If you're familiar with electric vehicles, hybrids, and such, you can just skip this section. Or, more commonly, make it home without having to find somewhere to charge.īut, on the flip side, it uses a far smaller battery pack than pure battery electrics - and it makes far better use of that pack! Once the battery runs out, the gas motor kicks on, and you can drive it across the country on gas. When you set off, you run in a pure electric mode for the battery range - 20-60 miles, depending on which version you have and the outside temperature. This means that you plug the car in at night (or during the day) to charge the main battery. The Gen 2 (2016-2019) upgrades to about a 50 mile battery only range, a larger gas engine, and a different transmission design, but works out to the same thing - some battery range and then a gasoline engine for longer travel. The Gen 1 Volt (2011-2015) has a 30-40 mile battery only range in the summer - plus a decent little gasoline engine and a useful gas tank (9 gallons) that can run it down the highway pretty much as long as you can find a gas station every few hundred miles. It's somewhere between a pure electric car and a hybrid - but, in reality, it's far better than either! probably half a dozen terms I've seen over the years. The Volt, on the other hand, is a "plug in hybrid," a "series hybrid," a "range extended electric vehicle," or. It's confusion for the sake of confusion as far as I'm concerned. And some marketing people at Chevy should be strung up for that bit of cutesy confusion, because it doesn't help anyone. If you're not familiar with the Volt, you may be in the process of confusing it with the Bolt - which is also a Chevy product. Plus, they depreciate like mad (just like all other electric cars), so you can get one cheaper than you might think! I think it's the "sweet spot" for electric transportation at this point in time, I think it's rather significantly more environmentally friendly than a pure BEV for most use cases, and I think that, for most people, it's a really, really good car and highly worth considering if you're interested in cheap, (slightly) environmentally friendly car transportation. For the electric crowd there’s the 2020 Hyundai Ioniq Electric, which now has more range and a larger battery-though we’re hoping Hyundai adds a longer-range plug-in hybrid to the mix.Since it's my blog and I can post what I want, I've decided to talk about the Volt for a while. On the other hand, it’s designed for those who want to increase their efficiency by plugging in, not for those who want to stay completely electric for a distance and then go hybrid. It drives well and skips the convoluted range and efficiency displays of some PHEVs in favor of conventional analog gauges, and it doesn’t have the confusing charge-restoring mode of some models. The Hyundai Ioniq Plug-In Hybrid is a great pick for those who want super efficiency but don’t want it to be the presence at all times. And as Green Car Reports has found in multiple driving experiences, it shows-with a decidedly sportier driving experience, albeit with a few more hiccups in gentler driving. Hyundai sets up its dedicated hybrid models, the Ioniq hatchback and Niro crossover, differently than Toyota’s Prius-placing one large motor between the engine and the input shaft of the transmission. In today’s market, looking at 20 models that have been rated by the EPA at the time of writing, here are the models that offer the most range: For all the complexity that automakers are introducing with a plug-in hybrid, Green Car Reports has long argued that there should be more battery.īeware that for some of these models, actually extracting anything close to the claimed all-electric range requires specific conditions, driving modes, or just a very, very gentle right foot. If this sounds a little bit like a grievance, well, it is. And plug-in hybrids seem to have only gleaned a small portion of the advantages that have doubled or tripled feasible range for EVs in just a few years-the Nissan Leaf from 84 EPA-rated miles to 226 miles (for the Plus) in just four model years, for instance. In today’s market, several automakers like Volkswagen and GM have completely abandoned plug-in hybrids, while only a handful of PHEV models are actually able to handle the average American roundtrip commute of about 32 miles without tailpipe emissions.
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