I've only heard of Edison because of their social media (so maybe a scam) - but they were showing off how they just bought a random truck and replaced the engine as a prototype
Looks like most of the images are concepts. I wonder if the looks will change before launch? And they do say the cost is only a few k above the gas models. Something to wait and see, I guess.
Note that this is a concept, I've never seen an actual production model look anything like the concept.
My father has a hybrid model, 2023 MY I think. It has physical controls for the radio, for AC and related things, for the heated seats, for the various "driver assist" features (like auto high beams, a parking thing (no idea what that is), radar, lane assist). It has a touchscreen, but that only seems to handle the maps, fancy radio controls (think equalizer and such), and other "car settings", whatever those are. You can absolutely drive it without ever having to interact with the touchscreen while doing normal things. I hate touchscreen controls as much as the next HN poster, but I have strictly 0 beef with the Corolla on this front. Door handles and windows work exactly the same as on my 2005 "dumb" car. Hell, I think it even has a physical toggle for the "automatic night mode" on the rear-view mirror, while mine couldn't be "non automatic".
To GP's point, I don't think it ever was an "entry level" car, just a "normal compact" car. I don't see why adding an electric drivetrain would have someone expect it would somehow become a basic, "entry-level" car.
I don't say we don't need those, but the Corolla never seems to have targeted that market, at least here in Europe. There always were plenty similar-sized cheaper and more basic cars from domestic manufacturers. Is it different in the US?
I've never seen an actual production model look anything like the concept.
As an exception to this rule, the original Audi TT was surprisingly similar to the concept car and even the initial concept sketches. They had a crazy design idea and just went with it.
The new Chevy Bolt EV is also a "normal car but electric" to me. It's not a car, but it's not a huge SUV either. It has physical controls, you can disable the modem by pulling the OnStar fuse, and it has a decent range and decent fast charging.
I wish they had a variant in a more normal sedan or hatchback than its "PT Cruiser thing", but it is still one of the closest in the US market to a normal car.
It's too bad Europe and Asia get all of the nice EV sedans like Dacia Spring and BYD Dolphin. This article even says Toyota hasn't committed to this Corolla EV in the US market, which is shameful.
Look into the Nissan Leaf, one of the early EV models. I don't know what the 2026 is like but my 2021 has 220-ish miles of range and is... an electric car.
It's a car. That's electric.
Physical buttons. Normal doors. Normal design. Normal handles. Normal controls. Drives great and accelerates better than an economy gas car.
As a bonus, that means almost the entire car is standard. Other than the electric drive train, a regular mechanic can work on everything else: tires, wheels, brakes, suspension, etc.
It's given us basically zero problems. Maintenance so far is a few minor recall items (free fixes) and a tire rotation. We bought it new during COVID.
Only downside to the 2021 model was the CHaDemO (or however you caps it) plug, which is obsolescent. I think recent models have CCS. There is a converter dongle and if I fast charged often I'd pick one up. Apparently they work but they're a little pricey since unfortunately it's not just a simple plug converter. It's a different signaling and locking system, so it has to be a smart dongle.
The 2026 Leaf made some big improvements. Liquid cooled battery, faster charging, longer range.
It has the usual modern car cost cutting where steering wheel inputs are plastic panels with mysterious capacitive regions and no feedback so you can't feel if you've successfully pressed anything, whether you pressed the right thing, or if your fingertips are too dry and don't register. Most of the center console inputs are replaced with a screen with another row of cheap capacitive touch icons below it.
Charging is behind the times again with an awkward 2-port arrangement, but it's different from the previous gen's J1772 L1/L2 and CHAdeMO for L3 up to 50 kW.
For 2026 they replaced the CHAdeMO port with NACS, supporting a maximum of 150 kW L3 charging, but it still uses a separate J1772 port for L1/L2 unlike every other car where the NACS port does both.
All things considered it's a solid entry level EV.
I don't mind analogue buttons or anything and I think screens can kind of suck especially with Android and auto manufacturer abandonware, but with the Tesla I now own I'm always wondering what people are using all these buttons for - thinking back to my previous Hondas. In the Tesla I've got climate control, heated seats, and music/navigation. Some of the other features like adjusting mirrors I can use the multi-purpose buttons for in the correct context. On any given drive I hop in, put my phone on the charger and don't use it, and then just drive.
What am I missing? Or is it just that folks want buttons? Is it the design?
What you are missing is you can press the button blind while you are looking at the road, the button merely closes a circuit and always works.
But I'm talking beyond just the buttons. Pure analog. No telemetry. No cellular connection. Real rack and pinion again. Real gauges. No drive by wire wherever possible. Maybe the actual ev motor output can be controlled with a simple switch in the circuit vs an entire ecu with throttle profiles and all the bullshit. Basically, your car in 2003, with the gas engine replaced with an electric motor. Pure car. Dead simple systems. Easy access engine bays.
It isn't happening again. These things are ipads on wheels that try and surveil you and come up with datapoints they can somehow make some money off of.
I'm not really concerned with hitting the button blind but I understand the desire to have no "tracking" or anything like that. Volume in the Tesla at least there is a button and you can configure some of those things with software. I know the heated seats and climate control are done via the iPad as you call it but I don't have to look at those. Once you hit it enough you just know where it is, or you can use voice control if you're not that comfortable. I can also text on my iPhone pretty well without looking at the keyboard.
But I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with all these gauges and stuff. I have 0 interest in trying to repair my car or understand how any of it works. I just want to get in, have it be super comfortable, everything works and it gets me from A to B pretty fast. The only gauge I care about is the speed at which the car is traveling. Well the battery too I guess but if I'm taking a trip where that's of concern the car handles the stops for me.
I get that people do enjoy that stuff which is super cool - I'm not hating on it, but figured I'd just provide a different perspective maybe. For me the biggest concern is just this dog shit Android software and abandonware that all the manufacturers create (except Tesla funny enough - I'm not a shill or anything, Elon sucks and I'll never buy another one because of him) which I think is probably the biggest negative to the iPad-ification. Thankfully there's Android Auto and Apple Car Play but still the computers in the cars can be underpowered to use those.
What you are missing is you can press the button blind while you are looking at the road, the button merely closes a circuit and always works.
Not just that: my hands get dry enough sometimes that my phone's touch interface doesn't work reliably, in which case, I'd expect a touchscreen interface in a newer car would face similar problems. Physical buttons don't have that problem.
Of course the buttons are for doing things. The things you listed are pretty much all the traditional buttons. I can remember as a kid paying attention to the center panel between the foot wells (in a Corolla!) - it was pretty much just heating/AC, radio, and a few miscellaneous things like hazard lights. It's no airplane cockpit or space shuttle.
Also if you had electric door locks and windows (we didn't) the driver's door had 4 window levers and a child lock button while everyone else had their own window lever.
I hear ya. I can't speak to other cars but in my Tesla I never have to fiddle with any of that stuff. I just press the button on the screen for example to modulate the climate control even when the car is in motion - I don't need to look at all. There's no feedback (haptic feedback would be a nice improvement actually). In the rare instance that I need to do something "complicated" I'd just put the car into the Autosteer mode. But that's only something that would really be done on the highway in a safe manner. In my older cars I found using the buttons to switch between say albums or something that to not really be that much easier. Maybe slightly worse.
On the other hand, boy when I get a rental car there are so many buttons to mess around with it's like going backwards in time (for me) in terms of ease of use. Even something like having to turn on/off the car itself is now a chore. Why do I need to even turn the car on? It should just always work. Obviously part of that is "it's a new car" but a lot of that stuff seems very needlessly complex. I'm not talking about turning the heat on or off even though a lot of those implementations seem way more complicated than they need be (engineers gonna engineer and over-complicate things unless someone stops them) but other random things.
If it makes you feel better, this is a concept. They probably won't produce the vehicle they showed, especially since customers are making it known that they want regular buttons/door handles/HVAC vents/etc.
The exterior design language is the same as their current newer models like the C-HR or even the GR GT. The interior is like any other concept car. I don't like it either, but it looks like a normal Toyota.
The article does say that the electric Corolla is to be priced at $30k, about $3,000 more than the hybrid and $5,000 more than the gas-powered one. That may not be objectively 'low cost', but it's comparable in cost to the lowest-cost new EVs, and probably similar total cost of ownership to the hybrid/gas cars when considering cheaper fuelling.
Depends on where you live. In states like Connecticut, or certain areas of California (PG&E Bay Area customers), the ROI is very long or simply doesn't pencil out at all. I think for Connecticut, which has high electricity prices but low gas prices, it's just net negative. For me in SF, despite high gas prices the ROI is just too long (5-10 years?), and that's before factoring in the ~$5000+ required for updating my electrical box, which is a conservative estimate because now the city requires the meter to be outside the house, whereas it's currently in the garage.
I was surprised to read the headline because this is going in a different direction than most car companies. For example, VW, Ford, GM, and others have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago. They discovered that most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them, and the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
Then I read the key quote and realized that Toyota isn't transforming the Corolla into an electric vehicle. They're simply going to offer an electric option. That's much less of an interesting headline, which explains why it wasn't chosen.
“Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source―let’s make good-looking cars that everyone will want to drive!” Toyota’s CEO said at the Japan Mobility Show.
let’s make good-looking cars that everyone will want to drive!
This is a very unfortunate goal for Toyota specifically to have. I am extremely loyal to driving late 90s/early 2000s toyotas (I have owned at various points a 1997 corolla, a 1999 camry, and a 2000 tundra, and my daily driver today is such a car as well), due to them being extremely cost effective and also extremely reliable. A well-maintained, or even moderately maintained, late 90s/early 2000s Toyota car is, in my experience, almost as reliable as a new car that costs 4x+ the price, and it has the benefit of much less DRM, spyware, and other software bullshit, as well as being much easier to repair. I am also unaware of any modern car that is remotely like this, as well as unaware of any electric car that is remotely like this, except maybe Slate (though this is not available yet, so I am withholding judgement until I can see 3rd party reviews and maybe try one).
