Shocking News: The Resurgence of Plug-in Hybrids!
There’s some fantastic news out of Detroit you guys I don’t know if you heard plug-in hybrids are back baby yeah we’ve got some terrible news on that front uh but let’s have a quick chat about it and what it actually means I’m Brian welcome to my Tesla
Weekend joining me all the way from Sunny Canada is Mark from the Tesla life uh he’s uh a two-time GM hybrid owner he’s got some insights and some perspectives Mark how are you my friend doing very well Brian thanks for having me on today yeah it’s
Exciting i’ I’ve been on your show a couple times now once or twice and uh if you guys haven’t checked out the Tesla life it is the biggest little channel on the internet uh they do amazing work and could use some love uh so uh Mark tell
Me real quick uh the Vault versus the bolt clear it up a v versus a b uh difference basically is the uh amount of battery uh the volt has a small battery about uh about 18 and a half 19 kilowatt hours uh the the bolt with a B uh certainly a
Much larger battery and of course the volt with a v v is in Victor uh it had a gasoline backup generator so that would uh allow the vehicle if you ran out of battery juice to seamlessly switch over to the generator it would fire and start sending electricity to the uh motor
Itself so it allowed the car to continue driving at whatever speed you were driving and the RPM would kick up and down depending on how much of a of a a push you were putting on the car but uh it would it would be able to switch
Seamlessly now does that make it a hybrid or a range extender or does there does it matter is there a difference I guess I guess the difference would be that um I would say that this was more of a a range extender in the fact that
Unlike a hybrid where a system like say a Toyota Prius is a classic hybrid the gasoline motor was always there for assist it would help you if you pressed hard into the accelerator uh it would kick on and produce a little more energy uh than just the battery and uh with the
Volt if you had juice in the battery it didn’t matter how hard you pressed on the car it would just use the juice in the battery so that gasoline motor could sit unused and it common commonly did for me for 42 days before it had to do
An engine maintenance mode so I was burning like zero gas with this car I thought it was the best trick that GM had ever done because it didn’t have to access the motor until you actually were out of battery juice and if you could do your normal route within let’s say uh 60
Some miles uh around town you would never burn gas so it it seemed to be a great invention when it came out and at the time uh there was a the charging infrastructure was very poor uh so it was not not necessarily a bad idea at the time and if the mineral sourcing
Requirement says we have got to get the batteries made domestically I guess it’s better to have three to five maybe 10 cars with a small battery domestically sourced rather than one or two uh sourced as pure electric now I’m obviously on the all electric train as
It were uh but uh what what is this new announcement from GM tell us about that yeah GM uh has indicated that hybrids are back on the table for them because it seems that there’s a bit of a supply problem when it comes to them receiving batteries to make
Bevs um it’s again speculation on my part I’m not a GM Insider or anything but it it looks like uh they’re trying to bring some hybrids back into the mix because they’re not going to be able to produce a lot of bevs and of course we’ve seen that lately with their amount
Of um pure electric vehicles that they’ve been exporting from factories it’s been fairly low it’s been shockingly low if you look the bolt in 2023 was the third bestselling EV model in the US but it came in at something like 1th of the model 3 17th something
Abysmal like that and closer to on10th of the model y uh so the spread between Tesla and everybody else’s so far quite quite ridiculous um what is your uh thought on on hybrids in today’s Tech you know environment is this is this a good thing a bad thing no news at all
Well it’s kind of a mixed bag I I think that hybrids uh the time for hybrids has already left us I think we’ve gone by that but I do look at the fact that GM is having issues getting materials to make bevs and I would suggest that making a
Hybrid over making strictly gasoline vehicles would be a plus over that but uh as honestly the the the whole industry’s moved on to completely battery vehicles but if GM can’t get batteries this is maybe a half measure that could help them a bit and this this seems to be all
They can do and I would agree I am not a fan of hybrids having twice the drivetrain for the same amount of uh go go power is not ideal but if the choice is pure gas or or no bevs which I mean that’s the what we’re facing this is
Better than nothing um and there are people who will only who are brand loyal who will only buy a GM or a Ford or or what have you and for them I guess this is something and there are still people who have an irrational uh bit of range
Anxiety and it would be great for people like that uh like you were saying you had times if you had had range anxiety at the time you could have looked at those 42 days and said I’ve I’ve never needed more than what did you what did
