This will be the last post on Hybridiot. But it’s not the end! Here’s why.

I spent a decade writing about music and another crafting ideas for agencies. Hybridiot was how I finally experimented with writing about cars — something I’d always wanted to do, ever since I started reading car mags and recommending rides to family members as a precocious kid. Launching Hybridiot helped me find my voice on electrified driving. More importantly, it guided me towards a new calling.

What I Learned From You

Well, you actually subscribed! Some of you I know, and many I don’t, and that really encouraged me to keep going. And through your comments and emails, I discovered something bigger: most people don’t just want information about EVs and hybrids. They want someone in their corner who’ll actually help them find the right car and navigate the dealership maze.

That’s why I’m launching Lanekeep.

What’s Lanekeep?

Everything Hybridiot was, but with skin in the game. I’m not just writing about car buying — I’m helping people actually do it. Lanekeep offers independent automotive guidance for people who want practical solutions without dealer pressure or endless hours of individual research, and we specialize in green vehicles.

We do it by matching clients with cars that suit their real world needs, backing up our informed recommendations with hard numbers — efficiency, costs, reliability — not just opinions.

Need to find the perfect EV or hybrid that fits your budget and parking situation? I’ll research it, negotiate it, and make sure you’re not getting screwed.

There will be a brand new newsletter — the Lanekeep Letter — with the same conversational, slightly snarky approach you know. I’m ending Hybridiot, and I hope you’ll subscribe to the new thing right here. I didn’t want to do the thing where I just imported everyone over to Lanekeep, but I hope you’ll make the jump over with me. I’m also switching to Ghost as the newsletter platform for a multitude of reasons (including reader feedback).

Special Friends & Family Launch Offer

You were here first. As part of Lanekeep’s soft-launch, I’m offering the Lanekeep Premium package at a special $500 flat rate to a few select clients.

Contact us by Oct. 31 to join the waitlist — I’ll inform folks by Nov. 10 if they’ve been selected for the pilot. Just shoot an email to launchoffer@lanekeep.com

Follow Along

• Instagram: @lanekeepdotcom

• Threads: @lanekeepdotcom

• Twitter/X: @lanekeepdotcom

Thank You!

Seriously. Thank you for reading, commenting, and trusting me with your car-buying questions. Hybridiot helped me figure out what I really wanted to do with my automotive obsession, and that’s only because you engaged with it.

Excited to keep this thing rolling.

—Peter

Every year at the annual New York International Auto Show, while most of the convention hall pulsates with LED walls touting silhouettes of Tesla fighters and overcompensating pickup trucks, Subaru's corner of the show is nestled in faux pine trees, bathed in nature sounds, patrolled by Smokey the Bear, and routinely visited by cuddle puddles of rescue dogs looking for a forever home. It's an expression of a brand that quietly, and somewhat magically, earned the trust of eco-conscious buyers for years without actually selling fuel-efficient cars.

Until now, that is. And I don't think there's a bigger story from this year's NYIAS.

In the coming months, Subaru will add hybrid versions to its most popular model lines, roll out a much-improved refresh of its Solterra EV, and launch an EV called the Trailseeker that embraces the brand's wagon-loving heritage. And all of these green rides are built in partnership with the undisputed king of hybrid tech, Toyota, who owns part of Subaru, so you know they'll work wonderfully. Not that you'd worry: Subaru just knocked Toyota off the top of Consumer Reports' annual list of most reliable cars in America, anyway.

Taken together, it's the wisest electrification push we've seen from any legacy automaker in years.

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It’s wild to me that Subaru waited so long to go all-in on hybrids considering they are disproportionately beloved by environmentally minded folks. A 2021 YouGov study found 32% of buyers considering a Subaru said the environment factors into their buying decision — far more than those thinking about Jeep (19%), Chevy (20%), or Ford (21%). Another YouGov report revealed Subaru is the most left-leaning car brand in America, with liberals nearly twice as likely as conservatives to consider buying one (28% vs. 16%). Of course, three times as many liberals view climate change as a major threat to the country's well-being.

It's time to tip our beanies to Subaru's marketing team for successfully selling green values before they sold green vehicles. Among the green-leaning brand strategies that Subaru embraced in recent years: touting their zero landfill Indiana factory since 2004; a long-running $65M+ partnership with the National Parks Foundation; and a series of "Subaru Loves the Earth" campaigns that include battery recycling, wildlife protection, and reforestation. They even extended the zero landfill approach to Subaru Park, the soccer stadium outside Philadelphia that bears the brand name.

On the engineering side, Subaru's doing a great job of pairing under-the-hood traits that have become synonymous with its brand — the 4-cylinder boxer engine and symmetrical all-wheel drive — with Toyota's unbeatable hybrid system, refined over nearly 20 years in the Prius and now available across so many vehicles. Reviewers are raving about how the Forester Hybrid, the first to get the hybrid powertrain, not only produces fewer greenhouse gases while saving owners money at the pump, but the tech actually enhances the capability that owners love and expect from their Subies. In Tom Voelk's recent review, he applauded how the hybrid system offers a 40% improvement in the Forester's city MPG rating while sacrificing none of the off-road traits that matter — like ground clearance — and that the increased horsepower makes for a zippier off-the-line experience.

The big-selling small crossover Crosstrek is next in line to roll out its own hybrid models this fall, followed in short order by the all-new 2026 Outback wagon around the end of the year. Voelk also reported that the hybrid option only costs $1,400 more in the Forester, which buyers would easily make back in fuel savings within a couple of years of ownership.

And this all comes at a moment when hybrid vehicle sales are hotter than Pedro Pascal in a Patagonia vest: In March 2025 alone, 193,419 hybrids were sold in the United States, a 56.1% increase compared to March of the previous year. Toyota has dominated this market to the point that folks are enduring ridiculous wait times and even markups to get the Toyota hybrid they want, something that Subaru can use to its advantage.

Industry pundit Kirk Kreifels put it bluntly: there are so few Toyota hybrids available across the country right now that he imagines all of them are probably pre-sold. "I'm fired up because people are illogically lining up for Toyota hybrids when there's competition out there," he ranted in a recent video. "It's not worth the wait." And why wait when the same proven tech is now sitting quietly on the lot at your local Subaru dealer?

We haven't even touched on the full EV offerings, which, after New York, are suddenly far more appealing. I have been aching to replace our aging Volvo XC70 wagon with an EV, but there wasn’t a mid-tier option with similar cargo capacity on the market — until Subaru unveiled the Trailseeker, built on the same platform as the existing Solterra EV but with six inches of length added to the rear end, stretching it to Outback-like dimensions. With a decent 260 miles of range and a revamped infotainment setup that eschews Subaru's current, laggy system for one that appears to be a reskinned version of Toyota's boring but functional one, the Trailseeker won't have trouble finding buyers.

Solterra, the brand's first foray into EV, felt like a half-assed attempt to get into the game when it launched in 2023, with paltry range, sluggish charging, and puzzling looks. Now, it's been given a heavy glow-up that increases range by 25% to over 280 miles, improves charging speeds to something not embarrassing (and adds compatibility with Tesla superchargers), and gets a facelift that is at least a mild improvement.

All of this points towards a big, big future for Subaru. While other brands tried to pivot toward values-driven marketing in the era of hybridization and electrification, Subaru's been there the whole time. They just hadn't caught up on the tech — and now, thanks to their pals at Toyota, they have. The most trusted car brand in America might quietly become the most trusted climate brand, too. With all the fanfare of a Peaceful Piano playlist.

