A broader perspective on decarbonization: Why hybrids can be more efficient than electric cars
Toyota is right: We need more hybrid cars and fewer electric cars. Here's why
The auto industry is going all in on electric cars, but a more effective way to rapidly reduce emissions is clearly ahead of us.
Once upon a time, Toyota led the mainstream transition to energy-efficient cars with the hybrid Prius. Today they seem more conservative, having dismissed battery electric vehicles for years in favor of hybrids and hydrogen - only to finally recognize the potential of electric cars with the BZ4X. Somewhat anyway; they still believe strongly in a wide range of decarbonization solutions, with hybrids being more important than full EVs.
That sounds like hindsight from a late-comer whose first electric car was received with lukewarm interest. But if you take a closer look at how efficiently hybrids and EVs use their batteries, you realize that Toyota is actually right: hybrids have a bigger role to play in decarbonization than EVs in the long run, if ever. In fact, we need to use our limited battery assets to maximize the reduction of CO2 emissions across the automotive industry, and soon. We need to use every last kilowatt-hour to its fullest, and in the short term, that doesn't mean going all-in on electric cars. It means leaning back towards hybrids.
The data is unequivocal: Electric cars generate fewer carbon emissions than those powered by internal combustion engines over their lifetimes, and what you'll read here doesn't dispute that. But the shift to electric cars is stumbling over range limitations, inadequate charging networks and high prices because of the battery costs that drive them.
What's more, the supply of electric car batteries is not expected to meet demand within the next few years. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence told the Financial Times that it predicts lithium demand will quintuple by 2035, while the Boston Consulting Group forecasts "chronic" shortages as soon as 2025. Last year, Stellanti CEO Carlos Tavares warned of similar in CNBC, predicting mineral and battery shortages later in this decade.
So is there a better use for the batteries currently packed into a relatively small number of $60,000 electric cars or $100,000 electric pickup trucks? Would the move to full hybrid models-now mostly dismissed as a temporary bridge-actually reduce emissions faster than accelerating EVs in the short term?
To illustrate this, let's compare the on-road carbon emissions of some models available with internal combustion engines, hybrid/plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and electric powertrains: the Ford F-150, Hyundai Kona and 2022 Kia Niro (which use the same chassis) and the BMW 3 Series and i4 (which also share their underpinnings). The question we want to answer is: What is the best way to use a limited battery supply? Should we spread these materials over a bunch of hybrids, or pack them into a few electric cars and leave the rest with gasoline or diesel engines?
We can answer this by dividing how much each vehicle reduces CO2 emissions compared to its internal combustion engine counterpart by its battery capacity in kilowatt-hours. It's hard to imagine, so don't bother: just look at this equation instead.
Armed with this data, we can then calculate how efficiently each electrified vehicle uses its battery. The goal is to reduce CO2 emissions as much as possible with a limited battery supply. And when you do the math, it's pretty clear what the best option is.
Consider how much battery your typical mass-market electric car uses. Powering an F-150 Lightning can generate less than a third of the CO2 emissions of a gasoline-powered F-150, but each unit uses 98 kWh of battery, most of which will only be used on infrequent longer runs. Meanwhile, an F-150 Powerboost hybrid battery is only 1.5 kWh. It doesn't achieve the same emissions reduction as the Lightning, but Ford could manufacture 65 of them with the batteries that go into a single Lightning.
That adds up, because if Ford sells one Lightning and 64 gasoline-powered F-150s, it reduces CO2 emissions from those trucks as a group by 370 g/mi. If they sold 65 hybrids-and spread a Lightning's battery supply across all of them-they would reduce total emissions by 4,550 g/mi. Remember, this is with exactly the same amount of batteries; the distribution is just different.
The pattern holds for the Hyundai/Kia combo and BMWs too-going full hybrid reduces emissions much more than building a few EVs and a bunch of gasoline cars. If you split an i4's battery, you can make seven 330e PHEVs, reducing 560 g/mi versus an i4's 266. Split a Kona EV's battery and you can make seven Niro PHEVs that reduce 1,085 g/mi (one EV reduces 239), or 41 regular Niro hybrids, for 4,797 g/mi eliminated. Like Ford, they make better use of a fixed battery supply by spreading it across a large number of hybrids, rather than concentrating them all in a single EV.
