As EV Sales Stall, Plug-In Hybrids Get a Reboot
Automakers got one thing right: Electrified cars are the future. What they got wrong was assuming that all of those vehicles would run on battery power alone, with gasoline-electric hybrid technology bound for the technological scrap heap.
Now the automaking giants are scrambling to course correct. They’re delaying their EV plans, rejiggering factories, and acknowledging what some clear-eyed observers (including
IEEE Spectrum) suspected all along: Not every car buyer is ready or able to ditch the internal-combustion engine entirely, stymied by high EV prices or unnerved by a patchy, often-unreliable charging infrastructure.
Consumers are still looking for electrified rides, just not the ones that many industry pundits predicted. In
China, Europe, and the United States, buyers are converging on hybrids, whose sales growth is outpacing that of pure EVs. “It’s almost been a religion that it’s EVs or bust, so let’s not fool around with hybrids or hydrogen,” says Michael Dunne, CEO of Dunne Insights, a leading analyst of China’s auto industry. “But even in the world’s largest market, almost half of electrified vehicle sales are hybrids.”
In China, which accounts for about two-thirds of global
electrified sales, buyers are flocking to plug-in hybrids, or PHEVs, which combine a gas engine with a rechargeable battery pack. Together, hybrids and all-electric vehicles (a category that the Chinese government calls “new energy vehicles”) reached a milestone last July, outselling internal-combustion engine cars in that country for the first time. PHEV sales are up 85 percent year-over-year, dwarfing the 12-percent gain for pure EVs.
The picture is different in the United States, where customers still favor conventional hybrids that combine a gas engine with a small battery—no plug involved, no driver action required. Through September 2024, this year’s conventional hybrid sales in the United States have soared past 1.1 million, accounting for 10.6 percent of the overall car market, versus an 8.9 percent share for pure EVs, according to
Wards Intelligence. Including PHEVs, that means a record 21 percent of the country’s new cars are now electrified.
But even as overall EV sales rise, plug-in hybrid sales have stalled at a mere 2 percent of the U.S. market. A J.D. Power
survey also showed low levels of satisfaction among PHEV owners.
Those numbers are a disappointment to automakers and regulators, who have looked to PHEVs as a bridge technology between gasoline vehicles and pure EVs. But what if the problem isn’t plug-in tech per se but the type of PHEVs being offered? Could another market pivot be just around the corner?
Plug-in Hybrids: The Next Generation
The Ram brand, a part of
Stellantis, is betting on new plug-in technology with its Ram 1500 Ramcharger, a brash full-size pickup scheduled to go on sale later this year.
The Ramcharger is what’s known as an extended-range electric vehicle, or EREV. An EREV resembles a PHEV, pairing gas and electric powertrains, but with two key differences: An EREV integrates much larger batteries, enough to rack up significant all-electric miles before the internal-combustion engine kicks in; and the gas engine in an EREV is used entirely to generate electricity, not to propel the car directly.
BMW demonstrated EREV tech beginning in 2013 with its pint-size i3 REx, which used a tiny motorcycle engine to generate electricity. The Chevrolet Volt, produced from 2010 to 2019, also used its gasoline engine largely as a generator, although it could partially propel the car in certain conditions. The short-lived 2012 Fisker Karma took a similar approach. None of these vehicles made much impact on the market. As a large pickup with conventional styling, the Ramcharger appears to be a more mainstream proposition.
The platform for the 2025 Ram 1500 Ramcharger includes a V6 engine, a 92-kilowatt-hour battery pack, and a 130-kilowatt generator. Stellantis
The Ramcharger shares its STLA Frame platform and electrical architecture with the upcoming pure-battery
Ram 1500 REV, but it’s designed to provide more driving range, along with the option of gasoline fill-ups when there are no EV chargers around. Although the Ramcharger’s 92-kilowatt-hour battery has less than half the capacity of the Ram REV’s humongous upgraded 229-kWh battery (the largest ever in a passenger EV), it’s hardly small. The Ramcharger still packs more battery power than many all-electric vehicles, such as the Ford Mustang Mach-E and the Tesla Model 3.
Originally, Ram planned to launch its EV pickup first. But based on consumer response, the brand decided to prioritize the Ramcharger; the Ram 1500 REV will now follow in 2026.
Ram estimates that its pickup will travel about 233 kilometers (145 miles) on a fully charged battery, more than three times the stated 71-km electric range of a compact
Toyota Prius Prime, among the U.S. market’s longest-range PHEVs. For typical commuters and around-town drivers, “that’s enough range where you could really use this truck as an EV 95 percent of the time,” says Ed Kim, chief analyst of AutoPacific.
When the battery runs down below a preset level, the gasoline engine kicks in and generates 130 kilowatts of electricity to the battery, which continues to feed the permanent-magnet motors that propel the car. Since the motors do all the work, an EREV mimics an EV, needing no conventional transmission or driveshaft. But the onboard generator enables the Ramcharger to drive much farther than any conventional EV can.
Extended-Range EVs: The Long Haul
With batteries and gasoline working in tandem, the Ramcharger has an extended range of 1,110 km (690 miles), dwarfing the 824-km range of the
Lucid Air Grand Touring, the current EV long-distance champ. And unlike many PHEVs, whose performance suffers when they rely on battery juice alone, the Ramcharger doesn’t skimp on power. The system churns up a mighty 494 kW (663 horsepower) and 834 newton-meters of torque. Ram estimates the Ramcharger will go from 0 to 60 miles per hour (0 to 97 kilometers per hour) in 4.4 seconds.