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Last week, I kicked off a micro series about EVs as potential “future classics” with some insight from auto buying expert Tom McParland. This topic originated from my semi-viral Threads post, seen below, about the potential value of 1st edition VW ID. Buzzes:

This week, I’ve reached out to Tamara Warren, an esteemed automotive journalist and all around awesome human who’s written for over 160 publications including The New York Times, Esquire, Road and Track, and Car and Driver, and is the former transportation editor at The Verge. She is the founder and CEO of Le Car, an editorial platform about cars and culture. Definitely follow her on social media to see all kinds of cool content and cooler cars.

Are there any EVs currently on sale or that have been on sale that you'd peg as future classics?

Tamara Warren: Early EV models will become classics, because they demonstrate an important forward thinking approach and innovation, which is usually what makes a vehicle important to collectors. The Tesla Roadster is now listed on the Hagerty Valuation site, though in the short term it's taken a hit. I'd add GM's EV1 and the Volt to that list, as well as the BMW i8. As more EVs come to market, they will be collectible not only because of their electric architecture, but because they become the dominant source of power for automobiles.

Should automakers try to develop mainstream EVs that get buyers more excited? If so, what should they build?

TW: I think there's no turning back from alternative power trains. Perhaps there may be unforeseen breakthrough in combustible engine development; you never know. Could other alternate forms of power such as hydrogen start to gain momentum? Sure. For now, China is leading and propelling EV development and as the global market expands, more brands will introduce both more conventional vehicles that happen to be EVs. It's all about timing, though. The VW ID Buzz generated a ton of excitement for its imaginative design and practical family friendly proportions, but it's a tough market at the moment for geopolitical reasons and infrastructure challenges. Because of the differing architecture, EVs shake things up in the design studios and allow designers to experiment with new forms and to toy with parameters on the current lineups.

If you could wave a magic wand, what type of car would you love to see electrified?

TW: I love vintage cars and I wish there was a low cost way to make retro mods electrified. Maybe my mom's old GLH Omni? The transition will eventually happen, but it will be much slower than we anticipated, and some car brands may not make it to the finish line with so much uncertainty in the marketplace.

I’m totally with you, Tamara, in wishing that it wasn’t so darn expensive to convert vintage cars into EVs. There are some brilliant companies out there doing the business, but it’s really only an endeavor for folks who’ve got major cash to spend. Still, maybe we can dream about someone fusing a GLH Omni body on top of my old BMW i3 skateboard? And speaking of BMW, I agree that the i8 has major future classic potential.

There’s still more to come in this series. Until then, what vintage car would you love to turn into an EV, if money were no object? Let me know in the comments.

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We’re still in our infancy here at Hybridiot. Shit, we’re not even a “we” yet. Just me. Anyhow, to this point, the most viral post I’ve made under the Hybridiot banner was this one on Threads:

In the replies, for the most part, I got many, many Spinal Tap references, and many more figures that were massive multiples of 10. But basically, almost no one believed a 1st edition of VW’s retrotastic electric van will be worth something someday, unless you count sarcasm as currency. Some prevailing sentiments:

• “A guy on commission told you stuff? That's crazy.” — @aaronandrusko

• “12.3/10 💩🌋” — @bbison724 [A shit volcano, for those who can’t make out the second emoji. Brilliant/vile!]

• “It’s going to age like a smartphone…” — @elvistrobinsky

But then there were folks who landed in this ballpark:

• “They’re full of shit. But it’s still a very pleasing car. We love ours.” — @toshi.clark

• “I live next to a VW dealership and the ID Buzz makes my heart flutter.” — @thethemeagan

I began to wonder if I should have phrased my post a bit differently. Whether a car feels like a future classic and whether it actually holds its value — those are two very different metrics. The vast majority of us aren’t frame-off, bolt-by-bolt restorers and preservationists. We’re hobbyists who love cars, but are smart enough not to bank on them. And did I really dig driving that quirky Buzz around Queens one afternoon? I certainly did.

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Now, many owners will tell you they love their EVs. But it's a different kind of love, more “daily companion” than the “poster on the wall” love I feel for a Volvo 1800S or an R-129 Mercedes. Most EVs and hybrids are beloved for their practicality, their technology, and, occasionally, for their blistering acceleration, but with the exception of some super premium offerings — like the Neptune Blue Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo that tantalizingly scoots around my neighborhood — I don’t think they’re enthralling to car enthusiasts in a meaningful way. Maybe modern cars, in general, aren’t up to snuff in this regard.

As an experienced writer but one new to the automotive space, I thought this would be an excellent moment to reach out to some folks that I admire and get their take about what types of EVs could potentially be “future classics,” and what else the industry could do to make EVs more appealing to people who just love cars. And wouldn’t ya know it, some of them actually got back to me! I was delighted.

First up: Tom McParland, a freelance writer featured in numerous automotive outlets who runs AutomatchConsulting.com. He takes the hassle out of buying or leasing a car. I’ve been reading Tom for years — you’ve probably caught his iconic, long-running car buying advice column on Jalopnik — and I even went so far as to namecheck him in a cover letter once, where I described my 8-year-old self recommending cars to my relatives as a “tiny Tom McParland.”

Are there any EVs currently on sale or that have been on sale that you'd peg as future classics?

Tom McParland: Currently, no, because I think most EV buyers are purchasing a piece of technology that happens to transport them around. When was the last time a smartphone was a “future classic”? As tech progresses, people move on to the latest and greatest. In the example of the ID Buzz, I'm willing to bet within two years these will follow the same depreciation curves as most other EVs and shoppers will find lightly used ones at almost half-off. The more interesting question: Is it possible to make an EV that's a “future classic”? I'm not sure buyers in the future are going to look back with nostalgia on any EV like they would a 997 generation [Porsche] 911 or a [Toyota] GR Corolla. I think the analog-ness (is that even a word?) of some cars keeps them timeless because you aren't just a user in a piece of tech, you are connected to the machine.

Should automakers try to develop mainstream EVs that get buyers more excited? If so, what should they build?

TM: Getting buyers excited is always a good strategy, but what does that look like and for what buyer? The reality is that the enthusiast market is small, and while something like the [Hyundai] Ioniq 5 N is a great machine with performance that is well above its price point, it's hard for me to get “excited” about something that costs almost $70,000 regardless of how good a value it is. Going back to the ID Buzz, that is an “exciting” car in a different way, though I doubt that the nostalgia is going to result in strong sales in the long term for that car. If it was priced around $45,000, it would be a different story. Again, most people are buying these cars based on tech. If an automaker were to come out with a $25,000 EV that seats four comfortably, has about 300 miles of range, and can charge to 80% in under 15 minutes, that is a car that would get people excited. Whether or not that combination of things is profitable is hard to say, but it seems like the Chinese automakers are close to achieving that.

If you could wave a magic wand, what type of car would you love to see electrified?

TM: There isn't a specific model that I think would be better if it were an EV and in most cases I think EVs should carry their own unique nomenclature and not “electrify” an existing ICE car. Just look at the initial reactions on the Mustang Mach E and the Charger EV. Customers hear “Mustang” and “Charger” and that evokes a certain expectation, so consumers often already may have some bias against that model. That being said, I would love to see EV platforms transfer over into the disability conversion space. My wife uses an Odyssey van with a wheelchair ramp conversion, and an EV platform could be great for mobility impaired folks as it may offer more flexible seating and logistics, and the possibility of assisted driving would make for a great combo if costs could come down.

Thanks, Tom, for the time and the insightful answers! I hadn’t considered the mobility space, and I too would love to see manufacturers consider that vertical for future development.

