Here’s a wild stat to start out the day: There are 41 plug-in hybrid (PHEV) models on sale in the United States. You know how many regular hybrid (HEV) models there are? Just 39. And, yet, HEVs are dramatically outselling PHEVs, as are electric cars. What’s the deal?
Not to get full-on Seinfeldian, but what’s the deal with Jaguar? They’re supposed to be going all-in on electric cars and are basically no longer making anything until that transition happens. And, have you ever noticed that Stellantis is in trouble with everyone? There’s something going on there, though dealers are now starting to like what they hear.
That’s one group that’s feeling better about the company, but even President Biden’s Press Secretary is chiming in on the promises Stellantis is making. GET OUT!
The Biggest Reason Why PHEVs Are Not Working Out
I like PHEVs. I think they’re a totally reasonable solution and a good transition technology. Unfortunately, PHEVs in the United States are not good enough. We’ve covered this before, but the ranges of most PHEVs in the United States are too low.
Here’s a list of vehicles and ranges:
- Jeep Wrangler 4xe: 22 miles
- Ford Escape plug-in: 37 miles
- Chrysler Pacifica PHEV: 32 miles
- Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe: 26 miles
- Hyundai Tucson PHEV: 33 miles
- Hyundai Santa Fe PHEV: 31 miles
- BMW X5 xDrive45e: 31 miles
- BMW 330e: 23 miles
- Toyota Prius Prime: 44 miles
- Lexus RX450H+: 37 miles
The big Lexus and Toyota Prius Prime are, maybe, good enough. The Volvo S60 Recharge is also ok at 41 miles. Anything significantly under 40 miles isn’t great, as it’s barely enough to go to work and back.
Because of the development time involved in making a car, a new car you see on the road now was likely first planned at least three years ago and probably more like four or five. This means most of the PHEVs out today were conceived back when automakers assumed: a higher take-rate for EVs than we’ve had; the old version of tax credits; charging infrastructure was bad; and BEVs are very expensive.
With the exception of the infrastructure assumption, almost every forecast has been wrong in some way. EV adoption has lagged, new tax credits currently work against buying most PHEVs, and many new EVs are expensive but the best EVs remain reasonably cheap.
In fact, a new study from JD Power shows that PHEVs are now way more expensive than HEVs and BEVs:
PHEVs are significantly more expensive to purchase than BEVs or HEVs. The average customer-facing transaction price (CFTP),for a PHEV in the compact SUV category is $48,700. That compares with an average CFTP of $37,700 for a HEV and $36,900 for a BEV in the compact SUV category.
This is actually the first study I’ve seen that shows BEVs are lower in price than hybrids, which I think reflects the model mix (hybrid trucks, Toyotas that rarely get discounted) and the fact that the Tesla-led price war and tax credits have driven BEV prices down a lot. I reached out to JD Power to find out if this includes leases, which would definitely pull the BEV number down.
Understandably, expensive PHEVs with a limited range aren’t exactly popular with customers. From the same study:
Overall customer satisfaction with PHEVs has been significantly lower than BEVs. Overall satisfaction with PHEVs is 669 (on a 1,000-point scale), while mass market BEVs (716) and premium BEVs (738) score significantly higher.
Not great! This might explain why the graphic above shows that there are now 60 BEVs, 41 PHEVs, and 39 HEVs on sale currently and, yet, HEVs are the most popular non-ICE vehicle followed by BEVs and PHEVs.
It doesn’t have to be this way! In China, there are PHEVs with real range (like the nearly 100-mile Chevy Equniox PHEV) and, even better, Range-Extended Electric Vehicles (REVs) that are EVs first and have a small gasoline generator, a la the i3, to provide more range in a pinch. The closest we’re getting is the Ram Ramcharger, which is a potentially game-changing product.
PHEVs are still a good idea, but the fact that there are 41 models on sale and they only cover 1.9% of the market means that all that product investment went to a tiny market that everyone is fighting over.
Jaguar Gets A New Strategist
The wild thing about Jaguar is that the entire company has paused production for a number of months as it makes the switch to an all-EV future. It’s just not making cars. Jaguar dealers have a ton of inventory, of course, so this doesn’t seem to be an issue right now.
With most automakers walking back their plans for complete electrification, I’m curious to see if this plan holds. Jaguar has the one advantage of being connected to Land Rover, which isn’t going full EV quite as soon.
All this talk about stopping production to assume that Jaguar was being killed off, a rumor that seems even more illogical in light of the news that Jaguar is mixing up its C-Suite with a heavy hitter according to Automotive News:
The automaker has hired Swarna Ramanathan as chief strategy officer from consultants McKinsey, where she was a leader in the company’s automotive and assembly division. Prior to that she worked at General Motors as an engineer.
Ramanathan takes over from Andrea Debbane, who did the job on an interim basis. Debbane gives up responsibility for strategy and continues in her role as JLR’s chief sustainability officer.
Both report to CEO Adrian Mardell.
