It's so funny to see so much Toyota bashing here. Toyota has saved more CO2 with its Prius and other hybrids directly, besides indirect savings from hybrids developed by other car makers who were motivated by Prius hybrids, than any other automaker.
The bashing is because they actively deny the successes that PEV has already had, continue to present BEV concepts that suggest BEV suitable only for stupid tiny urban commuters that they don't make, and have advertising that deliberately misrepresents plug-ins.
Guess which major automaker is quite close to meeting the EU emission targets next year?
That's helped by selling only 1/4 of what if sells in the USA, despite the European market being the same size, and selling a much higher proportion of its sales as hybrids.
In North America, it sells a much higher proportion of larger, conventional vehicles and those are clearly less efficient than those of its competitors.
EV is only zero emission if we ignore the extra CO2-e of the batteries and the source of the electrons.
The EVs also force more power generation, that hybrids don't.
Case 1: You put up solar panels (if they work in your area) and drive an EV. You are taking away the clean solar power that could reduce dirty power in someone else's house.
Case 2: You put up solar panels (if it works) and drive a Toyota hybrid. You cleaned up the grid, and also reduced your own car's CO2 emission by half. Also, you avoided the extra CO2-e of the big battery.
So what is better? As I showed earlier, in many states in US (e.g. W. Virginina), an Ioniq hybrid beats the identical Ioniq EV any day of the year; cold or warm.
I think, if Model S had a hybrid version, it would also save more CO2 than itself.
This is more true in developing countries where grid is often the biggest source of emission.
if our governments didn't divert funds to EVs so much, Toyota and others would have sold over 200 M hybrids by now. No big incentives needed.
Why West Virginia? A state with fewer than 2M people. Why not California with 40M people where generation is increasingly efficient and clean?
The not-really-zero-emissions is a tired straw man argument, that ignores the parallel developments in electricity generation, where grids are becoming progressively cleaner.
Why is more generation required a bad thing, when it's displacing the less efficient burning of gasoline and diesel, and removing the toxic emissions from the tailpipes of all the vehicles where commuters and pedestrians are in large numbers?
Why do you think people would buy HEVs in large numbers when US hybrid sales peaked at 3.5% and fell when gas prices fell, even though falling gas prices made it cheaper to own one? It's clear that people didn't _really_ want them. Even the hybrid market itself has shifted to less efficient hybrids.
EVs, meanwhile, are vehicles that have high satisfaction ratings, and which people want more when they get to experience them. As the technology has improved, and the infrastructure has grown, demand has continued to increase, even as subsidies have gradually been reduced, and in Europe we see 1 year waiting lists, as manufacturers have deliberately delayed sales to 2020.
The only real prospect of dealing with long-term energy problems, and eliminating the tens of hundreds of thousands of deaths and the chronic diseases caused by pollution, is to electrify transportation, and shift from fuel-based energy, to technology-based energy (use replacing consume). That's why governments support EVs and renewable generation, and thanks to that support, both of them have improved in capability and fallen in price dramatically, which now leaves us at a point where forecasts are pointing to future, unsubsidized, market dominance limited only by the speed at which they can grow manufacturing.