More voices from the trenches coming soon. In the meantime, drop your own future EV classic picks in the comments, if you think such a thing exists — or forward this to that friend who swears their Mach-E is collectible.

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As German house-rappers Snap! once said back in the early ‘90s, “It's getting, it's getting, it's getting kinda hectic.”

I thought that a potential elimination of the federal EV tax credit would be the first major impediment from the Trump administration for potential buyers of EVs, but yesterday’s tariff-palooza sent things spiraling. No need to bore/agonize you with the grim details, but between the tariffs levied against imports from Canada, Mexico, China, Europe, and, basically, everywhere on the planet, cars are about to get more expensive — and, with the average new car price in America at nearly $48,000 a pop, they’re already “at the brink of affordability” for the majority of Americans, per Jessica Caldwell, an analyst at car buying analyst Edmunds.

Some grim figures from CNN: (Italics are mine)

Bank of America estimates that a 25% tariff on all imported auto parts would increase the cost of US assembled vehicles by about $26 billion — or around $3,285 per vehicle on average.

Even cars assembled at US factories will likely get more expensive because they use many foreign parts. Goldman Sachs estimates the cost of foreign-made cars will increase by between $5,000 and $15,000 per vehicle due to tariffs.

YIKES. Now, the individual automakers are going to come up with their own approaches to pricing as the tariffs begin to reshape the market, but here’s something important to know: the tariffs apply to vehicles and parts entering the country as of today, not to ones that are already here. So, if you’re in the market for a new vehicle, especially one that’s going to be heavily impacted by tariffs (Car and Driver has a good list here), you’d be smart to buy one that’s already in the country. And do it now. Because once the dealers start replacing existing inventory with not-yet-imported inventory, prices will definitely start shooting up.

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Another aspect of car ownership that tariffs will impact: gas prices, which just reached their highest prices since September, and the energy market, given its interdependence on multiple national players, is volatile. Trump wants to keep gas prices low, but most experts lack confidence that he can keep that promise, given the uncertainty that the tariffs will continue to wreak with trading partners. Needless to say, it’s always better to use less gas, for the wallet and, of course, for the planet.

I’ve always been bullish on hybrids. While I love EVs, they’re not for everyone, and hybrids offer major savings in fuel usage (30-50% better efficiency than their gas-only counterparts) for only fractional increases in sticker price, and those can be made up in fuel savings over just a few years of ownership. (See my detailed breakdown here.)

Traditionally, Toyota has been the king of hybrid tech, and for good reason: they were pioneers with the Prius and, over time, expanded their rock-solid hybrid tech across their vehicle lineup from sedans like the Camry to light trucks like the Tacoma to the Sienna minivan to crossovers like the RAV4, which is now America’s most popular passenger vehicle. Toyota enjoys great ratings for reliability and customer satisfaction, and while few of their vehicles could be called interesting, they could definitely be called utilitarian. Thanks to this reputation, Toyota hybrids are always in high demand, and among the hardest to find on your dealership lot. These days, folks are typically waiting months for a Toyota hybrid.

But you don’t have to, especially now, if you need a new car and want a reliable hybrid. Former car salesman YouTuber Kirk Kreifels made a video this week that caught my attention. Kirk is a really excellent source of consumer friendly car news and this video was titled “Don't WAIT MONTHS for a TOYOTA HYBRID. Here's what to do INSTEAD.” He takes a deep dive into sales data that shows the extremely limited availability of Toyota hybrids across the country, especially models like the RAV4, Corolla Cross (subcompact crossover), Sienna, Grand Highlander, and Camry, and he offers alternatives for each. Definitely watch the video, but here are some of his picks.

Instead of the RAV4, for example, Kirk suggested you could get the Mazda CX-50 hybrid, which literally has the same powertrain as the Toyota — the two companies have a partnership. A Honda Accord could be had instead of the Camry, a Kia Carnival instead of the Sienna, and a Mazda CX-90 plug-in hybrid or Hyundai Santa Fe instead of the Grand Highlander.

You might also think, well, I’ll just shop for a pre-owned car instead and avoid the tariffs altogether. The last time we had scarcity in the new car market was during the pandemic, and used car prices went through the roof. With new cars likely to get more expensive and hard to find (automakers are already pausing some production while they analyze the impact of the new tariffs on their business models), dealers won’t hesitate to squeeze every penny out of their used inventories. So, if you’re shopping used, consider doing it now.

The wild thing here is that this could all change again, without warning, anytime. This is the Uncle-Baby-Billy-Bible-Bonkers timeline we inhabit, sadly. So I suppose you could just wait. But if you wait until tariffs have sent new and used car prices totally skyrocketing, and then really need a car, it’ll be getting kinda hectic indeed.

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In our current timeline, where “reality star” now qualifies folks for the highest office in the land, our newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary ticks the box. Sean Duffy first appeared in our living rooms almost 30 years ago on MTV’s The Real World: Boston as the “conservative guy,” a typical trope in those early seasons of the groundbreaking series. He dreamed of being a lawyer and competed in lumberjack competitions.

For readers under age 40, I cannot overemphasize the cultural weight of The Real World in the 1990s. It was an artificial construct, no doubt, but there was something staggeringly enlightening about seeing strangers, picked to live in a house, have their lives taped, and share their own experiences and values in ways that just weren’t happening organically at that time. My hope was always that the right-of-center folks like Sean would emerge from the experience changed, evolved. (Remember Julie from Season 1?)

Instead, Duffy fell in love with another conservative cast member — Real World: San Francisco alum Rachel Campos — and they raised nine children together as Duffy became an attorney general in Wisconsin before being elected to the U.S. House and serving for 9 years. I could bemoan Duffy’s record on the Hill, which included supporting Trump’s Muslim ban and voting to gut regulations for wages paid to workers executing federal projects. I could also say that he really did a whole lot of nothing while in office.

Now, as Transportation Secretary, what he’s doing is gaslighting the American people. On his first day on the job, Duffy took his lumberjack hatchet to Biden-era emission standards in order to, in his words, reduce “the burdensome and overly restrictive fuel standards that have needlessly driven up the cost of a car in order to push a radical Green New Deal agenda,” following the campaign trail rhetoric of his fellow unscripted TV alum, Donald Trump.

Time to stop being polite and start getting real, Sean. That is bullshit.

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Duffy’s Department of Transportation press release claims the “[c]urrent rule requires all passenger cars and light trucks to meet a standard of 50.4 miles per gallon (mpg) in Model Year 2031. This government mandate has dramatically increased the average price of a new car to nearly $48,000, driving up the cost and making it unaffordable for American consumers.”

The emissions regulations Duffy lambasts are known as the CAFE standards. “CAFE” stands for “corporate average fuel efficiency standards” — let me highlight the word “average.” Each automaker is meant to reach an average of 50.4 MPG across their entire fleet of vehicles, so that includes everything from their bulky SUVs and trucks to their leanest, sleekest EVs. Add up every vehicle’s MPG, divide by number of vehicles. Reading Sean’s bogus screed, you’d think the government was forcing automakers to magically deliver Toyota Prius-level efficiency in every vehicle within six years. That is not how it works.

Next, Duffy accurately points out that the cost of a new car has skyrocketed over the past few years, “from an average of $40,881 to an average of $47,218” according to Cox Automotive, and only eight new vehicles start below $25,000 vs. 20 in 2021. I wholeheartedly agree this is a major issue that needs to be addressed. But the quest to make cars more efficient is just a small factor driving those price increases.

