I love the Prius but it's a hybrid, not a full EV. Now when we've seen that full EVs can have long range why would we bother with internal combustion engines at all?
"Long range" is a marketing term. Right now I couldn't take a "long range" Tesla into rural North Carolina to see my relatives without serious range anxiety and/or careful routing.
Charging station coverage in the US is about where digital cellular coverage was in the mid-2000s. It exists in most places and in major population centers, but there are clear holes. Gas stations meanwhile are still ubiquitous.
The outlook may be different in 5-10 years, but right now in the US a plug-in hybrid is the best of both worlds IMO. Assuming your round-trip daily commute is within the electric range it's a de-facto pure EV, with the gasoline only kicking in for occasional longer trips.
Charging station coverage in the US is about where digital cellular coverage was in the mid-2000s
Even this may be optimistic. I can name the 5 closest gas stations to my house (even though the closest is about 8 miles away), but I couldn't name a single charging station. Not one. I see Teslas on the road, so they must exist, but I haven't a clue where they are.
I've found they tend to be out of the way or attached to shopping centers/big box stores/other places you wouldn't expect. It's rare to find a charging station with gas-station-like visibility, the numbers just aren't there yet I guess.
The closest Supercharger is about 40 miles away, but that other map shows a 120V charger about 12km away at a golf course. I wonder if it's specifically for car charging, though. Even this far south in Minnesota, some places do have plug-ins for engine heaters in winter.
> I love the Prius but it's a hybrid, not a full EV.
Indeed, it's much more complex than an EV. Yet as of February 2017 Toyota alone had delivered ten million hybrid vehicles, with 80,000 mile drive train warranties - better than Tesla offer and on a scale magnitudes greater.
The Kia Niro hybrid SUV is rated at 50 miles per gallon. With an 11.9 gallon tank, that's about 600 miles range. It retails for 2/3's the price of a Tesla 3.