But, to summarize, I really like some of Toyota's old work for intensely practical reasons, and I think that this is a gap in the market of cars manufactured today (someone please tell me I am wrong by pointing to a good option on these criteria, preferably an EV!), and I couldn't give a rat's ass about the car being "good-looking", so it's unfortunate (though not surprising) that Toyota is deeming that their goal.
Toyota, like many companies that succeed based on merits beyond the aesthetic, secretly dreams of being an aesthetics-first company like, say, Porche or Ferrari, and always tries their hardest to reject reality so that they can do the sexy-but-awful thing instead of the amazing-but-ugly thing.
You see this recently over the last couple years in tech where everyone is "an AI company" even when they make something totally unrelated - same impulse, different industry.
The problem with our economy is basically wealth concentration, partly funded by central banks and partly by lack of billionaire taxation. In a traditional economy, money was meant to always flow circularly, throughout the whole economy. Rich people could exist, but they could only exist by commanding a large upward flow of money from poor/middle people, so they had to offer something really good in return. These days the money mostly circulates between different rich people with only some loss back down to the poorer classes, so to get money they have to impress other rich people instead of poorer people. Companies who go full AI don't attract customers (unless B2B), they attract investors because the investors have all the money and the customers don't.
Yep, the only thing I love about newer cars are dynamic cruise/lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring, and memory seats. Cars from 20 years ago had better controls and were likely cheaper to repair in most cases.
For example, VW, Ford, GM, and others have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago. They discovered that most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them, and the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
I don't think that's a fair assessment of the EV market, which continues to grow, albeit slowly, in the US and much faster elsewhere. At best it is constrained to the US car market where the government has been yanking incentives, tariffs, and emissions requirements back and forth recently, providing an unstable market for manufacturers to invest in.
Some brands put together EV models that were inherently unprofitable, and hoped that incentives and scale would save them, mainly Ford. Ford is currently investing a lot into building their next-gen EV platforms which should be both more affordable and profitable. GM has not cancelled any EV models that I'm aware of, except the Bolt which is planned to be replaced by a new affordable EV model in a similar market slot.
VW is introducing a lot of new EV models in Europe and other markets, but not so much in the US where policy has us a less favorable market for them.
Toyota + Subaru have introduced multiple refreshed or brand new EV-only models over the last year including in the US.
And of course China is going crazy for EVs with many competing domestic manufacturers, a full battery supply chain, and many affordable models to pick from.
I think the US is still pretty far from saturating the potential market of garage-owning car buyers with EVs, but that is a major hurdle for people who rent or street park and might be interested in saving gas money.
My electric panel is full. If I want to add an EV charger to my garage, I first have to replace the electric panel with a larger one. That’s minimum $5000 before I even get to the EV charger.
Depending on how much you drive per week, a 120V charger might be viable. My new house has the same problem (I'd have to upgrade the electric panel for my car due to its age), but I've been using the normal 120V charger to charge it, and haven't yet run into a case where I couldn't charge it enough.
Can't you charge it from a wall outlet but slower (tier 1 charging)? If you have a dryer in your garage you can get a charger that plugs into that, taking turns with your dryer.
Technology Connections did a video essay on this and concluded that for most people, you get plenty of range for everyday use just by leaving it plugged into a normal socket overnight, and just occasionally using a supercharger when you're doing long trips. Of course if your commute is particularly long maybe this doesn't apply to you.
Range anxiety is definitely a real concern about switching to EV but apparently most people don't find it that bad once they actually get one. Besides, there won't be any gas soon anyway.
There are potentially options that could work for you, including:
1) Just charge from an existing 120V outlet. If you average under 50 miles of driving per day this might work just fine.
2) Reshuffle existing circuits to get even a 20A 240V circuit for charging. This provides more than double the charging you can get from a 15A 120V outlet and may be possible by combining some existing circuits with tandem breakers. A lot of electricians will just quote you on going straight to a 50A or 60A circuit, but most chargers are configurable to lower levels and it can save you a lot of money to stick to a smaller circuit.
3) Share a circuit with a dryer using a device that automatically switches power off to the car while the dryer is running, there are a few brands of these.
4) Get an EV charger that supports load management, using a current sensor on your main breaker. These can dynamically adjust how much current the car draws to avoid exceeding the max current of your panel.
5) Electric meter socket adapter, these connect between your utility's electric meter and its socket and provides an EV charging port that doesn't go through your household panel at all.
I'm not sure why you got downvoted as I think you are mostly correct.
We've had an EV for 1.5 years and love it. In fact any time I'm in a gas-powered car it feels downright primitive with all the noises and smells and sluggish performance. The range anxiety we experienced at first has completely given way to it being awesome that I never have to stop at gas stations and don't have to waste time/money on oil changes.
But if we couldn't charge at home it would likely be more expensive to fuel than a gas car instead of being much cheaper (but this depends on your local electricity and gas prices).
However, I do think there is still a big pool in the US who haven't even ridden in one to know what they are missing. Americans have never let poor gas mileage stop them from buying a car (or truck) that is bigger or faster or somehow "better" than the economical choice.
the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
Would love a Toyota EV but usually for significantly less I can get a Toyota hybrid with more space. Both my partner's and my vehicles are Toyota hybrid crossovers but we looked for an EV first and realized we simply couldn't justify the extreme price difference for how little our cars are driven. Really hoping when our time for a new vehicle comes we can trade in both for one reasonably priced EV crossover - so hopefully the rest of the planet can continue pushing the EV market forward while the US lags way behind.
Yeah Toyota's PHEVs are quite nice, but the price premium is too much. It basically makes no sense unless you can charge for free at work, and even then you'd have to drive 50,000 miles before it pays off. If you're like most of us and you pay for electricity at home, the inflection point is even further out. How many people even keep cars for that long anymore?
You are forgetting the elephant in the room: the charger at home and all the implications that brings in between costs and actual possibility of installation at all.
Ya that’s the big issues with EVs. It’s overblown in a lot of ways - it is, ultimately, just getting electricity where you park your car - but power at your overnight parking spot is a massive component of happy EV ownership and we’ve done almost nothing to help or even encourage that for apartment dwellers
You don't need a home charger to enjoy driving an EV. A home charger is a bonus to driving an EV. Do you know anyone who has ever had a "home gas pump"?
Not to mention how many people sleep on Level 1 and Level 2 charging, which are cheap or cheap as free in many homes. (Garages have had electric outlets for a long time. Some have had "dryer plugs" for nearly as long, due to power tools one might own.) Trickle charging doesn't get you to 100% overnight, but no one drives on a 100% full gas tank every morning either.
Do you know anyone who has ever had a "home gas pump"?'
You know that's a bad faith argument. Facts are, EVs have friction and that holds back a lot of adoption, and pretending it isn't there isn't going to make it go away.
It's not a bad faith argument, it is comparing like for like. (Saying that it isn't like for like seems to me to be the more bad faith argument in 2026.) If I have a gas car with 300 miles of range I go about 297 miles safely between fill ups. If I have an EV car with 300 miles of range I can go about 297 miles safely between charges. Those are the same characteristics.
The part that isn't like for like sure is that there is an increased friction that even a "fast charger" can take a magnitude more time than a gas pump. But fast chargers are much safer and can be parallel tasked (running other errands while a charge happens) whereas gas is an explosive and requires diligent observation while refueling (despite how many people seem oblivious to all the warnings not to leave a refueling car unobserved and a long history of explosion statistics).
In my experience, fast charging time and lack of home charging ability (and under-estimation of Level 1/2 charging utility) feel like red herrings rather than actual issues. These things get talked about a lot, but the real world experience of them isn't the friction people believe it is. The biggest issues seem to be far more sociopolitical than technical to me. People have invested too much of their identities in gas. Entire political parties seem devoted to propping up gas sales for as long as possible.
It is definitely a bad faith argument. That is no friction point really that anyone considers a friction point. The charger situation though is real friction. Take yourself out of your own shoes. I will give you anecdata. I have a friend who bought a tesla with no way to charge it in their apartment. It just seems like such a pain in the ass. So many times they are on like 18% charge and wondering if the car is going to actually make it home. Or they will be about to go somewhere and realize the car isn't going to be charged enough so they call an uber. It is unreliable transport without having a home charger. A new chore you have to remember to do. A bit more mental load making that extra calculation every time you want to leave. Having to actually consider where there might be chargers that you can use and if you'd be able to reach them on your present charge.
Take all of that anecdata and replace a gas car and it is the exact same with the same mental load: I've been on 18% fuel tank and wondering if my car will actually make it home or stall out on the road. I've been about to go somewhere and realized my car isn't fueled and and called a taxi or a Lyft as faster than the detour to refuel my car.
"It's an unreliable transport without having a gas pump at home." That just sounds silly. Funnily enough that was exactly one of the early complaints of gas cars when electric cars were preferred in the very early days of cars. It was a complaint when gas pumps were rare and hard to find, or didn't exist at all yet and you were pulling gas canisters from the back of a pharmacy.
It's a more reliable transport than a gas car because I can charge at home. (I can't do that at all with gas.) It's a more reliable transport than a gas car because in a pinch I can find an outlet on the outside of my hotel and trickle charge enough to get me to the next charger. (When was the last time a hotel had canisters of gas just in case?) It's a more reliable transport than a gas car because I can find RV plugs in national parks and state parks and campgrounds far away from chargers and gas stations. (You ever see what you might get charged for a tow from a remote national park, even if that tow is just dropping off a canister of gas?)
The impression of the charger situation being more inconvenient than gas stations is already flipping and has room to flip a lot more, possibly surprisingly quickly, as gas prices rise and low margin gas pumps go out of business.
I found some data from an auto insurance association.