We cannot have a real conversation about rising sticker prices without talking about the semiconductor shortages, labor stoppages, and supply chain issues, that sprung out of the Covid-19 pandemic years. Automakers couldn’t make as many cars, and that drove up demand for new cars as well as used cars, which had a wild market during the pandemic. We’re still recovering from those massive problems and now we’re likely to see costs soar as Trump’s tariffs are likely to make many components of cars even more expensive to import.

Those matters in the Covid years were beyond the automakers’ control. What they do control is deciding what cars to build and how many, and as long as Americans continue to prefer crossovers, SUVs, and pickups, which are naturally more expensive (and drive bigger profit margins and are naturally less fuel efficient due to their size), then that’s what’ll appear in showrooms. And, when a model is particularly popular, like a Kia Telluride or Jeep Wrangler, the dealers slap additional premiums on top of the sticker price.

In many parts of the world, buyers demand cheap, cheerful cars and actually buy them. I fell in love with Fiat’s new Grande Panda this week, which comes in both gas-hybrid and full EV versions, and folks are raving about the Renault 5, even reviewers who are skeptical about electric mobility. Both are pretty close to Duffy’s price target — and they’re EVs! But they’re not coming here. So how are American buyers finding affordable cars, then? Since they don’t want small, cheap new cars, they’re buying used crossovers, SUVs, and trucks — eight of the top 10 selling used cars in this country are trucks and SUVs. That’s how our market has organically played out.

You know by now that these bogus rationales for loose emissions standards have nothing to do with making cars more affordable. You might be unsurprised to learn that, after he left Congress, Duffy went to work as a lobbyist repping oil and gas pipeline giant Enterprise Products, among other clients, while also becoming a Fox News pundit, routinely taking aim at now-former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Duffy’s DOT is all about making sure Americans remain dependent on fossil fuels for as long as possible, continuing to line the pockets of the oil industry while posing a health risk to ourselves and our families, as I’ve written about in detail.

It’s also going to make driving more expensive. The more efficient our cars become, the more money we save. And while hybrids can be a bit more expensive than regular gas cars, drivers make back the cost difference and then some over the course of ownership by reduced fuel costs at the pump — and that’s not even getting into the immense cost savings of EV ownership.

Sadly, as long as sycophants like Sean the Pawn are wielding power, we need to create demand for efficient vehicles on our own, not just because it’ll save everyone money, but because it’ll help save our planet, and that’s the only version of The Real World that matters to me.

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“Range anxiety.” The feeling a driver develops when they’re unsure that their vehicle has enough electric charge to complete its journey. Of course, it was a journalist (Richard Acello) who coined the phrase while writing about the groundbreaking (and storied) GM EV 1 in the ‘90s. But did you know GM tried to trademark “range anxiety”? Back in 2010, the company smartly believed that fear of being stranded with a dead battery was the best way to market the Chevy Volt over its biggest competitor at the time, Nissan’s all-electric Leaf.

The Volt’s advantage? It was an EREV, an Extended Range Electric Vehicle — an EV with an onboard gas engine that could serve as a generator to recharge the battery on the go. The gas engine never drives the wheels; it only charges the battery, which provides all of the car’s horsepower. So, when the battery is low, say on a road trip or an unexpectedly long journey or in an instance when you forgot to plug in, a trip to the gas station will keep the car moving. In 2010, with charging infrastructure essentially non-existent, the Volt’s setup was immensely practical, and almost a sheer necessity on American roads.

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(As we’ve mentioned “EREV,” this seems like an opportune time to review some acronyms that get bandied about in car content that the regular reader might not know offhand. “BEV” stands for “battery electric vehicle,” meaning a fully-electric vehicle; “PHEV” is a “plug-in hybrid electric vehicle”; “HEV” is a “hybrid electric vehicle”; and “ICE” stands for “internal combustion engine,” so writers often refer to gas-powered vehicles as “ICE vehicles.” Maybe, these days, we should abandon the ICE acronym, given its awful alternative connotation in this country? For another discussion…anyway…)

We owned one of the world’s most popular EREVs: BMW’s i3, which debuted in 2013 as both a BEV and an EREV, and by the time our 2017 model rolled off the assembly line, it boasted a 33 kwH battery with 114 miles of range and a 34 horsepower motorcycle engine mounted under the rear cargo area that added 90 miles of range. It’s the best car we ever owned, and we only sold it because its size made rear-facing car seats a bit impractical, and because a total stranger offered to buy it from us in a parking lot for exactly what we’d paid for it two years earlier.

The range extender offered peace-of-mind while driving in the rural area where we lived at the time, and, frankly, it rarely fired up, even with the i3 having so little all-electric range, because we were charging at home and found few instances when we exceeded the battery’s capabilities, apart from road trips. In those cases, the little motor got us where we needed to go. The vast majority of the time, we were driving an EV.

Now imagine EREVs with the range of regular EVs — 300+ miles — with that gas-powered backup plan via a range extender. That’s what’s on offer in upcoming trucks from Ram and Scout, the resurrected brand now owned by the VW Group, and I think these are the types of plug-in “hybrids” that will endear more Americans to electrified driving.

The upcoming Ram 1500 Ramcharger (if you’re unfamiliar, Ram is now its own standalone brand after being under Dodge) is a full-size EV pickup that is expected to get 145 miles of all-electric range but also packs a V-6 engine up front to serve as a generator for recharging the battery and extending the range up to 690 miles. Plus, the electric powertrain provides 663 horsepower, on-site plug-in job power, and tons of towing capability — great for today’s ‘Murican truck owners — but it’ll drive and operate like an EV all the time. No, it won’t be the most efficient overall system — the smarties at The Autopian suggest it’ll only get 20 MPG once the battery is depleted — but if owners are doing their daily driving on electrons alone, the gas motor won’t be getting much use at all.

That brings us to the very chic offerings from Scout, a classic American brand which VW is resurrecting for 2026. Scout originally built boxy, stylish SUVs and trucks in the 1960s-70s, and the company recently revealed two retro-awesome launch vehicles, both set to be built in a brand new factory in South Carolina: the Traveler SUV and Terra Truck, both of which are standard EVs with an optional range extender called the Harvester. Scout’s approach differs from Ram’s in that their vehicles will aim for much greater all-electric range (around 350 miles on battery alone) with the gas generator responsible for adding just 150 miles of additional capability.

If you’ve gotten this far you might be asking: what’s the difference between these EREVs and a PHEV, or plug-in hybrid? An EREV is an electric vehicle whereas a PHEV is not. In an EREV, the gas engine is not connected to the wheels, whereas in a PHEV both the electric motor and gas engine can drive the wheels separately or in unison. When driving a PHEV in all-electric mode, you’re likely to have very compromised performance because you’re accessing the power of the electric motor and battery alone, which is a fraction of a PHEV’s total overall power output.

For example, I recently drove the Kia Sorento PHEV, a three-row SUV, and in all-electric mode, I could barely keep up with traffic on a 45 MPH road, and once I pushed the throttle past a certain point, the gas motor kicked on anyway. For a lot less money, you could buy the standard hybrid version of the same SUV and get similar gas mileage while not needing to carefully feather your accelerator pedal to eke out electric miles.

Also, the complexity of PHEV systems makes them 70% less reliable than ICE vehicles, per Consumer Reports, and 28% less reliable than EVs.

I would love to see more automakers considering EREV tech, especially for the U.S. market where we do tend to cover longer distances and don’t presently have high speed rail offering cheaper connections between cities (but we should!). I believe EREVs can give ICE drivers a taste of what’s great about EVs and eradicate that fear that GM so rightfully identified 15 years ago.