Of course, EVs' case improves when they run solely on renewable energy. We can zero out their CO2 emissions per mile to simulate it, and that helps them-but it doesn't change the fact that their battery use is still inefficient. Powering a few EVs with renewable energy still doesn't have the same immediate effect that broader hybridization of new cars would have.
It comes down to this: By using their limited battery supply on a small number of (expensive) EVs, the auto industry gets applause from investors and the public despite implementing an inefficient decarbonization plan. They can whitewash their reputation with a few dazzling products, while in reality they are not reducing CO2 emissions as much as they could. The figures strongly suggest that hybridizing as many new cars as possible is more effective, and increasingly so as battery technology develops and supply hopefully increases. That would allow hybrids to transition to PHEVs, before being replaced by full EVs where appropriate.
However, most of the benefits of a full transition to EVs would emerge with widespread PHEV adoption. They offer sufficient range to make short trips on electricity alone, often at comparable upfront cost to an electric car, but also the flexibility and efficiency of a hybrid powertrain for longer trips. This allows them to avoid most of the barriers to EV adoption, namely battery availability and poor charging infrastructure.
However, there are reasons why PHEVs have not caught on. They are less efficient and more complicated to produce and maintain than electric cars or regular hybrids, not to mention heavier and more expensive than regular hybrids. Nor do they benefit from their confusing names, let alone the PHEV acronym.
Hybrids as a whole have been slow to gain market share, accounting for just 5.5 percent of the light-duty vehicle market in 2021, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That's over a period of 24 years since the groundbreaking Toyota Prius began production. Electric cars, meanwhile, reached a similar market share in less than half that time, achieving 5.8 percent of the U.S. market in 2022 according to The Wall Street Journal. It's only been a decade since the paradigm-shifting Tesla Model S began production.
But electric car buyers benefited from more generous tax breaks than hybrid customers ever did, with the previous federal electric car tax credit effectively creating land
The auto industry is going all in on electric cars, but a more effective way to rapidly reduce emissions is clearly ahead of us.
Once upon a time, Toyota led the mainstream transition to energy-efficient cars with the hybrid Prius. Today they seem more conservative, having dismissed battery electric vehicles for years in favor of hybrids and hydrogen - only to finally recognize the potential of electric cars with the BZ4X. Somewhat anyway; they still believe strongly in a wide range of decarbonization solutions, with hybrids being more important than full EVs.
That sounds like hindsight from a late-comer whose first electric car was received with lukewarm interest. But if you take a closer look at how efficiently hybrids and EVs use their batteries, you realize that Toyota is actually right: hybrids have a bigger role to play in decarbonization than EVs in the long run, if ever. In fact, we need to use our limited battery assets to maximize the reduction of CO2 emissions across the automotive industry, and soon. We need to use every last kilowatt-hour to its fullest, and in the short term, that doesn't mean going all-in on electric cars. It means leaning back towards hybrids.
The data is unequivocal: Electric cars generate fewer carbon emissions than those powered by internal combustion engines over their lifetimes, and what you'll read here doesn't dispute that. But the shift to electric cars is stumbling over range limitations, inadequate charging networks and high prices because of the battery costs that drive them.
What's more, the supply of electric car batteries is not expected to meet demand within the next few years. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence told the Financial Times that it predicts lithium demand will quintuple by 2035, while the Boston Consulting Group forecasts "chronic" shortages as soon as 2025. Last year, Stellanti CEO Carlos Tavares warned of similar in CNBC, predicting mineral and battery shortages later in this decade.
So is there a better use for the batteries currently packed into a relatively small number of $60,000 electric cars or $100,000 electric pickup trucks? Would the move to full hybrid models-now mostly dismissed as a temporary bridge-actually reduce emissions faster than accelerating EVs in the short term?