You have 50 miles 100 miles of range yeah yeah about 100 I’m sorry about about 60 miles of range and I’ll tell you there are I live an hour from the nearest city it is less than once a week that I need to go more than 50 miles in
A day a normal around town trip for me is 3 4% of my battery at most so for me that would remain a battery vehicle um there there are concerns that people have where I know Bears Workshop in Arizona has a number of uh plug-in hybrid Chrysler pacificas they are never
Plugged in he doesn’t have the space to do it they are managed at a parking lot at the airport the airport does not have that facility does not have the capacity to deal with they barely can handle the turo owners as it is they certainly are
Not going to be shuffling cars around to put in 40 cents of juice per vehicle that doesn’t make sense yeah but at the same time you do have uh vastly better gas mileage than on a strictly uh electric uh strictly gas vehicle and you’re not burning gas at
Idle at stop lights the way you would in a in in a lot of gas cars some of them have the interrupt now where they stalled out when you come to the light people drivers find that very unsettling and well they should for those of us who
Have driven more than a few years your car sputtering out at a stoplight really increas you’re wondering what’s going on what have I done this is a problem oh no it’s fine it’s fine one other thing I should mention is that uh back in the
Hybrid days when I had the Chevy volts I would say that it allowed people to drive electric the vast majority of time and it also was a bit of a gateway drug it it almost became a game in the Chevy bold as to how many kilometers or mile I
Could put on the vehicle without it kicking on the gas engine and it it it always strived me to get more and more EV range more and more so you know what the next car I bought it was a Tesla complete uh battery car and I left the
Hybrid behind and I’ll tell you if you’re going to gamify it like that it’s good that you move to Canada because you’re always going to get more kilometers Than Miles yeah I just DED the Buffalo and I can I can just see the range just Dro right up
Um that’s how that works I am told um now what are your what are your power rates like where you live and your gas prices ah the uh Power rates here in Southern Ontario uh are sitting at about 12 cents kilowatt hour okay somewhere in that area and the gasoline prices uh
We’re talking about uh this point about a buck 50 per liter so that would be 3.8 times a buck 50 and you get a gallon equivalent yeah so about 550 is I’m I’m thinking yeah and I was told there’ be no math on this show so I’m sorry about that I don’t
Know who told you that I don’t have a Booker and I know very well I said it was going to be all math and that there would be a quiz at the end and it would be comprehensive uh yeah the cumulative tests are the one that get you and what
I tried to explain explain to my kids when they were in school was life is cumulative so it is heay pay attention uh you never know which parts of school my my son even said you know high school algebra when am I going to use this in
My like how often do you use it and I said every day my spreadsheets that is all high school algebra so I use it I use it I’m still I those are among the few teachers that I remember well because they seared into my brain it was traumatic
Experience so we’ve seen some delays getting domestic battery production up and running I’ve seen people who’ve said Tesla should have focused on the compact before the Cyber Tru and my response to that is there aren’t enough batteries for the compact the compact is going to is expected to be a very high production
Very high volume vehicle and even the Cyber truck even at very low numbers they’ve only got a couple weeks of spare batteries uh pre-built so it’s not like we could just do that um do you see a big advantage to spreading those batteries out among hybrids U obviously
In a perfect world we’d like all cars to be electric tomorrow there there ain’t enough batteries to do that there are enough batteries to cover what we’re already doing and there are enough batteries to expand it a bit but we couldn’t go 100% electric today is that
Good thing I mean again it’s it’s better than nothing we’re as mentioned there are GM does not have enough batteries to make everything electric if they’re going to have anything uh apply for some of the credit from uh the IRA uh they’re going to require uh the ability to have
Some hybrids on the road and apparently that’s what they’ve decided uh that they’re going to do as they say hybrids are back on the table um it’s it’s it’s kind of unfortunate but like we’ve said it’s better than nothing it is I agree I
I am not a fan of half measures but it if it is I you know I will take uh pretty good over terrible any day yeah and I guess that means that you and I are now shills for Big Oil how’s it feel Mark are you proud of yourself look at
What you’ve dragged me into yes I’m proud myself it’s it’s it’s a it’s a wonderful feeling Brian absolutely I had a video the other day where I said version 12 of of autopilot of fstd beta version 12 may be may be the solution it may be it the videos