In US urban areas the average car is only driven 6000 miles a year. That's 115 miles a week. Someone in an urban city would only need to charge every two weeks. Friend has a Chevy Bolt in SF he parks on the street. He says it's not a problem.
I also repeat myself but I've measured how long it take to gas up a car on road trips. It's usually around 10-15 minutes. Oh sure actually filling the car is quick. But you have to drive to the gas station, fill the car, drive away from the gas station.
But you have to drive to the gas station, fill the car, drive away from the gas station.
Costs you also pay driving to the EV charging station. 10-15 mins really? Maybe if you are taking a poop or buying a sandwich. Usually on road trips gas stations are immediately off the freeway or at major crossroads of state or county roads. You aren't really detouring to get to them.
You don't need a home charger to enjoy driving an EV. A home charger is a bonus to driving an EV.
I know precisely zero people who have EVs and do not charge them at home. The cost differential is enormous and completely changes the economics of cost per mile.
Trickle charging doesn't get you to 100% overnight, but no one drives on a 100% full gas tank every morning either.
Sure, but a full gas tank gets you further than a full battery. We have friends with a long range Tesla that takes them days to charge on 120. Despite living in a city with many Teslas, and having an expensive home, apparently it would have cost too much for them to upgrade their panel to be able to charge faster. They are retired so can make do (and they have other cars that use gas).
The cost differential is enormous and completely changes the economics of cost per mile.
Which is exactly the point and why it is a bonus. You can't do that with a gas car effectively or cheaply. You won't pay someone to come and install a gas service in your home or apartment with the express reason for fueling your car. That you can with an EV and would get a game changing efficiency and cost reduction is an incredible bonus.
Sure, but a full gas tank gets you further than a full battery.
That seems to be less of a factor today. Most batteries have hit the same or more range as comparable gas vehicles.
Some EV models already have ~600 mile range which is double their gas counterparts.
We have friends with a long range Tesla that takes them days to charge on 120.
Sure, but that's to 100%. You can drive a car with less than 100% battery. A 120v charge can add as much as 40-60 miles range overnight. That's an average person's regular commute. The car might "never" be at 100% if the 120v charge is all it ever gets, but for some people they might never need a fast charge in an average week or even month.
It axed the F150 Lightning. They might have later announced that they're going to bring it back as an EREV (pretty much PHEV), but that seemed like a separate decision. If it were the same decision, they would have announced it at the time of the cancellation announcement, to make it seem more like a pivot.
For example, VW, … have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago
most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them
You should really reconsider where you get your information from.
“Volkswagen reported more than 70,000 orders for its new Electric Urban Car Family within just a few weeks, while European BEV orders increased by more than 50% in Q2.”
Various OEMs have sort of soft-exited the US EV market, but that doesn't mean they're not offering the cars or stop development of them in other markets.
It just means the US market is too unattractive and low-volume for EVs that aren't a Tesla.
America, where they are pulling models. I have PHEVs and enjoy them, but I am aware that many people are not going to buy EVs with their current specs. Either they live somewhere cold, where range will fluctuate and not be sufficient at times of the year, or they live somewhere that has power outages frequently enough (or at times of emergency) that they do not consider pure EVs. This is especially true for people with only one car. Families that have multiple cars are obviously more open to having one car that's an EV.
EVs are actually great during power outages. Many have power outlets so you can run your fridge, charge devices, etc. while the power is out. Any gas station without its own backup generator will be unable to pump gas during an outage.
If you have home charging, it's more likely that you'll have a mostly full battery than that the power outage will occur when you have a mostly full tank of gas.
It's a bit more work and expense but some EVs can even act as automatic or manual whole-home power backups.
Unless you live somewhere that regularly loses power for a week+, an EV might actually be a net benefit.
Historically most of these "Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source" platforms have been utter ICE-first EV-distant-fourth-priority shit shows. Most of the exceptions are rather expensive.
In general, they've been pretty uninspired. That said, the Hyundai Kona/Kia Niro cousins were pretty much just "replace the engine with a motor and bolt the battery to the bottom" and those were perfectly reasonable cars for the vast majority of actual needs.
True, and it's especially interesting since Toyota I think offers some vehicles only as hybrids/PHEVs. For example, the Camry and RAV4 fall into this category, I think. It's deceptive because it makes it look like the RAV4 PHEV isn't that much more than the base model. But since the base model is already more expensive than an ICE would have been because it's a hybrid, this isn't the true differential between ICE and PHEV.
I picked up a '25 Subaru Solterra (rebadged Toyota bz4X) for a decent lease deal and while I'm surprised how little I think about the EV parts the "car parts" are dreadful.
I really need to do a write-up on the dichotomy of EV things being good (charger works, no real battery QC issues, it's a RAV4-but-EV) while all of the shared ICE parts (anything in the software stack) are riddled with bugs or head-scratching defaults.
Overall, a fine car for me, but (as much as I do not like El*n) Telsa is so significantly beyond their offerings it's hard to overstate.
EDIT:
I forgot to add but I think the cost savings for EVs can be a wash, make sure you check the following:
1.) can't charge at home / live in an apartment.
1a.) If you do install a L2 charger at home, you will significantly reduce your cost savings.
2.) you rely on fast-chargers in any significant capacity.
3.) Double check the math on any lease, loan, etc. on new EVs vs. a beater gas car. Especially if you pay an EV tax in your state or country. (Post-COVID the $2K beater car seems to have gone extinct here...)
in contrast, i bought a 2026 Subaru Uncharted, which is a clean sheet EV design, collaboration on powertrain components between Subaru and Toyota, and it's awesome. My BMW i4 xdrive 40 handled worse, had software bugs, cost about 50% more, and had a cheaper interior with truly stupid engineering choices, but you could choose from more colors. I had a clean sheet ev design i3 for about 8 years before that and it was cool.
I wonder, from your comments, and my cars, if the trick is ev-only designs, as the Solterra has various altered versions, as did the i4, whereas my i3 and Uncharted were designed only to be EVs.
edit: charging L2 at home is great, to your point.
We looked at the Solterra in 2025 and it was genuinely awful, I can't believe anyone who works at a car company looked at it and thought "this is substantially better and will sell more than the Pontiac Aztek despite aesthetically and practically being worse in many regards". The interior center console feels like a prank, almost.
I never will (also because of Elon), but this comment makes me curious to experience a Tesla. Are they really so much better? I've heard endless bad things about their build quality.
After returning a '25 Mercedes EQB (employee lease), I bought a used '23 Solterra, and it seems like a better than linear downgrade (that is, the overall experience is a bit worse, but the price is lower by more than how much worse it is). The software and interface are all completely fine, and stay out of the way of driving and Android Auto. And I'm rather glad for the lack of some of the bells and whistles, because the dashboard screen on the MB had too much going on.
I've been in my friends Model 3 many times and it's full of "oh why didn't anyone think of this before" and EV-centric choices. There's stupid stuff too (no turning stalks or shifter) but even ignoring the software choices it's really that much better of a car.
The software and interface are all completely fine
Perhaps whatever platform mine, my friends corolla and friends taco are on is just busted but I wish it had even 70% reliability of just working when I'm using anything software related.
I own very first model Y, but wouldn’t buy the facelift. Changing gears swiping touchscreen is too much despite many real improvements. Build quality is definitely not premium, but it was single electrical vehicle I was able to afford and use as a substitute for petrol car. Many others at the time were good only as 2nd or 3rd car in the household.
I had a 21 Y, and now a 26. If you actually buckle your seat belt and turn on the feature, the car will auto select the correct gear without needing to do....anything. After a short while you get used to it on the rare occasions you do need to swipe the screen to change gear. Another thing I didn't notice during test drives, is that it does actually have permanent gear shifting controls - they're just by the hazard light (not a great place to use them often, but still there).
At least for me, the 26 is so much better built and fixed the insane body roll the 21 had that I'm quite happy with it.
My wife has also been full-EV for 5 years, first with a Kia Niro EV and now with a Hyundai Ioniq 9. Those are pretty good as "real car" EVs as well, though not without their own quirks (and, unfortunately, the Ioniq 9 recently had to have the ICCU replaced, as Hyundai still seemingly hasn't figured that problem out over the years).
I've had not a single "quality issue" with my Model 3 other than the cabin air filter. The car interior stinks worse than any other car I've owned, if it isn't replaced on time! I too have heard a ton of bad things on Reddit. Then I went on the subreddits where people actually owned them. Those folks really seemed to like their cars. I can't say I LOVE the car... removing turn signals, wiper controls and ability to physically shift into reverse seem like brain-dead moves. Otherwise though? It's a lovely care to drive.
The main question is whether to count the Corolla at all, given that it's changed so much over the years. The original VW Beetle at ~21M and minimally changed from 1938 to 2003 has a strong claim.
You're wrong. The best-selling vehicle is the Flying Pigeon bicycle, the standard bicycle from Mao-era China with more than 500 million produced since 1950.
Nobody's making good lightweight superfast electric sportscars except for Kia (EV6 GT, 600hp). That car is amazing but the interior is super-cheap and Kia failed to "do the Acura thing" that made the NSX respectable (it isn't a "Honda NSX").
The Porsche Taycan is an absolute boat, an old man's car, the thing weighs a ton. Handling is terrible, center of mass is way above the axles. BMW electrics are the same. Mercedes doesn't even have an electric performance car.
The German car companies are really just "mailing it in" when it comes to electic sportscars; they refuse to actually try to build a good one.
Tesla Model S isn't much better and is discontinued.
Other than the $250k+ upcoming roadster and the $60k EV6 GT (cheap cloth seats, no leather option, Kia badge) there's really nothing out there that handles well. Pretty huge gap in the market there.
The EV6 GT is a 1550mm tall crossover SUV-coupe weighing almost 4900 lbs with 577 hp, but is more of a young man's sports car than a 1380mm tall sedan weighing 100 lbs more but approaching twice the power? Seems sensible.
