Are Hybrid Cars Helping America Transition to Electric Vehicles?

America's electric car subsidies expired at the end of September, notes Bloomberg. Yet in those last three months, 'while fully electric cars and trucks made up 10% of all auto sales in the US... another 15% of transactions were for hybrid vehicles.'

The EV market is slowing in the U.S., but analysts expect hybrid sales to continue accelerating. CarGurus Inc., a digital listings platform that covers most of the US auto market, predicts nearly one in six new cars next year will be a hybrid, as automakers green-light more and better machines with the technology. And though these cars and trucks will still burn gas, they will quietly move the needle on both transportation emissions and the transition to fully electric cars and trucks... CarGurus calls hybrids the success story of 2025. Indeed, the fastest-selling car in the country this year has been the Hyundai Palisade Hybrid; it sat on lots for fewer than 14 days on average...

While carmakers have struggled to turn a profit on fully electric vehicles, analysts say their investments in batteries and electric motors are helping them sell more and better hybrid machines. It's also increasingly difficult to discern a hybrid from a solely gas-powered model, said Scott Hardman, assistant director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California at Davis. Carmakers today often don't even label a hybrid as such. Consider Toyota's RAV4, one of the best-selling vehicles in America. The 2026 version of the SUV comes in six different variants, all of which include an electric motor and a gas tank. 'A hybrid is just a regular car now,' Hardman said. 'You can buy one by accident....'

While not as clean as an electric vehicle, hybrids offer sneaky carbon cuts as well. Americans, on average, drive about 38 miles a day, which requires about one gallon of gas in most basic hybrids. Contemporary plug-in hybrids, which can run on all-battery power, can cover almost that entire range without the gas engine kicking in. And a small crowd of cars will do even better, stretching their batteries well over 40 miles per charge. All told, hybridization can reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of a vehicle by roughly 20% to 30%, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation.

Some interesting statistics from the article:

By 2030 Ford expects fully or partially electrified vehicles will represent half its global sales. Toyota has already reached 50% ('in part thanks to all those hybrid RAV4s').
Honda is 'basing its entire business on hybrids until at least 2030.'
Around one-third of America's hybrid drivers 'transition to a fully electric vehicle when they next switch cars.'
In September 57% of America's car shoppers 'were considering a fully electric auto, according to JD Power. However, among hybrid households, that share was almost 70%.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.