Paris is not something I ever want to forget. I’ve watched the Eiffel sparkle with my wife, our bellies full of fromage, charcuterie, and champagne. I’ve savored delicate morsels of Michelin-worthy cuisine, appreciated the fine arts, retraced Amelie’s steps in Montmartre, danced into the wee hours in the Pigalle, gawked at the chic auto showrooms on the Champs Elysees. But here we are, just days into Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House, and the man has the gall (pun intended) to put gorgeous, awe-inspiring, mouth-watering Paris in his proverbial rear-view.

Of course, we’re talking about the Paris Agreement, the one designed to stave off irreparable climate change and global crisis. How gauche, Donald!

As expected, Trump issued an executive order announcing the United States’ intent to withdraw from the historic 2015 climate pact, something he also did in his first term; Joe Biden reversed Trump’s decision early in his own presidency. We’ll join Libya, Iran, and Yemen as the only nations outside the Paris framework. Even worse: Who knows what other countries might be emboldened by Trump’s nationalistic approach to energy and join suit?

(Relatedly, Trump signed another executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy,” in which he vowed “to eliminate the ‘electric vehicle (EV) mandate’” by taking a hatchet to any subsidies that give EVs any unfair advantage over their internal combustion counterparts. As I outlined, the EV tax credits will take congressional approval to rework, so, for now, it appears the incentives for buying or leasing EVs remain — but the clock is ticking. More on that soon!)

If you’re someone who cares personally about climate change, or, as I wrote about a few weeks ago, would like the air that our children breathe to be less polluted, it surely feels frustrating and disenfranchising to watch as your country’s leaders make sweeping changes that take our approach to global warming backwards. But the only way to fix that is at the ballot box, so, yeah, get on that next time.

In my own angst, I thought about the rhetoric that got us here — not from the fossil fuel lobbyists but regular folks and car content creators who shouted about personal choice. “It’s a free country!” they ranted. “If I love a bored-out Ram Hemi pickup with dual straight-piped 8-inch exhausts spewing, then by God I should damn well be able to drive one!”

I realized that, just like the choice to drive a fire-breathing gas-guzzler, the choice to be environmentally conscious has always been a personal one. There were vegans long before you could routinely find vegan options on restaurant menus, and composting before municipalities offered official composting bins. There were folks choosing biking, walking, and public transport over solo commutes in cars. And celebs were notoriously choosing an early Toyota Prius when they could easily afford any opulent but inefficient Range Rover or Mercedes.

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So just like your local Le Pain Quotidien, let’s attempt to bring a little taste of Paris to existence here in our Trump-era America. What might it take for us to live up to the Paris Agreement when it comes to our car buying choices and driving behaviors?

It would be nice if the authors of the agreement spelled things out more explicitly, but, instead they encouraged individual nations to concoct their own Nationally Determined Contributions to reach two agreed-upon metrics:

1. Limiting global warming to well below 2°C, with efforts to cap it at 1.5°C.

2. Achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the second half of the 21st century.

Until Monday, the United States was working towards those two goals by committing to a 50–52% reduction in overall GHG emissions by 2030, and that’s across our energy infrastructure, transportation, and agriculture. Based on EPA estimates, the 242 million or so light duty vehicles on American roads make up about 16% of our total GHG emissions. So the challenge becomes chopping that in half.

“Half” is an easy concept to grasp. You could drive half as often. Or half as far. You could split driving and public transportation 50/50. You could walk half of the time. Or bike. Or carpool instead of driving alone.

But those solutions work best for folks who live in places where public transit is abundant or where distances are short. In much of America, we still need cars. The answer to reach “half” in this case is “hybrid.” To an extent, I think we’ve been approaching environmentally-conscious incentives for electrified driving all wrong: we should be incentivizing folks to get into plain old hybrids – not even the plug-in variety – especially at lower price points and in the used car market.

And we should be targeting these incentives towards our lowest income drivers, people who depend on their cars to get to work, people who are living paycheck to paycheck. Regular hybrids are cheaper to make, require tiny batteries in comparison to EVs, and still depend on gas, appeasing many influential voices in today’s political scene.

Let’s take a Ford Maverick Hybrid – that’s the Blue Oval’s small pickup truck, perfect to double as a work truck and family hauler – and offer incentives off the base $27,949 sticker price. The hybrid version gets 37 MPG (with many reviews finding even better efficiency in testing), so that’s at least a 33% savings in GHG emissions AND an annual savings of around $600/year at the pump. It would instantly be one of the best deals in America. Yes, it’s only a reduction in emissions by one-third, but why should we apply the same burden to every single American? Maybe those who can afford to do more…should? Novel concept!

In the middle, we have plug-in hybrids. I’ve been meaning to dedicate a whole post to PHEVs, but the TL;DR is that I’m not a huge fan, namely because, by trying to be both an EV and a combustion vehicle, they excel at being neither and often cost substantially more. Take the Toyota RAV4, one of America’s most popular vehicles: its regular hybrid version costs just $1,000 more than the gas-only, but the plug-in “Prime” variant adds a whopping $13,000 to the base price. Still, some folks adore PHEV life — and you might too, if you want to pay the premium. One good reason: the plug-in RAV4 produces about 60% fewer GHGs than the standard model, and 45% fewer than the regular hybrid. You’d also save about $300 more in fuel costs per year over the standard hybrid (per this one report, anyway), so while that won’t make up the difference in vehicle cost, it’s something.

Lastly, of course, we have EVs. Here, the math is pretty simple. An EV produces zero emissions at the tailpipe, and even taking into account the emissions produced in the manufacturing process for an EV — which, admittedly, are often greater than those created while making a standard combustion car — and America’s not-so-clean energy mix, an EV’s annual GHG emissions are at least 62% less than a gas car. Yes, that’s decidedly more than half. And while an cheap, incentivized leases have recently made EVs more accessible, for sure, their actual sticker prices routinely soar into the $60,000 range and beyond, keeping them out of reach for many buyers.

But that’s okay — back in the 1990s, when it debuted, the Prius was a luxury item, costing almost double the price of a similarly-sized Toyota Corolla. Those who had the means and desire to do more for the planet took it upon themselves to pay the premium. The same is true today. Not everyone will choose to spend the money on a Rivian R1T over a loaded Ford King Ranch, but we can applaud those who make the green choice and hopefully influence more folks in their respective communities.

In other words, in a world of Donalds, be a Diaz:

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The return of Toyota’s legendary Land Cruiser to the U.S. market after a three-year absence1 had my favorite car YouTubers absolutely salivating back in the Spring of 2024. Same here. After all, it looked great, tapping into styling cues from the nameplate’s 75-year history at a moment when boxy is very much back in SUV design. Fast forward to December, and we’ve got heavy hitters like Doug Demuro and Jason Cammisa posting videos lambasting the 2024 Land Cruiser as a huge miss. What went wrong? Well, it’s a hybrid of reasons, but not the ones that Doug, Jason, and many enthusiasts would have you believe.

Yes, the big headline was that the Land Cruiser was coming back, but many eyebrows raised when Toyota announced that the U.S. version of the SUV would be powered solely by a 2.4 liter turbocharged 4-cylinder hybrid motor, albeit one generating 326 combined horsepower with 465 lb.-ft. of torque, while achieving 23 MPG.

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For folks used to V-8 powered Land Cruisers since the late-’90s, this felt like a gut punch, even with the new powertrain boasting comparable output numbers. And when critics like Demuro and Cammisa got behind the wheel, the performance matched their fears:

“Never has 326 horsepower felt so much like 247 horsepower," said Doug. “You floor it and you're not really going all that fast.”