Who cares if the roof is higher off the ground? The EV6's center of mass is much lower than the Porsche's.
The EV6 GT suspension is vastly superior, and it's active electronic; the Taycan just toggles between two settings ("normal" and "high-clearance" for going over speed bumps).
The EV6 GT's rear differential has electronic control; you can feel it when you take freeway turns at >80mph -- your brain tells you "the rear wheels should be fishtailing"... but they just don't. It's crazy. I think they actually factor in the steering wheel position, something you can't do with a simple mechanical differential. I've never felt anything like that in any other car.
But it still has the Kia badge. And the cheap interior. It's a shame; they could've used this car to launch an "Acura"-like brand with the EV6 GT as their NSX.
Still, Porsche should be embarrassed of the Taycan. That car is a joke.
"But it still has the Kia badge. And the cheap interior. It's a shame; they could've used this car to launch an "Acura"-like brand with the EV6 GT as their NSX."
Isn't that kinda what the Genesis GV60 is supposed to be? Granted it doesn't have the same HP as the EV6 GT, AFAIK....
One of the things that really frustrated me about my Tesla Model 3 was how low it was. I would "look up" at Ford Fusions and other sedans on the road.
In contrast, my Model Y isn't an SUV. It's the height (and ground clearance) of what we used to call sedans, and really feels like a sedan instead of an SUV.
I'm holding on to my gas vehicle as long as I can because I really don't like the hybrid sad spaceship noise. I guess I could get it and disable the speaker but then that might void the warranty. The mechanic I go to tells me I can absolutely disable it and they will do it for me but they caution that it will void a warranty. I will continue to drive my old car until it falls apart.
and all it took was two decades and millions of spend in anti-EV lobbying before they finally gave in, huh
(also kind of wild to me that an EV focused blog wouldn't mention this a single time since Toyota is (was?) arguably one of the staunchest and most stubborn anti-EV manufacturers out there)
Don't they have existing EV models, though?
Yep bz, chr, bz woodland and the upcoming highlander Bev, at least - but they’re late to the game for sure.
They have large electric cars / SUVs, but not small EVs.
To be fair that's true of most manufacturers. Nobody wanted to go head to head with the Tesla M3, except Hyundai I guess but then they discontinued the Ioniq 6 IIRC.
It's true in the US market. Europe and Asia are seeing a flood of smaller EV cars from Dacia, Renault, BYD, VW, Fiat and far more. The US is getting left behind.
https://blog.ucs.org/dave-reichmuth/why-does-toyota-oppose-c...
it's sunk cost on their hydrogen cell R&D - they want there to still be room for that instead of going with electrification but they have to diversify their portfolio to keep up with markets
They were neither anti-EV in the past nor will they stop producing Internal Combustion Engine vehicles in the future
based on what? there's so many sources noting their anti-EV lobbying
https://chargedevs.com/newswire/toyota-actively-lobbies-agai...
https://thedriven.io/2026/06/17/japan-car-giants-still-pushi...
https://blog.ucs.org/dave-reichmuth/why-does-toyota-oppose-c...
and here's their CEO going on a tirade about Japan's EV-adoption mandate: https://evannex.com/blogs/news/puzzled-by-toyota-ceo-s-anti-...
People who have vested interest will make such accusations.
I own EVs but I am opposed to "mandates", opposing coercion makes you anti coercion not the objective of coercion.
you read the articles, correct? the ones where they are actively supporting climate-change denying, pro-January 6th Republicans who are actively working on repealing CAFE, emissions standards, and other climate protective standards?
also the accusation of 'vested interest' is very funny to me as someone who is proverbially hiding all his liquidity under a mattress (ie bonds) until this AI bubble pops and whose sources are 1) a non-profit and 2) a Union of Concerned Scientists blog
Anyone can write a blog and they can write anything they want there. There's no more value in those links than in a Reddit comment.
Or even an HN comment, for that matter.
so you'd treat an academic reference text on chemistry as just as prone to bias and as worthless as a reddit comment?
if you have other sources that talk about how great Toyota is, that'd be wonderful
When the government said everyone should wear masks were you the guy coughing on all the produce?
Toyota isn't so much pro-internal combustion as pro-hydrogen. They bet on the wrong horse -- a really stupid horse -- and it cost them heavily.
I don't believe either of those statements.
I was going to say "about time", but actually about 3 years too late.
Toyota was broadly right in their approach to EVs. They were pioneers in hybrids. They had excellent hybrid cars like Prius that have been around forever. Their low end cars are extremely fuel efficient too that making them hybrid does not really offer marginal benefits.
Now most companies have written off their crazy investments in EVs. Honda has discontinued Prologue and so on.
at first, sure, but they've since donated large amounts of money to climate-change deniers who fight hard against electrification and emission standards
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/toyota-scrutinized-after-rest...
I do feel like y'all need to read the news more instead of just going by brand rep
Wait till you hear about German car manufacturers. It's not even that long ago that e.g. Mercedes said that their target audience doesn't want EVs and they will never (!) give in to that market. Now look at them. All of them.
That could be caused by EU regulation because they have to meet fleet emission standards. Pretty much the only way to get there is to sell some EVs.
I am with Toyota on this one. They have done more to reduce carbon emissions than any other automaker. Hybrids, particularly plug-in hybrids, achieve most of the benefits of EVs without any of the tradeoffs, and they make far more efficient use of our limited supply of batteries.
Public policy should not insist on one technology to the exclusion of viable alternatives.
Fuel cells are stupid, though.
please, I beg of you HNers, maybe read the news instead of just going by your brand sentiment
https://www.citizen.org/article/driving-denial-how-toyotas-u...
From a few posts upstream:
EVs are a stupid idea and will remain so for the foreseeable future. If you want to complain about their funding of climate deniers, complain about that. But don't criticize them for their justified dismissal of the EV mania.
I am disappointed Toyota is making EVs now. That doesn't mean I am a fan of the company; I don't even own a car.
what's your objection to EVs? what are the alternatives?
We don't really have a limited supply of batteries. At least not so limited as to prevent every passenger vehicle having a large enough one.
I mean for gosh sakes, they make semitrucks, boats, and planes with batteries. Huge grid storage systems as well.
The hybrid already gets 55mpg and the batteries are dirt cheap.
Its actually cheaper (for me in the UK) to run a corolla hybrid than an EV as I don't have the ability to charge at home.
I really did think Toyota would have a nice market if they stuck to hybrids.
Our 2026 hybrid gets 64mpg in Albuquerque. The last time I did the EROI calculation it beat everything by a long shot.
Not sure how you got one that gets 55mpg, mine gets 44 (47 was on the sticker). But in CA this still beats 100% EV.
You really do have to do the math using your local costs. I'm in a place with slightly cheaper gas but much cheaper electricity than California. Combined with cheap night time electricity I'm paying under $0.03 per mile for a large EV. I would need 150 mpg vehicle (assuming $4.50 gas) to beat that. However I'm cheating a bit - I'm on a plan which raises my day time electric costs a small amount in exchange for half-price at night, so they're getting some of that back, and I should amortize charger and electrician work ($1600 for me).
Corolla is sort of highly underrated engineering marvel.
55mpg is nothing. I get 100+ mpg equivalent on my massive F-150 lightning and if you include cost in the comparison it’s probably a couple of multipliers more than that.
And that's just operating cost. PHEVs have a higher maintenance cost and worse reliability than pure EVs, typically. Certainly higher complexity and more parts.
why don't Japanese auto-makers embrace the super+ hybrid that was embraced by Chinese auto makers. having electric motors and a small engine to constantly charge / drive the motors.
Japanese auto makers are already good at hybrid power trains, small engines.
surely extended range vehicles - 1000km+/700mi+ shouldn't be limited to Chinese brands only.
Yeah, what happened after the Toyota Prius?
They have. See toyota hyryder
How is that different than plug-in hybrids that toyota already have?
As far as I know, such plug-in hybrids directly drive the car forward via the internal combustion engine, which is more efficient than using a (possibly smaller and simpler) engine to charge a battery which then moves the car via electric motors, which is what I understand the person that you're replying to to be describing, though I am not familiar with the specific Chinese cars in question, since those are not options available to me due to living in the United States.
Related, though not for plug-in hybrids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnUFH5GX_fI
In a pure series hybrid a gas engine acts a generator which charges a battery, which drives an electric motor, which provides power to the wheels.
In parallel hybrids, both the gas motor and the electric motor provide traction, sometimes simultaneously.
Parallel is more efficient if you're depending on gas often, as every conversion has losses. Toyota mostly sells hybrids you can't plug in, and the ones you can plug in are variants of the ones you can't, so they all share the same drivetrain.
Chevy had that with the Volt and while it has its fans, it wasn’t exactly a hit.
The volt was more like a Prius Plugin++. It still has a planetary gearset through which the engine would drive the wheels.
I think they have, though not as much as they should have.
I have a Sienna minivan that is hybrid and gets 36 MPG which is at least 10MPG more than everyone else using a beefed up version of the drivetrain the Prius created. (I can go 550-600 miles on a tank)
I also got RAV4 Prime which is a plugin electric that uses the same drivetrain tech and can go full electric, hybrid, or full power with both for over 300hp which is fun.
They achieve the best efficiency by using an Atkinson cycle engine which is more efficient but less powerful on the Sienna and Prius. What has confused me more is that things like the Grand Highlander still have a traditional cycle engine in their hybrid setup so you don't get the maximum advantage.
Didn't Toyota bet heavily on hybrid, only to realise that no one really wants them. You have to have a specific daily drive for them to make much sense. You're carrying two engines and to fuel/power sources, so mileage is terrible on gas and battery.
Hybrids make a lot of sense, they just have a lot of the same costs as building EVs and most buyers in the US weren't willing to pay an extra $5k to increase gas mileage by 15%.