To illustrate this, let's compare the on-road carbon emissions of some models available with internal combustion engines, hybrid/plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and electric powertrains: the Ford F-150, Hyundai Kona and 2022 Kia Niro (which use the same chassis) and the BMW 3 Series and i4 (which also share their underpinnings). The question we want to answer is: What is the best way to use a limited battery supply? Should we spread these materials over a bunch of hybrids, or pack them into a few electric cars and leave the rest with gasoline or diesel engines?
We can answer this by dividing how much each vehicle reduces CO2 emissions compared to its internal combustion engine counterpart by its battery capacity in kilowatt-hours. It's hard to imagine, so don't bother: just look at this equation instead.
Armed with this data, we can then calculate how efficiently each electrified vehicle uses its battery. The goal is to reduce CO2 emissions as much as possible with a limited battery supply. And when you do the math, it's pretty clear what the best option is.
Consider how much battery your typical mass-market electric car uses. Powering an F-150 Lightning can generate less than a third of the CO2 emissions of a gasoline-powered F-150, but each unit uses 98 kWh of battery, most of which will only be used on infrequent longer runs. Meanwhile, an F-150 Powerboost hybrid battery is only 1.5 kWh. It doesn't achieve the same emissions reduction as the Lightning, but Ford could manufacture 65 of them with the batteries that go into a single Lightning.
That adds up, because if Ford sells one Lightning and 64 gasoline-powered F-150s, it reduces CO2 emissions from those trucks as a group by 370 g/mi. If they sold 65 hybrids-and spread a Lightning's battery supply across all of them-they would reduce total emissions by 4,550 g/mi. Remember, this is with exactly the same amount of batteries; the distribution is just different.
The pattern holds for the Hyundai/Kia combo and BMWs too-going full hybrid reduces emissions much more than building a few EVs and a bunch of gasoline cars. If you split an i4's battery, you can make seven 330e PHEVs, reducing 560 g/mi versus an i4's 266. Split a Kona EV's battery and you can make seven Niro PHEVs that reduce 1,085 g/mi (one EV reduces 239), or 41 regular Niro hybrids, for 4,797 g/mi eliminated. Like Ford, they make better use of a fixed battery supply by spreading it across a large number of hybrids, rather than concentrating them all in a single EV.
Of course, EVs' case improves when they run solely on renewable energy. We can zero out their CO2 emissions per mile to simulate it, and that helps them-but it doesn't change the fact that their battery use is still inefficient. Powering a few EVs with renewable energy still doesn't have the same immediate effect that broader hybridization of new cars would have.
It comes down to this: By using their limited battery supply on a small number of (expensive) EVs, the auto industry gets applause from investors and the public despite implementing an inefficient decarbonization plan. They can whitewash their reputation with a few dazzling products, while in reality they are not reducing CO2 emissions as much as they could. The figures strongly suggest that hybridizing as many new cars as possible is more effective, and increasingly so as battery technology develops and supply hopefully increases. That would allow hybrids to transition to PHEVs, before being replaced by full EVs where appropriate.
However, most of the benefits of a full transition to EVs would emerge with widespread PHEV adoption. They offer sufficient range to make short trips on electricity alone, often at comparable upfront cost to an electric car, but also the flexibility and efficiency of a hybrid powertrain for longer trips. This allows them to avoid most of the barriers to EV adoption, namely battery availability and poor charging infrastructure.
However, there are reasons why PHEVs have not caught on. They are less efficient and more complicated to produce and maintain than electric cars or regular hybrids, not to mention heavier and more expensive than regular hybrids. Nor do they benefit from their confusing names, let alone the PHEV acronym.
Hybrids as a whole have been slow to gain market share, accounting for just 5.5 percent of the light-duty vehicle market in 2021, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That's over a period of 24 years since the groundbreaking Toyota Prius began production. Electric cars, meanwhile, reached a similar market share in less than half that time, achieving 5.8 percent of the U.S. market in 2022 according to The Wall Street Journal. It's only been a decade since the paradigm-shifting Tesla Model S began production.
But electric car buyers benefited from more generous tax breaks than hybrid customers ever did, with the previous federal electric car tax credit effectively creating land