“It sounds like a dying calf... it's unpleasant even by four-banger standards,” lamented Jason. “If there's one word to describe how this engine sounds, it's ‘broken.’”

For people like me, the 23 MPG number seemed fine, especially when considering the absolutely laughable fuel economy of the iconic 80-series Cruisers (12 city/14 highway). Yet, given the 2021 Land Cruiser’s 17 MPG combined, the new model offers a relatively massive increase in efficiency, and, as I pointed out a few weeks ago, we should all be targeting at least an 8.4% increase in efficiency in our next car to move more quickly towards a greener future. But given all of the technology at our disposal, could Toyota — the king of hybrid technology, creator of the Prius – have done better? I think so.

So it was less powerful than the enthusiasts would like and less eco-friendly than the efficiency-minded folks would hope.

It also deviated from another core element of the Land Cruiser brand: luxury. By the release of the 80-series in the early ‘90s, the Land Cruiser evolved into a symbol of “stealth wealth,” as Cammisa put it in his video. While remaining extremely capable in all conditions, it was the most expensive vehicle in Toyota’s lineup, with a leather interior, creature comforts, and a cushy third row of seating. It was the SUV you bought instead of a Range Rover to appear a bit more humble (and also to avoid spending weeks in the service department). The 2024 edition, even in its top trims, did not inspire any lux feelings from reviewers.

In fact, it reminded folks of Toyota’s own 4Runner, another two-row, off-road-focused, legendary SUV whose pricing overlaps the Land Cruiser’s. Moreover, the 4Runner is set for a complete overhaul in 2025 that’ll bring two powertrain options (both 4-cylinders, though, including the hybrid), a myriad of rugged configurations, and stripped-down base model that will be far cheaper than any Land Cruiser. (And, Toyota also offers the Sequoia, a burlier three-row SUV that occupies the top-of-the-range space the old Land Cruiser once did, powered by a twin-turbo hybrid V-6 with comparable MPG to the Land Cruiser’s four-banger.)

When you look at 2024 sales figures, the all-new Land Cruiser sold just under 24,000 units, by far the biggest number ever for a Land Cruiser. But it’s deceiving: the Land Cruiser sales simply cannibalized sales of the 4Runner, which fell by about 27,000 units in 2024, and the 4Runner that was on sale was the 14 year-old version that is about to be replaced.

So, what would have been the sweet spot for a new Land Cruiser? More power? No, get a Sequoia. More rugged? 4Runner for you. But better efficiency? Stealth wealth? Now we’re talking. Toyota should have built something like the new Hyundai Santa Fe Hybrid and branded it the Land Cruiser.

That will undoubtedly sound blasphemous to most car people out there, and frankly I couldn’t quite believe it when I arrived at this conclusion. Here’s how…

Let’s talk about the Santa Fe Hybrid

Hyundai’s design team has shown a knack for understanding trends in the market and turning that insight into exciting sheet metal over the past few years, eschewing their blah, bubble-like models of a few years back in favor of truly timely, if not derivative, looks. The new Santa Fe relishes in the return to boxy SUV design, taking cues from Range Rover and Land Rover, in particular, to create a vehicle that feels of-the-moment yet also familiar.

The interior will blow away any outdated inklings that Hyundai is a “bargain brand” — especially when compared to what Toyota (or even Lexus) is doing these days. It also has all the thoughtful touches needed in a family hauler in 2025, from USB ports to wireless charge pads to cup holders galore. Oh, and did we mention the hybrid model gets 36 MPG combined?

It’s no surprise it’s ended up on many 2024 best-of lists, or mentioned countless times in Consumer Reports’ year-end podcast.

SUV efficiency is doable

I write about making driving greener, and it’s crazy to me that Toyota could not eke out more MPG from the Land Cruiser considering their reputation as hybrid innovators. They’ve also reduced the cargo capacity and eliminated a possible third row thanks to the way they packaged the hybrid batteries. It’s really baffling. Meanwhile, the Santa Fe offers a standard fold-away (but tiny) third row of seating and boasts that rather astonishing 36 MPG number; anecdotal reports I’ve seen from owners suggest city MPG routinely reaches into the forties. Remember how the Toyota’s 326 horsepower felt like 247 to Doug Demuro? The Hyundai has 231. And it weighs about 1,000 lbs less than the Toyota, so that 231 feels a bit more punchy.

Stealth wealth for days

The Santa Fe looks awesome on the outside (although its posterior styling leaves a bit to be desired) but it’s inside where it outshines the Land Cruiser by miles. From the Range Rover-esque steering wheel to the stylish center console to the elegant and effective infotainment system, it’s a really nice place to be. When your friends get into this vehicle, they won’t believe its starting price — which is $37,700 for the base trim, and maxes out, fully-loaded, in the low-$50s, which is still five grand less than the cheapest Land Cruiser.

But call it a “Land Cruiser”?! Heresy!

I think not. Here’s a stat that caught more than a few folks by surprise in the past week: Ford sold 7,000 or so more Mustang Mach E EVs in 2024 than gas-powered Mustang coupes. When Ford decided to apply its iconic pony logo and moniker to its first mass-market EV, purists gasped. But it was totally the right call. People love the Mustang brand, and the choice to connect that brand to a new era of electrified performance helped reorient existing fans to an emerging technology.

“All cars are drag costumes that drivers put on and take off in order to toy with perception, to undermine or underscore norms, or to communicate to the world, and to themselves, who they are and how they want to be seen,” writes Brett Berk, one of my favorite automotive scribes. “This is why vehicular purchases so often transcend the rational.” There’s no category of vehicle that’s more “drag” than a beefy SUV. As Berk’s piece points out, “98% of all SUV and crossover buyers drive off-road over rocks or in mud at most once per year, if ever, and 91% drive on dirt or gravel but one time a year or not at all,” per a study by automotive research firm Strategic Vision.

Maybe a Land Cruiser gets a bit more off-road usage than the average SUV, but the vast majority of its time is spent doing normal car things, while looking like a vehicle that can do rough and tumble things. It’s cosplay. It’s drag. A car like the Santa Fe embraces this mentality. Yes, it is available with all-wheel drive and even offers an optional tough-looking trim package, but it’s not conquering trails with the capability of a Land Cruiser, mainly because it doesn’t have to. And while it’s driving kids around and doing road trips, it’s not hauling around that rigid off-road equipment, leading to fewer visits to the pump for Santa Fe owners.

If we’re going to move towards greener driving behaviors, we need to embrace a more realistic approach to how we use vehicles, whether it’s considering low speed vehicles for short trips, like I talked about last week, or choosing vehicles that suit our actual needs vs. suiting our imagined ones. Our country has fallen in love with SUVs and crossovers for lots of reasons, and one of them is that they look cool — and that’s okay! Hyundai’s proven with the Santa Fe that you can have those tough SUV looks while maintaining sensible levels of MPG.

If Toyota kept the awesome, retro-inspired looks of the new Land Cruiser, stripped out the heavy, beefy off-road capability, leaned into a “stealth wealth” interior, and grabbed the 35 MPG powertrain from its own (albeit boring) Highlander crossover, you’d be selling them like — Santa Fes. That’s a drag show anyone can get behind.

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For reasons overtly political and even sordid, the massive, ever-expanding Central Florida retirement community The Villages has a national reputation. Heck, there’s even a two-hour Vice documentary on the place. It’s truly fascinating stuff. The Villages also happen to be home to an estimated 80,000-100,000 golf carts and residents use them for large amounts of their weekly activities. Are boomers actually pioneering a transportation model that could benefit all of us?