Toyota is currently seeing record sales of their hybrid models and has made multiple models hybrid-only as costs have fallen.
Plug-in hybrids with larger battery packs are a harder market fit. They cost more because of the larger battery (often more than full EV equivalents) and are not saving you any extra money unless you can plug it in daily. If you have that extra money to spend and a place to plug an, an EV will probably work fine for you and save you more money over time.
It's more-so the "I don't want that over-complicated crap" mentality, which is hilariously out of date. The first-gen Prius ended up being the single most reliable car ever made by almost any metric you can name.
That's a factor, but as you say many hybrids are actually very reliable and actually simplify many parts of the drivetrain over a conventional ICE.
Cost is a huge factor, and now that hybrids are a small cost increase, or even the default option on some models, sales have increased substantially. Basically half the cars that Toyota sells are hybrid or EV at this point.
Most hybrids Toyota sells have a ~1 kWh battery which cannot be charged externally.
"only to realise that no one really wants them" - 1 of every 6 new cars sold in the US are hybrids
"You have to have a specific daily drive for them to make much sense" - You'd have to have an extremely specific commute for an ICE car to potentially beat a hybrid (flat highway driving with zero traffic). Even then it's doubtful as hybrid engines can be designed to optimize more for efficiency since the electric torque can augment to make performance acceptable. Try to find an ICE car that gets better EPA ratings than equivalent hybrids.
"You're carrying two engines and to fuel/power sources, so mileage is terrible on gas and battery." - The corolla hybrid LE weighs 100lbs less than the ICE LE, in part because hybrid transmissions are quite simple in comparison to a manual/automatic required in an ICE car. In either case, hybrids have a huge advantage in the types of driving where weight matters (stop-and-go/hills) because they can reclaim that energy rather than losing it as heat.
Part of that is that we are reaching the point where a plug-in hybrid is actually more expensive to produce than an EV.
Go to Toyota's website today and you'll see that a Rav4 Plug-in Hybrid is more expensive than the bZ which is the equivalent full EV.
Going to an EREV layout (a series plug-in hybrid where the gas engine cannot drive the wheels mechanically) doesn't really save any costs directly, but allows sharing the platform between EV and EREV models.
Range extender motors should have been easy to rent and much cheaper for long trips than a full car rental.
It would be very interesting to me to have a small sedan BEV with a rear charging port and an optional flat trailer with a large battery and room for luggage/furniture. The battery would be plugged into that car while driving. I'd want the trailer rentable from the dealer for occasional long trips. BEVs seem to have powerful motors, there must be something else with the economics why this isn't a thing.
Oh please no! I loved the old boring interiors with analog components
can we get a car that doesn't self-drive or phone-home?
just replace all the gas burning, oil dripping parts
electric cars also produce way less brake dust particulates, so it's a win all around
just stop trying to make a car a smartphone
Like the Slate truck, to bad it's impressively expensive for a bare bones car.
https://www.slate.auto/en
At this point I’d pay a significant premium to the dealership and brand that will:
- A. make me an accessor to any datasets (and derivative reports that include my data if you want an extra poisonous pill) that include my data as a full dump and access log of my records and ‘admin’ activities.
- B. Tear out the telemetry hardware, or let me send it to my own endpoint. No satellite access needed. No thanks, driver cam. Who needs LoJack when we have Flock?
- C. Sell a car that’s built to be owned and operated by a human, not an auto brand. If they want to subscribe to some sort of remote assistance subscription, that would be an aftermarket 3rd party device. Open software and hardware within safety protocols increase the value proposition significantly. I would think this is the lowest TCO option, with standard, locally milled parts.
One can dream, right?
Depends. Compared to a competent driver in a manual transmission, I doubt it. Manual transmission cars can brake with the engine instead of brakes. You also may be on the order of 1-2000+lbs lighter.
Then there's tire dust particulate considerations with the heavier EV with all that torque.
Except for the tire and road wear. The extra weight isn't free.
I think that's what Edison Motors is doing but only for trucks? I don't know how they're getting on now. Maybe they already failed.
You could be the first to make one. I've only heard of Edison because of their social media (so maybe a scam) - but they were showing off how they just bought a random truck and replaced the engine as a prototype
Maybe, some day, eventually, many years into the future.
/shrug.
Ugh. I saw the headline and I was hoping it would be an entry-level, low cost, highly analogue, "looks just like a normal car but electric" car.
Toyota does sell those. Just not in EU/NA. Toyota hyryder sells in India for 15k Euros.
Hyryder is not an EV, it's hybrid
Looks like most of the images are concepts. I wonder if the looks will change before launch? And they do say the cost is only a few k above the gas models. Something to wait and see, I guess.
Wonder if they'll have different battery sizes like Hyundai does.
Yes!
The closest thing I could find to a "normal car but electric" was the Hyundai Kona EV (I know, it's more small-SUV than 'car). So, I bought one.
It's good. There are physical controls for the temperature and volume, and the door handles aren't stupid.
I walked away from a Ford Mach-E because I didn't want to have to explain how to open the doors to ever person I drove for the next five years.
But isn't that what the Corolla was?
Note that this is a concept, I've never seen an actual production model look anything like the concept.
My father has a hybrid model, 2023 MY I think. It has physical controls for the radio, for AC and related things, for the heated seats, for the various "driver assist" features (like auto high beams, a parking thing (no idea what that is), radar, lane assist). It has a touchscreen, but that only seems to handle the maps, fancy radio controls (think equalizer and such), and other "car settings", whatever those are. You can absolutely drive it without ever having to interact with the touchscreen while doing normal things. I hate touchscreen controls as much as the next HN poster, but I have strictly 0 beef with the Corolla on this front. Door handles and windows work exactly the same as on my 2005 "dumb" car. Hell, I think it even has a physical toggle for the "automatic night mode" on the rear-view mirror, while mine couldn't be "non automatic".
To GP's point, I don't think it ever was an "entry level" car, just a "normal compact" car. I don't see why adding an electric drivetrain would have someone expect it would somehow become a basic, "entry-level" car.
I don't say we don't need those, but the Corolla never seems to have targeted that market, at least here in Europe. There always were plenty similar-sized cheaper and more basic cars from domestic manufacturers. Is it different in the US?
It's a compact sedan (or a compact hatchback, depending on the model) from Toyota, which in Canada at least, makes it an "entry-level" new car.
As an exception to this rule, the original Audi TT was surprisingly similar to the concept car and even the initial concept sketches. They had a crazy design idea and just went with it.
The new Chevy Bolt EV is also a "normal car but electric" to me. It's not a car, but it's not a huge SUV either. It has physical controls, you can disable the modem by pulling the OnStar fuse, and it has a decent range and decent fast charging.
I wish they had a variant in a more normal sedan or hatchback than its "PT Cruiser thing", but it is still one of the closest in the US market to a normal car.
It's too bad Europe and Asia get all of the nice EV sedans like Dacia Spring and BYD Dolphin. This article even says Toyota hasn't committed to this Corolla EV in the US market, which is shameful.
I think Volkswagen ID.4 is alright. It's perhaps a bit small. Also - I kind of like the ID.Buzz though not sure if it will sell.
Not quite normal but not "future" - the Renault 5 E-tech electric is nice but I don't think it's available in the US.
3 button presses just to start driving. I hated kona so bad. Annoying bing bongs, no app and of course we hit wheel of fortune issue.
Look into the Nissan Leaf, one of the early EV models. I don't know what the 2026 is like but my 2021 has 220-ish miles of range and is... an electric car.
It's a car. That's electric.
Physical buttons. Normal doors. Normal design. Normal handles. Normal controls. Drives great and accelerates better than an economy gas car.
As a bonus, that means almost the entire car is standard. Other than the electric drive train, a regular mechanic can work on everything else: tires, wheels, brakes, suspension, etc.
It's given us basically zero problems. Maintenance so far is a few minor recall items (free fixes) and a tire rotation. We bought it new during COVID.
Only downside to the 2021 model was the CHaDemO (or however you caps it) plug, which is obsolescent. I think recent models have CCS. There is a converter dongle and if I fast charged often I'd pick one up. Apparently they work but they're a little pricey since unfortunately it's not just a simple plug converter. It's a different signaling and locking system, so it has to be a smart dongle.
The Leaf is massively underrated IMO.
The 2026 Leaf made some big improvements. Liquid cooled battery, faster charging, longer range.
It has the usual modern car cost cutting where steering wheel inputs are plastic panels with mysterious capacitive regions and no feedback so you can't feel if you've successfully pressed anything, whether you pressed the right thing, or if your fingertips are too dry and don't register. Most of the center console inputs are replaced with a screen with another row of cheap capacitive touch icons below it.
Charging is behind the times again with an awkward 2-port arrangement, but it's different from the previous gen's J1772 L1/L2 and CHAdeMO for L3 up to 50 kW.
For 2026 they replaced the CHAdeMO port with NACS, supporting a maximum of 150 kW L3 charging, but it still uses a separate J1772 port for L1/L2 unlike every other car where the NACS port does both.
All things considered it's a solid entry level EV.
Highly analogue? We all want that but you have to realize we aren't ever getting that. The incentives aren't there.
I don't mind analogue buttons or anything and I think screens can kind of suck especially with Android and auto manufacturer abandonware, but with the Tesla I now own I'm always wondering what people are using all these buttons for - thinking back to my previous Hondas. In the Tesla I've got climate control, heated seats, and music/navigation. Some of the other features like adjusting mirrors I can use the multi-purpose buttons for in the correct context. On any given drive I hop in, put my phone on the charger and don't use it, and then just drive.
What am I missing? Or is it just that folks want buttons? Is it the design?
What you are missing is you can press the button blind while you are looking at the road, the button merely closes a circuit and always works.
