US to announce sharply lower vehicle fuel economy requirements

Bought a PHEV earlier this year and my “old fashioned” family quickly moved from “that boy ain’t right” to “you get HOW MANY miles per gallon??” And they still can’t compute that I can drive 50 miles on less than $2 of electricity and not a drop of gas.

The numbers make sense, people just need to be shown. It’s where the market is headed, no one should really be considering anything less than hybrid. When my wife’s old Civic dies, it’ll be replaced by a full EV.

I hope for my next vehicle to be an EV, but I won’t take anything less that 300 miles range. I know that 90% of my driving can be comfortably done in under 200 range, but I do go on longer trips. I know that recharging has come a long way, and I have no problem hanging out for 15+ min at a station, but I won’t do it every 2-3 hours because that’s all I’ve got.

I’m hoping to get many more years out of my current ride before it dies or becomes too costly to repair vs replace. That gives ample time for battery tech to further improve, and hopefully more and cheaper EVs to the market.

I’m not a car snob by any means, but currently the only EV that really piques my interest is the ionic 5 n, but it’s range is just way too low. I’ve been driving a WRX for a little over 6 years now, and love pretty much everything about it. I hope to someday have an EV equivalent of it.

Range anxiety is partially what pushed us to go PHEV. We really only use gas if we leave our immediate area, and on longer trips it’s the same as a full ICE car (just with much better efficiency).

I too hope for better batteries and cheaper EVs before my next purchase! Would love to see Chinese cars in the American market to humble these MSRPs.

But if you leave the electrical zone, it’s even less efficient than gas only, no?

I drive a Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross PHEV. Highway fuel economy is roughly 6L/100Km (about 30mpg) when driving on a depleted battery. Much better than the 9.5L/100Km (24mpg) from the i30 it replaced.

Not as efficient as a Toyota hybrid, but on daily commutes it uses zero fuel and roughly 20kW/100Km.

So the okay fuel economy is offset by the ability to run on electric for 90% of my driving.