There are a bunch of other people who swapped jobs, too, but I just want to reiterate that Jaguar isn’t going anywhere. It’s possible the EV sedan they’re going to show later this year is going to suck and they’ll be going in the wrong direction, but that’s still going somewhere.
Stellantis Makes Dealers Feel Better
The vibes at Stellantis have been bad, with everyone getting mad at the company. Suppliers, governments, workers, customers, and dealers have all been more than a little ticked off. The company badly needs to sell more cars in North America, so its first move seems to be an attempt to placate the same dealers who called the company a “disaster” in an open letter earlier this year.
So far, the application seems to be working.
“They’re coming ready to work with us, and not the previous approach, which was, ‘Figure out a way to get it done,'” Farrish, a Virginia dealer, said Wednesday.
The dealer-company gathering, which occurs every few months, centered on Stellantis’ Auburn Hills headquarters on Tuesday and involved 21 dealer council members and key executives like newly-appointed North America leader Antonio Filosa, who also heads the Jeep brand.
What does working with dealers look like? According to the report, that means putting dealer profitability front and center, trying to better understand North American consumer preferences, giving out better incentives, and killing the unpopular program that tied incentives to ordering more cars.
Well, that should just about solve it.
Everyone Else Is Still Kinda Mad At Stellantis
In full fairness to Stellantis, if it was my call I would also try to make the dealers happy first. There’s no use designing cars, making cars, or getting government incentives for cars if your front line isn’t on board. It’s full triage mode at Stellantis.
The workers are mad because they think part of the Stellantis triage plan involves cutting them out of agreements they’ve already made. The current White House doesn’t love this.
On Wednesday, Jean-Pierre said the administration applauded the UAW and Stellantis “for coming together after hard, good faith … negotiations, and also reaching a historic agreement that secured record raises, greater retirement security and investment in the future.” She noted that the agreement included “a commitment to reopen and expand production in communities that were devastated by previous plant closures.”
“What we want to see is Stellantis certainly deliver on those commitments to the UAW and to the communities that have long supported the industry. That’s what we want to see, and so we want Stellantis to keep their commitment,” she said.
That seems like a nice way of saying “There’s no way we have your back” to Stellantis if it tries to walk away from its plans.
Site Update
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What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
After yesterday’s inclusion of Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah” someone in the Discord (shout out Funkthulu) mentioned that a true artist created a version where it’s the tune matched to the lyrics of “Baby Got Back” by Sir-Mix-A-Lot and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t kinda work. Even though “Hallelujah” has become a song meant to convey peace, it’s really still just a song about humping.
The Big Question
How many miles should a PHEV have? Should we just ditch PHEVs for REVs?
Aren’t PHEVs simply for increasing MPGs (while hiding the cost in one’s electric bill)?
“Electric-only Range” doesn’t seem to be the stat that should be used.
Check the MPG on a Prius vs Prius Prime. Work out the difference in number of miles used per year. Decide whether the increased initial price (minus expected sale price) is worth it. Done.
I mean, get an EV if Electric-Only Range is the major concern. But first, do the math.
Damn, Abe Froman, sausage king of Chicago, beat me to it.
We own an X5 45e. It gets around 35 miles in warm weather and 28 in the cold of electric range. Is it enough for us? Absolutely. Our last tank of gas lasted 1400 miles. Get over the “I drive more than 30 miles every day” and realize that you’re saving 30 miles of gas per day. We fill up roughly once per month. It saves us 3 fill ups per month, at $80 each that works to $240/month and $2850/year.
I don’t recall the price delta of the 40i to 45e, but it wasn’t much.
I had started a job with my current employer and then initially bought a Sportage hybrid to replace an older car, but thanks to the corporate lease program was able to pick up a lightly used Hyundai Tucson PHEV instead for less money than I got back for the Sportage after dumping it on Carvana.
I was looking for a non PHEV, but at the time they only had the regular gas Tucson or the PHEV and so it’s worked out well as a primarily EV around town to and from work, in good weather typically exceeds the advertised all electric range for air-conditioning off with the air conditioning on.
The range is sufficient for 1.5 round trips to work if it’s only driven there and back, can fully charge overnight on 110V or in less than 3 hours at the level 2 chargers at work and it’s still at 83% full of gasoline since April on the same tank.
More than 2071 miles mostly electric on the current tank, but with the ability to refuel in minutes and drive 2-300+ miles at a shot like on the cross country trip from California back to the Midwest.
Would have had to ship an EV home vs road tripping the PHEV in a 4 day weekend.
Technically I can also get away with an EV as the second vehicle as I do test cars for work that are full Electric as our primary family car is an Escape Hybrid, but I still prefer the convenience of the dual power trains.
The only thing I wish they would have implemented was to use a heat pump instead of just the electric a/c compressor or to allow it to function as one as in cold weather it’s no longer able to run in EV only if the cabin heat demand is more than can be managed by the heated seats and heated rear window.
“Anything significantly under 40 miles isn’t great, as it’s barely enough to go to work and back.”
What’s special about 40 miles and when did that distance become a delineation of what is or isn’t great?
