EVs, Hybrids, and Pistons

All three types of vehicle were produced in the automobile's infancy, and all three are completely different than any vehicle from the nineteenth century. Since electricity was only available in the larger cities, by the 1930s gasoline, a waste product of lamp oil production available in any hardware store, was the energy source of the day. But things change in over a century.
The electric vehicle (EV) and hybrid, the combination of an EV and a piston vehicle, are back. Here are the advantages of each.
 
Gasoline vehicles and diesels, vehicles with pistons, are mostly cheaper to buy than EVs and hybrids. EVs produced by the existing automakers only make them for the government fuel economy mandates and are all larger cars or muscle cars that formerly had V-8s. Put a big electric motor in one and your fifteen miles per gallon mileage instantly jumps to infinite miles per gallon. The hybrid has all of the parts of both EVs and pistons, except for a transmission; the electric motor replaces it. As a result of no transmission, its drive train has fewer moving parts. But unlike EVs and hybrids, piston vehicles have been around for over a human lifetime and used ones are cheap and plentiful, while used EVs and hybrids are rare.
The automakers don't want cheap EVs. The piston drive train is an incredibly complex, inefficient, unreliable Rube Goldberg device with thousands of moving parts to wear and break, guaranteeing a dealer to junkyard gravy train for the manufacturer, while an EV's drive train is an electric motor with one moving part. They're not about to give up that parts business easily, but if they don't, they'll die like the buggy makers died a century ago. The last buggy maker was Studebaker, who started putting engines on their buggies.
Gasoline beats the EV when traveling, because traveling is difficult to impossible with EVs at the present time. There simply aren't nearly enough charging stations along interstates, and a large proportion of those that exist have been vandalized by the people whose livelihoods are threatened by EVs; automakers, parts stores, mechanics, and the oil industry. Kids, too; kids are always tearing stuff up, and unlike gas stations, public chargers often have no one watching.
Pistons also have an advantage because many charging station companies idiotically demand that you use their app, which is impossible if you're not getting cell service. And imagine needing an app to buy gasoline at most gas stations, a different app for each brand? This should be against the law! Your credit card should work to pay for fuel. I won't let anyone borrow my wallet, but I'll let them borrow my phone, and I'll be damned if I use my phone for a wallet! What the hell are those morons thinking??
 
Hybrids are more expensive than the same class of piston vehicle, but you can buy smaller ones that are almost as inexpensive as the piston counterpart.
They are far more inexpensive to operate than piston cars. It costs twenty bucks in gasoline to go from here to Columbia and back in a gasoline car, my friend there with a hybrid pays six dollars in gas. Far cheaper. However, it has none of any of the other advantages of pure EVs. They still have the same Rube Goldberg drive train, although hybrids usually don't need a transmission. You still have all of the expensive routine maintenance, so the automakers are betting on them with fingers crossed.
 
The Electric Vehicle is more expensive to buy, as mentioned, but its drive train is an electric motor with one moving part. An EV's drive train needs no more maintenance than a ceiling fan, its maintenance is mostly tires, wiper blades and fluid, and brakes.
Those brakes are an advantage over piston cars because there are actually two sets, the traditional friction brakes, and engine braking known by its euphemism "regenerative braking", so named because rather than converting motion to heat, it converts it to electricity. Your brake pads will seldom touch the disks unless you're stopped. That dual set of brakes makes my EV stop quicker than any car I've ever driven, and I've been driving since 1968. Some fear the disks rusting from disuse, but cars set unused for years, and though its gasoline engine needs work, the brakes are fine.
Part of the braking is, ironically, probably the extra weight; EVs weigh roughly twice what a piston car weighs, and that weight keeps the tires from sliding. As that huge weight is all under the passenger compartment, it has a wildly low center of gravity, making it handle better than any car I've ever driven.
Not having that big Rube Goldberg contraption with its thousands of moving parts, the drive train and battery are far smaller than a piston car or a hybrid, making it much roomier. My back seats have more leg room than any sedan I've ever seen except for the '59 Checker my dad had when I was a kid.
I would probably still be driving a piston car if full service gas stations still existed. I bought it because I hated standing in the snow freezing while it fueled. Now, rather than a stop for gas I just pull into my driveway, plug it in, and go inside the house.
In the morning when it's cold enough to freeze a lead-acid battery, unlike a piston car there's no starter to require a jump. The battery doesn't freeze in an EV, although temperatures below freezing will limit your mileage as reported by the vehicle.
You have heat before you're out of the driveway, instead of after you're already at your destination, like a piston car tortures you with.
There's no sound or vibration with an EV, no exploding fuel to make noise, or pistons jumping up and down making it vibrate. Some consider the lack of noise a downside to EVs. Those are the boys the old men called "whippersnappers," young men have always loved speed and noise.
The EV is to the piston car what a Model-T was to a horse. I've been driving since 1968 and I'll not buy another piston car, they're just too much hassle and trouble and have no advantages that will still be there in a decade.
3/15/2024