I’ve been visiting The Villages for years, as my wife’s family relocated from Ohio about a decade ago. One weekend visit and they were hooked. And what’s not to love for retirees of a certain age? Ample, mostly free golfing; dozens of pools and recreation centers with every activity you can think of; multiple “town squares” packed with shops, restaurants, and live entertainment 365 days a year; a wide range of housing price points; Florida sunshine; and all of it tightly-packed, geographically, accessible by golf cart.

And cart driving isn’t just a novelty, or something my toddler son insists on doing when we visit (although, of course, he does). Villagers go everywhere on golf carts, and there’s a well-planned network of cart-only roadways designed to help residents cover major distances. After installing its first golf cart lane in 1990, The Villages began to factor golf cart access into its expansion plans, and in my in-laws’ neighborhood, built in the 2010s, there are plentiful golf cart roadways and even cart-specific bridges over Florida’s Turnpike and other major roadways. When we’re in The Villages, we go out to dinner on the cart, get our groceries on the cart, head to the town square on the cart, even get coffee in the drive-thru on the cart. We routinely drive five or more miles in the cart for various trips about town.

Of course, this country consists of existing towns, not ones being built from scratch in Central Florida. But would it make sense to replace some of our larger vehicles with smaller ones, like golf carts, especially in warmer climates where the carts could operate year-round? Let’s take a look at the numbers.

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Most Villagers drive gas carts (more on that later), but even those offer substantial savings in MPG and CO₂ emissions over driving a regular gas car. Where a gas car averaging 25 MPG emits about 350 grams of CO₂ per mile, a gas powered golf cart emits less than one tenth that amount. Per federal estimates, retired Americans average 181 miles of driving per week. If a Villager were to drive half that distance in their golf cart each week, that’s close to a 50% reduction in CO₂ emissions.

Now for the bad news: the EPA doesn’t regulate tailpipe emissions on golf carts like it does on passenger vehicles, so the reductions in CO₂ emissions are simply due to the carts being smaller and having smaller engines. In reality, cart motors produce far more pollutants — hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides — because they lack the catalytic converters that help regular cars meet emissions standards.

Manufacturers could start outfitting their gas carts with more expensive pollution-fighting tech, but there’s a simpler solution available right now: electric carts. About 85% of golf cart sales are electric, nationwide, with lithium-ion battery costs sharply decreasing, making longer range electric carts essentially equivalent in price to their gas counterparts. And in places like Peachtree City, Georgia, another planned community, the vast majority of the town’s 11,000 registered carts are electric, reducing not only tailpipe pollution but noise pollution, as well — not to mention all of the emissions from gas cars that aren’t being used. Certain political proclivities might make Villagers less inclined to get off the dino juice, but the overall operating costs of switching to electric carts would be hard for anyone to deny — it’s hardly fake news.

Now, the least expensive initiative we could employ to drive greener is to drive less. But for Americans who’ve grown up as avid drivers, used to the boundless freedom that the automobile provides, smaller, electric vehicles used for shorter distances would enable folks to keep driving but pollute less.

And we don’t necessarily have to jump through legislative hoops to start experimenting with cart life. All 50 states already have regulations on the books that permit Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs), also known as Low-Speed Vehicles (LSVs), to share roadways with full-size cars. We’re talking about golf carts with more oomph, capable of speeds up to 25 MPH, that are allowed to drive on roads with 35 MPH speed limits in certain areas. And, in many jurisdictions, these can be driven legally by teens.

Mostly, this happens in coastal/resort areas with limited amounts of traffic, but imagine a thoughtful expansion of this policy. Where I grew up, in the DC suburbs, I could easily reach almost any amenity via 35 MPH roads: grocery stores, restaurants, pharmacies, shopping, and even a movie theater. Yes, we should be emphasizing bike travel as well, but why not consider NEVs in the green transit mix? Down here in The Villages, we’re even seeing more all-season NEVs like the fully-enclosed Atomic Coupe, which offers a climate-controlled interior. And I’d love to see some of the European models make their way over, like the awesome Citroen Ami (and its even awesomer Buggy configuration) or the Renault Twizy, which I drove on vacation in Bermuda.

With average new car prices approaching $50,000 in the US, there’s also an economic argument. Imagine folks ditching their second car and replacing it with an NEV that costs a fraction of the price, and using it for shorter trips at a reduced operating cost. Just like they do here in The Villages.

As I drove my family in our cart back to my in-laws on New Year’s Eve, I considered another potential future use case for NEVs. We’d just left one of the faux town centers, Brownwood Paddock Square, my son having demanded to leave the New Year’s Party after Daddy unleashed his best Ozzy impression while the cover band romped through “Crazy Train” (“But it’s a song about trains!” I argued in futility). It was packed with Villagers, their families, and folks from the surrounding community — the squares are open to the public. Moreover, it was packed with golf carts. Tailgating carts. Ones adorned with a favorite sports team’s logo and colors. Some still decked out with Christmas decorations. Some made to look like hot rods.

I thought about my kid and his generation and all the data that’s showing teens are choosing online interaction over in-person. The number of teens getting their driver’s licenses has dropped dramatically. I remembered reading about Peachtree City and how their teens use golf carts as a social vehicle, literally. They provide connective tissue that unites teens in physical spaces. Sure, the kids probably drive too fast, and yes, they seem to account for a disproportionate amount of accidents, but so do teen drivers of regular cars. It turns out by saying, “Okay, Boomer,” and following our parents’ and grandparents’ lead by embracing that golf cart life, we’re not only helping our kids have a greener existence but a more wholesome one as well.

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Is it just me, or does it feel like the second Trump presidency has begun a month early? Or is it the first DonElon administration? Are we shipping them now? Should we try “Elonald”? Watching this week’s wild debate over the spending bill, which the president-elect and his techbro-in-chief derailed with overnight social media posts, the most damaging of which were fueled by misinformation, is like jumping into Doc Brown’s Delorean and dialing in Q2 2025. Great Scott, indeed.

For months, fossil fuel-loving Trump made rolling back “Biden’s EV mandate” one of his Day One priorities, something I began to delve into a few weeks ago. Now that we’re 30 days out from the Inauguration, and we’re starting to get a sense of how Trump might “collaborate” with the GOP majority on Capitol Hill, let’s talk about what the 47th president might do, and when, and how you should react if you’re considering buying an EV.

A Reuters report this week offered a sneak peek into the administration’s EV agenda, so I’m basing most of my assumptions off of their reporting.

What incentives might be on the chopping block?

Tax credits on EV purchases make up the cornerstone of EV legislation in the Inflation Reduction Act, and they are now the law of the land, having been passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden. In a nutshell, this means qualified buyers of a specific list of new electric vehicles that meet certain criteria receive a $7,500 federal tax credit, and buyers of specific used EVs can get up to a $4,000 federal tax credit. (I highly recommend this NerdWallet article for a detailed breakdown of how it works, what buyers qualify, and what cars are eligible.)

Only new legislation passed by Congress could eliminate this tax credit entirely. However, there’s a lot that Trump could achieve via executive order to severely reduce the number of eligible buyers and vehicles that qualify for these tax credits, and he could get started on Day One. For example:

• The current law only allows the tax credit on SUVs/crossovers under $80,000 and sedans under $55,000; Trump could drop those numbers.

• He could slash the household income limits for buyers, reducing the pool of eligible owners.

• He could tighten already strict regulations about the vehicles’ manufacturing locations and the origins of their battery materials, ruling out specific vehicles for the tax credit.

• And, he could potentially make all of these decisions in a manner that benefits vehicles made by his pal Elon Musk at Tesla.

Sounds…not great. Here’s even worse news.