Plugin-hybrids are currently kinda useless unless you really care about having zero emissions on your daily commute (or want to virtue-signal as such) or if you just really hate pumping gas.
They’re so much more expensive it will take you forever to make up the difference. You are paying for a full EV drivetrain and a full gas drivetrain.
A full Ev with a range extender that can just buzz away at its optimum RPM with no transmission to deal with is a much better idea.
We got Bev’s, Hevs and Phevs oh my. That really hit my Wizard of Oz button. It’s good that Stellantis and the UAW got an agreement but with historic raises I hope they got quality commitments from the union. No matter what you put out crap build all that money is going away and plants will close.
A PHEV makes a lot of sense for me, but use case and so forth basically makes the Prius Prime about the only option that’d work. The difference in price between it and the regular Prius make me question the economics of it. But I’m still shopping, buy time is likely in the early spring, so who knows what deals are going to be there once I get to that point.
I think part of the PHEV issue is that they aren’t very good yet. For most companies new to the game, they have all of the issues of gas and all the issues of EV’s. Hybrid’s have been around for 20 years and they’re more reliable. Consumer reports has been covering this issue. Toyota/ Lexus and BMW make the most reliable PHEV’s right now.
Some genius modified Hallelujah!
hahahahhaha
Can someone explain to me again why JLR cancelled the supposedly fully-developed XJ EV?
And if Stellantis doesn’t know what consumers want – Perhaps they shouldn’t be in the car business?
Same reason Stellantis cancelled the fully-developed Airflow, they’re morons who’d rather squander valuable brand equity than enhance it
Also,I’d suspect that a large percentage of Stellantis management does know perfectly well what consumers want, just not the ones at the very top in Hoofddorp, who make the ultimate spending decisions.
I listened to this version of “Baby Got Back” yesterday while working. Great minds . . .
Wouldn’t this be wholly dependent on how far you live from your work?
Yes it might work for about 12 people.
In my 28 years in the workforce, I’ve never had a roundtrip commute of 22 miles or more. And even if I did, 22 miles of running on electric is a lot better than 0 miles. Especially if there was another gas shortage and whichever economically illiterate knucklehead wins the election implements fuel rationing again.
The average daily travel in the US is 42 miles, which means there is a lot of people under that.
Regarding Stellantis and their dealers… “ trying to better understand North American consumer preferences, “
Yeah… surrrre they are. How long have they been at selling vehicles to the public? And they STILL “don’t know”?
Nah… the truth is they just care about making a sale and pushing people into buying what they have… ‘customer preferences’ be damned…
“According to the report, that means putting dealer profitability front and center, trying to better understand North American consumer preferences, giving out better incentives, and killing the unpopular program that tied incentives to ordering more cars.”
Hmmm… that sounds more like they’re focusing on ‘dealer preferences’ rather than ‘customer preferences’.
Because you know what I think most customers would rather see? They’d likely rather see those sky-high MSRP’s that were jacked up over the pandemic period to be brought back down to Earth.
A more reasonable MSRP is better than a high MSRP with a bunch of ‘cash back’ that you may or may not get after the fact, depending on your negotiating skills.
Of course doing that means they have to give up on their fantasy that pandemic-shortage-profit-margins will go on forever.
“How many miles should a PHEV have?”
I say at least 40 miles or 65km. That should be enough range to do my daily commute even at highway speeds with the heater on in the winter.
My C-Max Energi has half that and thus, I have enough range to get to work on a cold day, but not enough to get home.
“Should we just ditch PHEVs for REVs?”
Nah… PHEVs are useful for some use cases and they enable automakers to extend the life of the ICE-related investments they made in the past. So I see them as a good interim measure.
I agree on your Stellantis take. I also think they would be in the most advantageous place if they went in on it now instead of tweaking it a little bit by week. It’s and old platform costs are covered all the Stellantis vehicles should be the cheapest in their class, their really old class. Like Curly from the Simpsons held back so many times his kid is in the same class.
I maintain that there’s no meaningful difference. A REV is just a PHEV with a bigger battery.
I’m not entirely convinced a 100 mile PHEV is the right path either though. One of the reasons PHEVs are more expensive is that they have to pay for a much bigger battery than a plain hybrid, but they also have to pay for the drivetrain of an ICE. If you want to make them affordable, a smaller battery is a big step in that direction.
What needs to happen is for people to stop focusing on electric range exclusively and look at TCO. Even if your PHEV can’t do your full commute on battery, it’s still going to get drastically better overall mileage than a plain hybrid. The important thing is reducing fuel usage in a package that people can afford to buy. That’s why plain hybrids are so popular.
I’ve been driving just BEVs for years now, including a used Bolt that got a new battery, due to that recall (any 2017 – 2021 model has a still very “new-ish” battery for that reason — and can sometimes be found for around $10k *before* rebate!). I don’t know why people are so impressed with hybrids on this site. They still need oil and gas and in addition to smog checks. They have the complexity of two drive-trains.
Bubble butts? Hallelujah!