We’ve seen inconclusive so far but promising and people said I thought you liked Tesla what what are you talking about uh so NE negative I don’t know why you’re having this discussion okay okay You’ got to look at the reality of things like like the the world is not
Perfect it will never be perfect and we are always we are always riding between good and bad and every the world’s gray it’s not black it’s not white it’s gray and there are different Shades of Gray and that holds true in all these conversations you have to tell the truth
You you’re telling it what you believe is happening what you see from your own eyes right and it’s it’s you know I would much rather hear an honest review as opposed to someone that’s being fanboyish and just speling the company line and that’s it I want I want to know
What the real thing is I am cautiously optimistic on a lot of fronts where caution is warranted but optimism is also warranted and if anybody wants just now on your show so for those who haven’t seen the test of life and I’m sure you all have uh every week they do
An hour of all the news and they will cover the good and the bad they will they will dig into it and and actually get um you’ve said things that are uh that I’m sure the ultra fans would find would find much much too bearish uh and
Of course the haters would find much too bullish and that’s what’s important if you if you just want a cheerleader um let’s just start I I don’t know making uh music videos about how awesome every I mean that’s just ridiculous what are we doing at that point uh exactly you
Got to be able like if there’s if there’s no uh constructive criticism of what’s going on how are we expected to get anything better like it’s you just you just ride the company line the mistakes have been made mistakes mes are being made it’s much better to point
Them out and be realistic as to what the consumer can actually find out they’re going to be facing sure and Elon has said if we don’t if we don’t have to start adding Parts back in we didn’t cut enough and we’ve seen that for example the Yol on the snx those are now
Optional and they’re more expensive than just the wheel the yok is for now at least gone I suspect that the Yoke was going to be part of a steer by wire system because if you don’t have to take your hands off the wheel a yoke is fine
It’s great but for um a number of people they found it to be unacceptable or how about how about moving the horn away from the center of the wheel yeah that that that was a solution that’s still looking for a problem right by the way on the Highland the blinker is still on
Your thumb but it is now tactile so it will click when you touch it when you activate it that’s a step back in the in the right direction I would say without push back we don’t get these things back they don’t know what’s going right and what’s going wrong and that’s that’s you
Know the feedback is important it’s important and I would say a couple years ago the sales and service side was pretty abysmal and it’s gotten a lot better at one point I wanted to see I needed to see a seven seat model y to see if it would even fit
Because they were sufficiently rare that I couldn’t just find someone who had one and I contacted a service a sales Center and they said we don’t have one but you can call around I said Can can you call around and they said no that’s not good service those days
Have passed those are behind us can I can I call here’s a list of some past customers call them between 5 and n they’re usually home no they meant call other Sales locations that’s right yeah and it’s like this is I’m pretty sure this is your job and you have a screen
That would have the answer but okay okay uh that is not a worse experience than I’ve had at traditional car dealerships um and it is not an experience that you could expect to have today they would find you the vehicle that you need to
See uh if you get a chance to check out the Highland um I checked it out last week it is fantastic it is quieter it is um the going over speed bumps in the three felt softer than the Y which was very impressive to me uh and it’s not
More expensive which is crazy and I don’t know if you saw but there was a 70 M hour range test in it yes and it performed it did very well so yeah I can’t wait to get my hands on a on a Highland three and compare it to my
Current three it’ll be fun that’s that’s the most valuable comparison because you will be able to tell road noise instinctively from yeah having had so much experience with it so guys what do you think hybrids are we crazy are they crazy would you rather have hybrids or
No electric vehicles at all GM has struggled getting their batteries getting it all sorted out getting ones that don’t go all flamy on them uh but uh they’re they’re hopefully getting there uh at least we we shall see and you can tell us in a them a com below
Everybody else like subscribe do the usual thing head on over to see what Mark and his guys are up to over there at the Tesla life and stay tuned stay juicy and I cannot wait to hear it from you clever robots in a hybrid that doesn’t kick in ever
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Edited by: Roshan Khatiwada
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