But I'm talking beyond just the buttons. Pure analog. No telemetry. No cellular connection. Real rack and pinion again. Real gauges. No drive by wire wherever possible. Maybe the actual ev motor output can be controlled with a simple switch in the circuit vs an entire ecu with throttle profiles and all the bullshit. Basically, your car in 2003, with the gas engine replaced with an electric motor. Pure car. Dead simple systems. Easy access engine bays.
It isn't happening again. These things are ipads on wheels that try and surveil you and come up with datapoints they can somehow make some money off of.
I'm not really concerned with hitting the button blind but I understand the desire to have no "tracking" or anything like that. Volume in the Tesla at least there is a button and you can configure some of those things with software. I know the heated seats and climate control are done via the iPad as you call it but I don't have to look at those. Once you hit it enough you just know where it is, or you can use voice control if you're not that comfortable. I can also text on my iPhone pretty well without looking at the keyboard.
But I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with all these gauges and stuff. I have 0 interest in trying to repair my car or understand how any of it works. I just want to get in, have it be super comfortable, everything works and it gets me from A to B pretty fast. The only gauge I care about is the speed at which the car is traveling. Well the battery too I guess but if I'm taking a trip where that's of concern the car handles the stops for me.
I get that people do enjoy that stuff which is super cool - I'm not hating on it, but figured I'd just provide a different perspective maybe. For me the biggest concern is just this dog shit Android software and abandonware that all the manufacturers create (except Tesla funny enough - I'm not a shill or anything, Elon sucks and I'll never buy another one because of him) which I think is probably the biggest negative to the iPad-ification. Thankfully there's Android Auto and Apple Car Play but still the computers in the cars can be underpowered to use those.
That's all fine. Sounds like a digital car is more for you vs an analog drivers car. People have different preferences.
LOL are you ready to perform a burnout every time you touch the accelerator?
My decades old tube amp has figured out how to modulate high wattage power
Not just that: my hands get dry enough sometimes that my phone's touch interface doesn't work reliably, in which case, I'd expect a touchscreen interface in a newer car would face similar problems. Physical buttons don't have that problem.
Of course the buttons are for doing things. The things you listed are pretty much all the traditional buttons. I can remember as a kid paying attention to the center panel between the foot wells (in a Corolla!) - it was pretty much just heating/AC, radio, and a few miscellaneous things like hazard lights. It's no airplane cockpit or space shuttle.
Also if you had electric door locks and windows (we didn't) the driver's door had 4 window levers and a child lock button while everyone else had their own window lever.
I also drive a Hyundai Kona. Here are some things I use the physical buttons for that I wouldn't want to use a screen for:
- turning the air conditioning up or down (or off) while I'm driving and feel too hot/cold
- adjusting the volume of music or the radio while driving
- turning on the radio
- turning seat heaters on or off
I don't want to fiddle with a touchscreen to do any of these things while the car is in motion.
I hear ya. I can't speak to other cars but in my Tesla I never have to fiddle with any of that stuff. I just press the button on the screen for example to modulate the climate control even when the car is in motion - I don't need to look at all. There's no feedback (haptic feedback would be a nice improvement actually). In the rare instance that I need to do something "complicated" I'd just put the car into the Autosteer mode. But that's only something that would really be done on the highway in a safe manner. In my older cars I found using the buttons to switch between say albums or something that to not really be that much easier. Maybe slightly worse.
On the other hand, boy when I get a rental car there are so many buttons to mess around with it's like going backwards in time (for me) in terms of ease of use. Even something like having to turn on/off the car itself is now a chore. Why do I need to even turn the car on? It should just always work. Obviously part of that is "it's a new car" but a lot of that stuff seems very needlessly complex. I'm not talking about turning the heat on or off even though a lot of those implementations seem way more complicated than they need be (engineers gonna engineer and over-complicate things unless someone stops them) but other random things.
If it makes you feel better, this is a concept. They probably won't produce the vehicle they showed, especially since customers are making it known that they want regular buttons/door handles/HVAC vents/etc.
... probably.
I'd expect it to look similar to the current Prius and not like these concepts.
https://www.toyota.com/prius/
The exterior design language is the same as their current newer models like the C-HR or even the GR GT. The interior is like any other concept car. I don't like it either, but it looks like a normal Toyota.
The article does say that the electric Corolla is to be priced at $30k, about $3,000 more than the hybrid and $5,000 more than the gas-powered one. That may not be objectively 'low cost', but it's comparable in cost to the lowest-cost new EVs, and probably similar total cost of ownership to the hybrid/gas cars when considering cheaper fuelling.
That's not bad. Those are going to be some fantastic value used cars, eventually.
It is low cost! The Tesla Model 3 was twice the cost almost a decade ago.
BTW: The price premium for electric is offset by the lower cost of electricity, and the fact that electricity's cost is much less volatile than gas.
Depends on where you live. In states like Connecticut, or certain areas of California (PG&E Bay Area customers), the ROI is very long or simply doesn't pencil out at all. I think for Connecticut, which has high electricity prices but low gas prices, it's just net negative. For me in SF, despite high gas prices the ROI is just too long (5-10 years?), and that's before factoring in the ~$5000+ required for updating my electrical box, which is a conservative estimate because now the city requires the meter to be outside the house, whereas it's currently in the garage.
The article says the gas version will look the same, so it matches your "looks just like a normal car but electric car" requirement.
I was surprised to read the headline because this is going in a different direction than most car companies. For example, VW, Ford, GM, and others have been axing electric vehicles that they started selling a few years ago. They discovered that most people who wanted EVs had already purchased them, and the rest of the market wasn't interested enough to pay the price premium.
Then I read the key quote and realized that Toyota isn't transforming the Corolla into an electric vehicle. They're simply going to offer an electric option. That's much less of an interesting headline, which explains why it wasn't chosen.
This is a very unfortunate goal for Toyota specifically to have. I am extremely loyal to driving late 90s/early 2000s toyotas (I have owned at various points a 1997 corolla, a 1999 camry, and a 2000 tundra, and my daily driver today is such a car as well), due to them being extremely cost effective and also extremely reliable. A well-maintained, or even moderately maintained, late 90s/early 2000s Toyota car is, in my experience, almost as reliable as a new car that costs 4x+ the price, and it has the benefit of much less DRM, spyware, and other software bullshit, as well as being much easier to repair. I am also unaware of any modern car that is remotely like this, as well as unaware of any electric car that is remotely like this, except maybe Slate (though this is not available yet, so I am withholding judgement until I can see 3rd party reviews and maybe try one).
But, to summarize, I really like some of Toyota's old work for intensely practical reasons, and I think that this is a gap in the market of cars manufactured today (someone please tell me I am wrong by pointing to a good option on these criteria, preferably an EV!), and I couldn't give a rat's ass about the car being "good-looking", so it's unfortunate (though not surprising) that Toyota is deeming that their goal.
Toyota, like many companies that succeed based on merits beyond the aesthetic, secretly dreams of being an aesthetics-first company like, say, Porche or Ferrari, and always tries their hardest to reject reality so that they can do the sexy-but-awful thing instead of the amazing-but-ugly thing.
You see this recently over the last couple years in tech where everyone is "an AI company" even when they make something totally unrelated - same impulse, different industry.
I've noticed this too.
It is completely baffling.
There must be something seriously wrong with our economy that companies operating like this don't go bankrupt and/or get driven out of business.
The problem with our economy is basically wealth concentration, partly funded by central banks and partly by lack of billionaire taxation. In a traditional economy, money was meant to always flow circularly, throughout the whole economy. Rich people could exist, but they could only exist by commanding a large upward flow of money from poor/middle people, so they had to offer something really good in return. These days the money mostly circulates between different rich people with only some loss back down to the poorer classes, so to get money they have to impress other rich people instead of poorer people. Companies who go full AI don't attract customers (unless B2B), they attract investors because the investors have all the money and the customers don't.
Yep, the only thing I love about newer cars are dynamic cruise/lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring, and memory seats. Cars from 20 years ago had better controls and were likely cheaper to repair in most cases.
I don't think that's a fair assessment of the EV market, which continues to grow, albeit slowly, in the US and much faster elsewhere. At best it is constrained to the US car market where the government has been yanking incentives, tariffs, and emissions requirements back and forth recently, providing an unstable market for manufacturers to invest in.
Some brands put together EV models that were inherently unprofitable, and hoped that incentives and scale would save them, mainly Ford. Ford is currently investing a lot into building their next-gen EV platforms which should be both more affordable and profitable. GM has not cancelled any EV models that I'm aware of, except the Bolt which is planned to be replaced by a new affordable EV model in a similar market slot.
VW is introducing a lot of new EV models in Europe and other markets, but not so much in the US where policy has us a less favorable market for them.
Toyota + Subaru have introduced multiple refreshed or brand new EV-only models over the last year including in the US.
And of course China is going crazy for EVs with many competing domestic manufacturers, a full battery supply chain, and many affordable models to pick from.
Meanwhile, batteries keep getting better and cheaper, in most places the charging networks are growing, and charging is getting faster.
Yep, I find that a lot of EV-hesitants in the US have no idea how much the travel charging network has grown.
https://dcfctracker.com/map
I think the problem is not that people don't want electric cars. The problem is that people don't have a place to plug the car at home.
I think the US is still pretty far from saturating the potential market of garage-owning car buyers with EVs, but that is a major hurdle for people who rent or street park and might be interested in saving gas money.
My electric panel is full. If I want to add an EV charger to my garage, I first have to replace the electric panel with a larger one. That’s minimum $5000 before I even get to the EV charger.
Depending on how much you drive per week, a 120V charger might be viable. My new house has the same problem (I'd have to upgrade the electric panel for my car due to its age), but I've been using the normal 120V charger to charge it, and haven't yet run into a case where I couldn't charge it enough.
You don't need an EV charger. I charge my car from a normal wall socket over night, limited to 12A. That gives me 60 miles of range over night.
