Kenny Chaffin

2024-04-15 15:27:21

♲ @xanni@diaspora.glasswings.com:

The anti-EV brigade are pushing plug-in hybrids. But electric is still the future

Despite continued strong sales, there’s no denying the negativity surrounding the U.S. battery electric vehicle (BEV) industry as of late.
This has pundits casting about for alternatives, and some have ended up at a not-so-novel solution: plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs for short.

Among the most prominent is a recent Washington Post editorial arguing that the U.S. government needs to do more to support PHEVs rather than put all its eggs in the BEVs basket. This is seriously misguided and leaves the wrong impression about current government support. Let’s clear things up.

In reading the Post editorial, you might worry that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s multi-pollutant standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles, released on March 20, 2024, in some way require BEVs or that somehow PHEVs don’t count toward the standards.

Neither is true. EPA’s standards are technology neutral and can be met by automakers using a combination of technologies from BEVs to more efficient regular gas cars, as we explain in another blog post.

That PHEVs count toward the standards is underscored by EPA’s own modeling, released with the rule, which shows that the least-cost compliance pathway for automakers includes a 13% PHEV sales share in 2032.