Using the engine solely as a generator also addresses a couple of key criticisms of PHEVs: skimpy all-electric range, especially if the owner rarely bothers to plug it in, and compromised efficiency when the car runs primarily on gasoline.
“Today’s PHEVs can be extremely efficient or extremely inefficient, all depending on how a customer decides to use it,” Kim says. “If they never plug in, it ends up being a hybrid that’s heavier than it needs to be, hauling around a battery it doesn’t really use.”
In an EREV, by contrast, the engine can operate constantly in its most frugal operating range, which maximizes its thermal efficiency, rather than constantly revving from idle to high speeds and wasting fuel.
The Ramcharger should also excel at actual hauling. Some truck loyalists have soured on all-electric pickups like the
Ford F-150 Lightning, whose maximum 515-km range can drop by 50 percent or more when it’s towing or hauling heavy loads. The Ramcharger is rated to tow up to 14,000 pounds (6,350 kilograms) and to handle up to 2,625 pounds (1,190 kg) in its cargo bed. Company officials insist that its range won’t be unduly dinged by heavy lifting, although they haven’t yet revealed details.
China Embraces EREVs
If China is the bellwether for all things electric, the EREV could be the next big thing. EREVs now make up nearly a third of the nation’s plug-in-hybrid sales, according to
Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Beijing-based Li Auto, founded nine years ago by billionaire entrepreneur Xiang Li, makes EREVs exclusively; its sales jumped nearly 50 percent in 2024. Big players, including Geely Auto and SAIC Motor Corp., are also getting into the game.
The
Li L9 is a formidable example of China’s EREV tech. The crossover SUV pairs a 44.5-kWh nickel cobalt manganese battery with a 1.5-liter turbo engine, for a muscular 330 kW (443 horsepower). Despite having a much smaller battery than the Ramcharger, the all-wheel-drive L9 can cover 180 km on a single charge. Then its four-cylinder engine, operating at a claimed 40.5 percent thermal efficiency, extends the total range to 1,100 km, perfect for China’s wide-open spaces.
Dunne notes that in terms of geography and market preferences, China is more similar to the United States than it is to Europe. All-electric EVs predominate in China’s wealthier cities and coastal areas, but in outlying regions—characterized by long-distance drives and scarce public charging—many Chinese buyers are spurning EVs in favor of hybrids, much like their U.S. counterparts.
Those parallels may bode well for EREV tech in the United States and elsewhere. When the Ramcharger was first announced in November 2023, it looked like an outlier. Since then, Nissan, Hyundai, Mazda, and General Motors’ Buick brand have all announced EREV plans of their own.
Volkswagen’s Scout Traveler SUV, due out in 2027, is another entry in the extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) category.Scout Motors
In October, Volkswagen unveiled a revival of the Scout, the charming off-roaders built by International Harvester between 1960 and 1980. The announcement came with a surprise twist: Both the Scout Traveler SUV and Scout Terra pickup will offer EREV models. (In a nod to the brand’s history, Scout’s EREV system is called “Harvester.”) The hybrid versions will have an estimated 500-mile (800-km) range, easily beating the 350-mile (560-km) range of their all-electric siblings. According to a crowdsourced tracker, about
four-fifths of people reserving a Scout are opting for an EREV model.
Toyota Gets the Last Laugh
For
Toyota, the market swing toward hybrid vehicles comes as a major vindication. The world’s largest automaker had faced withering attacks for being slow to add all-electric vehicles to its lineup, focusing more on hybrids as a transitional technology. In 2021, Toyota’s decision to redesign its Sienna minivan exclusively as a hybrid seemed risky. Its decision to do the same with the 2025 Camry, America’s best-selling sedan, seemed riskier still. Now Toyota and its luxury brand, Lexus, control nearly 60 percent of the hybrid market in North America.
Toyota was criticized for sticking with hybrid cars like the Prius, but it now controls nearly 60 percent of the North American hybrid market. Toyota
Although Toyota hasn’t yet announced any plans for an EREV, the latest Toyota Prius shows the fruits of five generations and nearly 30 years of hybrid R&D. A 2024 Prius starts at around $29,000, with up to 196 horsepower (146 kW) from its 2.0-liter Atkinson-cycle engine and tiny lithium-ion battery—enough to go 0-97 km/h in a little over 7 seconds. The larger 2025 Camry hybrid is rated at up to 48 miles per gallon (20 kilometers per liter).
Market analysts expect the
Toyota RAV4, the most-popular SUV in the United States, to go hybrid-only around 2026. David Christ, Toyota’s North American general manager, indicated that “the company is not opposed” to eventually converting all of its internal-combustion models to hybrids.
Meanwhile, GM, Ford, Honda, and other brands are rapidly introducing
more hybrids as well. Stellantis is offering plug-in models from Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge in addition to the EREV Ramcharger. Even the world’s most rarefied sports-car brands are adopting hybrid technology because of its potential to improve performance significantly—and to do so without reducing fuel economy. [For more on high-performance hybrids, see “A Hybrid Car That’s Also a Supercar”.]
The electricity-or-nothing crowd may regard hybrids as a compromise technology that continues to prop up demand for fossil fuels. But by meeting EV-skeptical customers halfway, models that run on both batteries and gasoline could ultimately convert more people to electrification, hasten the extinction of internal-combustion dinosaurs, and make a meaningful dent in
carbon emissions.
From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web