Can't you charge it from a wall outlet but slower (tier 1 charging)? If you have a dryer in your garage you can get a charger that plugs into that, taking turns with your dryer.
Technology Connections did a video essay on this and concluded that for most people, you get plenty of range for everyday use just by leaving it plugged into a normal socket overnight, and just occasionally using a supercharger when you're doing long trips. Of course if your commute is particularly long maybe this doesn't apply to you.
Range anxiety is definitely a real concern about switching to EV but apparently most people don't find it that bad once they actually get one. Besides, there won't be any gas soon anyway.
There are potentially options that could work for you, including:
1) Just charge from an existing 120V outlet. If you average under 50 miles of driving per day this might work just fine.
2) Reshuffle existing circuits to get even a 20A 240V circuit for charging. This provides more than double the charging you can get from a 15A 120V outlet and may be possible by combining some existing circuits with tandem breakers. A lot of electricians will just quote you on going straight to a 50A or 60A circuit, but most chargers are configurable to lower levels and it can save you a lot of money to stick to a smaller circuit.
3) Share a circuit with a dryer using a device that automatically switches power off to the car while the dryer is running, there are a few brands of these.
4) Get an EV charger that supports load management, using a current sensor on your main breaker. These can dynamically adjust how much current the car draws to avoid exceeding the max current of your panel.
5) Electric meter socket adapter, these connect between your utility's electric meter and its socket and provides an EV charging port that doesn't go through your household panel at all.
I'm not sure why you got downvoted as I think you are mostly correct.
We've had an EV for 1.5 years and love it. In fact any time I'm in a gas-powered car it feels downright primitive with all the noises and smells and sluggish performance. The range anxiety we experienced at first has completely given way to it being awesome that I never have to stop at gas stations and don't have to waste time/money on oil changes.
But if we couldn't charge at home it would likely be more expensive to fuel than a gas car instead of being much cheaper (but this depends on your local electricity and gas prices).
However, I do think there is still a big pool in the US who haven't even ridden in one to know what they are missing. Americans have never let poor gas mileage stop them from buying a car (or truck) that is bigger or faster or somehow "better" than the economical choice.
Would love a Toyota EV but usually for significantly less I can get a Toyota hybrid with more space. Both my partner's and my vehicles are Toyota hybrid crossovers but we looked for an EV first and realized we simply couldn't justify the extreme price difference for how little our cars are driven. Really hoping when our time for a new vehicle comes we can trade in both for one reasonably priced EV crossover - so hopefully the rest of the planet can continue pushing the EV market forward while the US lags way behind.
Yeah Toyota's PHEVs are quite nice, but the price premium is too much. It basically makes no sense unless you can charge for free at work, and even then you'd have to drive 50,000 miles before it pays off. If you're like most of us and you pay for electricity at home, the inflection point is even further out. How many people even keep cars for that long anymore?
Today there isn't really a price premium for electric cars. With Gas prices being what they are the demand is naturally increasing.
Even with normal Gas prices EVs are cheaper
You are forgetting the elephant in the room: the charger at home and all the implications that brings in between costs and actual possibility of installation at all.
Ya that’s the big issues with EVs. It’s overblown in a lot of ways - it is, ultimately, just getting electricity where you park your car - but power at your overnight parking spot is a massive component of happy EV ownership and we’ve done almost nothing to help or even encourage that for apartment dwellers
You don't need a home charger to enjoy driving an EV. A home charger is a bonus to driving an EV. Do you know anyone who has ever had a "home gas pump"?
Not to mention how many people sleep on Level 1 and Level 2 charging, which are cheap or cheap as free in many homes. (Garages have had electric outlets for a long time. Some have had "dryer plugs" for nearly as long, due to power tools one might own.) Trickle charging doesn't get you to 100% overnight, but no one drives on a 100% full gas tank every morning either.
You know that's a bad faith argument. Facts are, EVs have friction and that holds back a lot of adoption, and pretending it isn't there isn't going to make it go away.
It's not a bad faith argument, it is comparing like for like. (Saying that it isn't like for like seems to me to be the more bad faith argument in 2026.) If I have a gas car with 300 miles of range I go about 297 miles safely between fill ups. If I have an EV car with 300 miles of range I can go about 297 miles safely between charges. Those are the same characteristics.
The part that isn't like for like sure is that there is an increased friction that even a "fast charger" can take a magnitude more time than a gas pump. But fast chargers are much safer and can be parallel tasked (running other errands while a charge happens) whereas gas is an explosive and requires diligent observation while refueling (despite how many people seem oblivious to all the warnings not to leave a refueling car unobserved and a long history of explosion statistics).
In my experience, fast charging time and lack of home charging ability (and under-estimation of Level 1/2 charging utility) feel like red herrings rather than actual issues. These things get talked about a lot, but the real world experience of them isn't the friction people believe it is. The biggest issues seem to be far more sociopolitical than technical to me. People have invested too much of their identities in gas. Entire political parties seem devoted to propping up gas sales for as long as possible.
It is definitely a bad faith argument. That is no friction point really that anyone considers a friction point. The charger situation though is real friction. Take yourself out of your own shoes. I will give you anecdata. I have a friend who bought a tesla with no way to charge it in their apartment. It just seems like such a pain in the ass. So many times they are on like 18% charge and wondering if the car is going to actually make it home. Or they will be about to go somewhere and realize the car isn't going to be charged enough so they call an uber. It is unreliable transport without having a home charger. A new chore you have to remember to do. A bit more mental load making that extra calculation every time you want to leave. Having to actually consider where there might be chargers that you can use and if you'd be able to reach them on your present charge.
Take all of that anecdata and replace a gas car and it is the exact same with the same mental load: I've been on 18% fuel tank and wondering if my car will actually make it home or stall out on the road. I've been about to go somewhere and realized my car isn't fueled and and called a taxi or a Lyft as faster than the detour to refuel my car.
"It's an unreliable transport without having a gas pump at home." That just sounds silly. Funnily enough that was exactly one of the early complaints of gas cars when electric cars were preferred in the very early days of cars. It was a complaint when gas pumps were rare and hard to find, or didn't exist at all yet and you were pulling gas canisters from the back of a pharmacy.
It's a more reliable transport than a gas car because I can charge at home. (I can't do that at all with gas.) It's a more reliable transport than a gas car because in a pinch I can find an outlet on the outside of my hotel and trickle charge enough to get me to the next charger. (When was the last time a hotel had canisters of gas just in case?) It's a more reliable transport than a gas car because I can find RV plugs in national parks and state parks and campgrounds far away from chargers and gas stations. (You ever see what you might get charged for a tow from a remote national park, even if that tow is just dropping off a canister of gas?)
The impression of the charger situation being more inconvenient than gas stations is already flipping and has room to flip a lot more, possibly surprisingly quickly, as gas prices rise and low margin gas pumps go out of business.
I found some data from an auto insurance association.
In US urban areas the average car is only driven 6000 miles a year. That's 115 miles a week. Someone in an urban city would only need to charge every two weeks. Friend has a Chevy Bolt in SF he parks on the street. He says it's not a problem.
I also repeat myself but I've measured how long it take to gas up a car on road trips. It's usually around 10-15 minutes. Oh sure actually filling the car is quick. But you have to drive to the gas station, fill the car, drive away from the gas station.
Costs you also pay driving to the EV charging station. 10-15 mins really? Maybe if you are taking a poop or buying a sandwich. Usually on road trips gas stations are immediately off the freeway or at major crossroads of state or county roads. You aren't really detouring to get to them.
I know precisely zero people who have EVs and do not charge them at home. The cost differential is enormous and completely changes the economics of cost per mile.
Sure, but a full gas tank gets you further than a full battery. We have friends with a long range Tesla that takes them days to charge on 120. Despite living in a city with many Teslas, and having an expensive home, apparently it would have cost too much for them to upgrade their panel to be able to charge faster. They are retired so can make do (and they have other cars that use gas).
Which is exactly the point and why it is a bonus. You can't do that with a gas car effectively or cheaply. You won't pay someone to come and install a gas service in your home or apartment with the express reason for fueling your car. That you can with an EV and would get a game changing efficiency and cost reduction is an incredible bonus.
That seems to be less of a factor today. Most batteries have hit the same or more range as comparable gas vehicles.
Some EV models already have ~600 mile range which is double their gas counterparts.
Sure, but that's to 100%. You can drive a car with less than 100% battery. A 120v charge can add as much as 40-60 miles range overnight. That's an average person's regular commute. The car might "never" be at 100% if the 120v charge is all it ever gets, but for some people they might never need a fast charge in an average week or even month.
You just plug it into the wall like a computer. I don't know why you think you need to install anything.
I don’t know about the others but Ford isn’t axing it’s EVs, it’s reworking them to make them cheaper.
It axed the F150 Lightning. They might have later announced that they're going to bring it back as an EREV (pretty much PHEV), but that seemed like a separate decision. If it were the same decision, they would have announced it at the time of the cancellation announcement, to make it seem more like a pivot.
You should really reconsider where you get your information from.
“Volkswagen reported more than 70,000 orders for its new Electric Urban Car Family within just a few weeks, while European BEV orders increased by more than 50% in Q2.”
https://www.volkswagen-group.com/en/half-yearly-financial-re...
Various OEMs have sort of soft-exited the US EV market, but that doesn't mean they're not offering the cars or stop development of them in other markets.
It just means the US market is too unattractive and low-volume for EVs that aren't a Tesla.
America, where they are pulling models. I have PHEVs and enjoy them, but I am aware that many people are not going to buy EVs with their current specs. Either they live somewhere cold, where range will fluctuate and not be sufficient at times of the year, or they live somewhere that has power outages frequently enough (or at times of emergency) that they do not consider pure EVs. This is especially true for people with only one car. Families that have multiple cars are obviously more open to having one car that's an EV.
EVs are actually great during power outages. Many have power outlets so you can run your fridge, charge devices, etc. while the power is out. Any gas station without its own backup generator will be unable to pump gas during an outage.
If you have home charging, it's more likely that you'll have a mostly full battery than that the power outage will occur when you have a mostly full tank of gas.
It's a bit more work and expense but some EVs can even act as automatic or manual whole-home power backups.
Unless you live somewhere that regularly loses power for a week+, an EV might actually be a net benefit.
Historically most of these "Whether it’s a battery EV, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, or internal combustion engine vehicle―whatever the power source" platforms have been utter ICE-first EV-distant-fourth-priority shit shows. Most of the exceptions are rather expensive.
In general, they've been pretty uninspired. That said, the Hyundai Kona/Kia Niro cousins were pretty much just "replace the engine with a motor and bolt the battery to the bottom" and those were perfectly reasonable cars for the vast majority of actual needs.
True, and it's especially interesting since Toyota I think offers some vehicles only as hybrids/PHEVs. For example, the Camry and RAV4 fall into this category, I think. It's deceptive because it makes it look like the RAV4 PHEV isn't that much more than the base model. But since the base model is already more expensive than an ICE would have been because it's a hybrid, this isn't the true differential between ICE and PHEV.
I picked up a '25 Subaru Solterra (rebadged Toyota bz4X) for a decent lease deal and while I'm surprised how little I think about the EV parts the "car parts" are dreadful.
I really need to do a write-up on the dichotomy of EV things being good (charger works, no real battery QC issues, it's a RAV4-but-EV) while all of the shared ICE parts (anything in the software stack) are riddled with bugs or head-scratching defaults.
Overall, a fine car for me, but (as much as I do not like El*n) Telsa is so significantly beyond their offerings it's hard to overstate.
EDIT:
I forgot to add but I think the cost savings for EVs can be a wash, make sure you check the following:
1.) can't charge at home / live in an apartment.
1a.) If you do install a L2 charger at home, you will significantly reduce your cost savings.
2.) you rely on fast-chargers in any significant capacity.
3.) Double check the math on any lease, loan, etc. on new EVs vs. a beater gas car. Especially if you pay an EV tax in your state or country. (Post-COVID the $2K beater car seems to have gone extinct here...)
in contrast, i bought a 2026 Subaru Uncharted, which is a clean sheet EV design, collaboration on powertrain components between Subaru and Toyota, and it's awesome. My BMW i4 xdrive 40 handled worse, had software bugs, cost about 50% more, and had a cheaper interior with truly stupid engineering choices, but you could choose from more colors. I had a clean sheet ev design i3 for about 8 years before that and it was cool.
I wonder, from your comments, and my cars, if the trick is ev-only designs, as the Solterra has various altered versions, as did the i4, whereas my i3 and Uncharted were designed only to be EVs.
edit: charging L2 at home is great, to your point.
It's weird to me because they apparently have the same issues across their gas cars that sell enormously well.
My friend with a '25 taco has issues with remote start, fob range and infotainment stability.
My friend with a '24 corolla has the same issues on his car.
maybe it's how recently the platform was designed, but who knows?!
We looked at the Solterra in 2025 and it was genuinely awful, I can't believe anyone who works at a car company looked at it and thought "this is substantially better and will sell more than the Pontiac Aztek despite aesthetically and practically being worse in many regards". The interior center console feels like a prank, almost.
I never will (also because of Elon), but this comment makes me curious to experience a Tesla. Are they really so much better? I've heard endless bad things about their build quality.
After returning a '25 Mercedes EQB (employee lease), I bought a used '23 Solterra, and it seems like a better than linear downgrade (that is, the overall experience is a bit worse, but the price is lower by more than how much worse it is). The software and interface are all completely fine, and stay out of the way of driving and Android Auto. And I'm rather glad for the lack of some of the bells and whistles, because the dashboard screen on the MB had too much going on.
I've been in my friends Model 3 many times and it's full of "oh why didn't anyone think of this before" and EV-centric choices. There's stupid stuff too (no turning stalks or shifter) but even ignoring the software choices it's really that much better of a car.
Perhaps whatever platform mine, my friends corolla and friends taco are on is just busted but I wish it had even 70% reliability of just working when I'm using anything software related.
I own very first model Y, but wouldn’t buy the facelift. Changing gears swiping touchscreen is too much despite many real improvements. Build quality is definitely not premium, but it was single electrical vehicle I was able to afford and use as a substitute for petrol car. Many others at the time were good only as 2nd or 3rd car in the household.
I had a 21 Y, and now a 26. If you actually buckle your seat belt and turn on the feature, the car will auto select the correct gear without needing to do....anything. After a short while you get used to it on the rare occasions you do need to swipe the screen to change gear. Another thing I didn't notice during test drives, is that it does actually have permanent gear shifting controls - they're just by the hazard light (not a great place to use them often, but still there).
At least for me, the 26 is so much better built and fixed the insane body roll the 21 had that I'm quite happy with it.
My wife has also been full-EV for 5 years, first with a Kia Niro EV and now with a Hyundai Ioniq 9. Those are pretty good as "real car" EVs as well, though not without their own quirks (and, unfortunately, the Ioniq 9 recently had to have the ICCU replaced, as Hyundai still seemingly hasn't figured that problem out over the years).
I've had not a single "quality issue" with my Model 3 other than the cabin air filter. The car interior stinks worse than any other car I've owned, if it isn't replaced on time! I too have heard a ton of bad things on Reddit. Then I went on the subreddits where people actually owned them. Those folks really seemed to like their cars. I can't say I LOVE the car... removing turn signals, wiper controls and ability to physically shift into reverse seem like brain-dead moves. Otherwise though? It's a lovely care to drive.
Is it or is it not the best-selling vehicle to date? Should be pretty simple to determine.
The main question is whether to count the Corolla at all, given that it's changed so much over the years. The original VW Beetle at ~21M and minimally changed from 1938 to 2003 has a strong claim.
It's not. The Honda Super Cub is the top selling motor vehicle in the world, with 60 million produced in 2008 alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Super_Cub
You're wrong. The best-selling vehicle is the Flying Pigeon bicycle, the standard bicycle from Mao-era China with more than 500 million produced since 1950.
Why couldn't it just look like a Corolla
I want an electric Supra.
Nobody's making good lightweight superfast electric sportscars except for Kia (EV6 GT, 600hp). That car is amazing but the interior is super-cheap and Kia failed to "do the Acura thing" that made the NSX respectable (it isn't a "Honda NSX").
The Porsche Taycan is an absolute boat, an old man's car, the thing weighs a ton. Handling is terrible, center of mass is way above the axles. BMW electrics are the same. Mercedes doesn't even have an electric performance car. The German car companies are really just "mailing it in" when it comes to electic sportscars; they refuse to actually try to build a good one.
Tesla Model S isn't much better and is discontinued.
Other than the $250k+ upcoming roadster and the $60k EV6 GT (cheap cloth seats, no leather option, Kia badge) there's really nothing out there that handles well. Pretty huge gap in the market there.
The EV6 GT is a 1550mm tall crossover SUV-coupe weighing almost 4900 lbs with 577 hp, but is more of a young man's sports car than a 1380mm tall sedan weighing 100 lbs more but approaching twice the power? Seems sensible.
You clearly haven't driven both.
Who cares if the roof is higher off the ground? The EV6's center of mass is much lower than the Porsche's.
The EV6 GT suspension is vastly superior, and it's active electronic; the Taycan just toggles between two settings ("normal" and "high-clearance" for going over speed bumps).
The EV6 GT's rear differential has electronic control; you can feel it when you take freeway turns at >80mph -- your brain tells you "the rear wheels should be fishtailing"... but they just don't. It's crazy. I think they actually factor in the steering wheel position, something you can't do with a simple mechanical differential. I've never felt anything like that in any other car.
But it still has the Kia badge. And the cheap interior. It's a shame; they could've used this car to launch an "Acura"-like brand with the EV6 GT as their NSX.
Still, Porsche should be embarrassed of the Taycan. That car is a joke.
"But it still has the Kia badge. And the cheap interior. It's a shame; they could've used this car to launch an "Acura"-like brand with the EV6 GT as their NSX."
Isn't that kinda what the Genesis GV60 is supposed to be? Granted it doesn't have the same HP as the EV6 GT, AFAIK....
If they would bring a barebones electric station wagon to the US that would be heavenly.
Toyota wants to show nobody wants EVs by making EVs nobody wants.
Judging from the prototype Toyota is clearly not serious about actually producing this ev version.
Any design of a future car with manual controls is already obsolete or admitting they have no autonomy stack.
Been waiting for this and a plug-in hybrid Corolla with at least 50 mile electric range. Would be a game changer.
The car is too low to the ground.
One of the things that really frustrated me about my Tesla Model 3 was how low it was. I would "look up" at Ford Fusions and other sedans on the road.
In contrast, my Model Y isn't an SUV. It's the height (and ground clearance) of what we used to call sedans, and really feels like a sedan instead of an SUV.
Why does every car manufacturer peddle these overly complex designs with massive displays, a futuristic aesthetic, etc?
People drive Corollas because they're cheap and reliable. Give me that with an electric motor.
That's what the market expects from an EV
This is what the market is being told to expect from an EV.
The Dacia Spring is what the market actually seems to want:
https://www.dacia.co.uk/hybrid-and-electric-range/spring-cit...
It's a car, not an Autobot.
How do you know if there isn't a sensible car to compare it with? Nobody wants something that looks like a tesla
I'm holding on to my gas vehicle as long as I can because I really don't like the hybrid sad spaceship noise. I guess I could get it and disable the speaker but then that might void the warranty. The mechanic I go to tells me I can absolutely disable it and they will do it for me but they caution that it will void a warranty. I will continue to drive my old car until it falls apart.
Just another ugly car. These days they all look like angry vacuum cleaners.