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One of the best deals going in EVs involves leasing. Thanks to a loophole in the current tax credit policy, any buyer, regardless of eligibility, can take advantage of the $7,500 tax credit when they lease an EV, rather than buying it outright. Since the leasing company technically owns the vehicle, they are able to claim the tax credit and pass the savings along to the lessee. And many pundits recommend lease vs. ownership not only for the savings, but because the technology is evolving so rapidly and some drivers will want to upgrade to the latest model once their lease is up, much like people upgrade their smartphones.

Unfortunately, this loophole appears to be an easy target for executive action. Trump could quickly work with his Treasury Department or the IRS to restrict or eliminate any usage of the EV tax credit on leased vehicles.

Normally, one could expect that major regulatory changes would require public comment periods and review cycles which would take months, or even up to a year. But the Reuters article mentioned that Trump’s administration plans to claim that these changes in EV policy have a national defense rationale — this reads to me like a tactic designed to fast-track his potential executive orders.

What does it all add up to? It has been looking like the incentives to buy an electric vehicle would be getting very scarce, pretty quickly.

Budget Wars: A New Hope

At least I thought so until this week. In a development that truly surprised me, 34 GOP House members pushed back on Elonald’s last-minute interventions in the spending bill debate. The public pushback was shocking, especially in the face of unfiltered threats from both Trump and Musk. I took a look at the list of 34 and found that almost a fifth of them hail from states with significant investments in the EV space, plus an additional seven lawmakers from Tesla’s adopted home state of Texas (although, hilariously, the member of Congress representing the district where Tesla HQ is located is Progressive Caucus head Greg Casar, and the member representing Musk’s residential district is also a Democrat).

In the end, the House didn’t cave to Elonald’s demands and passed a spending bill without the duo’s debt ceiling recommendations. It’s anyone’s guess whether this backbone will remain sturdy once Trump is actually in the White House. But I was surprised and encouraged to find red state reps with EV ties among this early contingent of intra-GOP resistors.

EV buying advice for the next month

So what does this mean for you, potential EV buyer?

Trump politicized electric vehicles with vigor during his campaign, so my prediction is that he will go after the easiest, quickest win possible — like the lease loophole. Good news for you, then! There are some truly bonkers EV lease deals happening right now. If you live in Colorado, for example, you can walk out of a dealer tomorrow with a brand new Fiat 500e for zero down and zero monthly payments; you just pay the sales tax. Seriously!

Colorado is literally the Wild West of EV lease deals, but you can routinely score incentivized lease deals for mainstream EVs that are chopping 40% off the sticker price, and if you decide to keep the car after your lease concludes in 2-3 years, your purchase/”selling” price maintains those amazing discounts.

For instance, check out some Honda deals I found on the amazing Leasehackr forums. Compare the lease deals for the popular Honda Prologue EV and the Honda Pilot SUV with similar suggested sticker prices:

• 2024 Prologue EV Touring AWD, $289/month, $2,861 down, 36 months/10K miles a year;
  MSRP: $56,550 / Selling price: $35,025

• 2024 Pilot Touring AWD, $595/month, $2,861 down, 36 months/10K miles a year;
  MSRP: $50,995 / Selling price: $47,500

The difference is wild: the monthly payment for the EV is about half, and the selling price is 62% of sticker, vs. 93% of sticker. This gives you a sense of the expected depreciation for the EV, which is a bit scary, but the lease deal is hard to beat — and many EVs come with complimentary charging packages or complimentary home charger installation.

Here’s my recommendation, then: If you’re interested in EV, and you can afford a sub-$300 monthly payment for the next 2-3 years, and you can charge where you sleep (or can charge conveniently where you’re being given free charging as part of your purchase), do it now, before Inauguration Day. The lease deals are most likely to vanish pretty quickly once Elonald takes control.

If you’re worried about what you’ll do in three years when your lease expires, you’ll still have a good option to buy the car you leased at a decent, discounted price. If you want something different, I am very, very confident that there will be plenty of capable used EVs on the market for good value. Just log onto any used car site today and you’ll find excellent deals on low mileage Nissan Ariyas or even venerable Hyundai Ioniq 5s.

Now, we just have to hope Elonald won’t funnel the remainder of the $7.5 billion allotted to EV charging over to defense spending or phallic space rockets — but that’s for another post.

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Now that the social networks know I care about electrified driving, they love to serve up provocative, baiting posts from folks who think EVs are part of the woke agenda. And one topic that comes up again and again is that electric cars just don’t work in the cold. Of course, with the onset of climate change, that may cease to be relevant, but, for now, we do have cold weather and snowstorms and those of us who reside in those areas need vehicles that can manage.

Many mistruths have some root in truth, so let’s be real: the earlier generation of electric vehicles didn’t do a great job of maintaining battery efficiency in cold temperatures. A U.S. Department of Energy study, using electric vehicles from the 2019-2020 model year, observed a reduction of efficiency of 41% in 20 degree Fahrenheit temperatures vs. 72 degrees. Gas powered counterparts, meanwhile, saw a reduction of 10% efficiency in those same cold temperatures. Not a great showing for Team Electrons!

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But, like Timmy-channeling-Bobby-Dylan might sing, the times they are a-changin’, and EV technology continues to make leaps forward. Primarily, more and more models are available with an onboard heat pump, a device that heats the cabin without less strain on the batteries, leaving them more available to power the car. (For contrast, your gas car produces a ton of excess and otherwise wasted heat through the process of internal combustion, and it turns that heat into cabin heat.) If you want to learn more about how it all works, there’s a good explainer here.

What this boils down to is smart shopping. Just like you wouldn’t want to buy a rear-wheel drive sports car to daily-drive in a cold, snowy climate, you aren’t going to want an EV in cold weather unless it’s got a heat pump. Thankfully, the nice folks at Recurrent are maintaining a list of EVs equipped with heat pumps. It’s a bit tricky to navigate, as some manufacturers offer heat pumps as an option while others offer it as standard equipment. Sometimes it’s included with a specific trim package. Sometimes, you’ll ask a salesperson and they’ll have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

And as you’ll see from this chart, also from Recurrent, the heat pump makes a dramatic difference in cold weather battery performance. The top six cars in their winter testing all come equipped with a heat pump, and their data says that EVs with a heat pump average 87% range in freezing conditions, which is just about on par with their gas counterparts.

A couple of years ago, there was a major snowstorm in Virginia that paralyzed I-95, leaving folks stranded in their vehicles for as many as 24 hours, and a columnist in The Washington Post used this news item to question the viability of EVs in real world situations. He highlighted an anecdote of a trucker offering blankets to a Tesla driver who was worried about running out of power in the cold with his kids. Who wouldn’t be scared in this situation? I’m a dad. I can relate.

Thing is, as Car and Driver discovered, EVs are just about as efficient keeping the cabin warm in “idle” as a gas car. Their test found that a Tesla Model 3 could maintain a cabin temperature of 65 degrees for 45.1 hours, just 6 hours less than a similar sized gas powered car. Oh, and their test used an older Model 3 that did not feature a heat pump, which is now standard on that vehicle. The moral of that snowstorm story: if you’re going out driving in a snowstorm, which you shouldn’t, make sure you have a full battery (or tank of the dinosaur juice).

Anyhow, with an efficient heat pump in your EV, you will be totally toasty all winter. You can also program the vehicle to know when you plan to leave the house and you’ll have a warm cabin and a pre-conditioned battery and powertrain, without any fumes filling up your garage. And, if you’re plugged into your home charger, there won’t be a drop of loss from your battery. (Another key reason to charge where you sleep, as I discussed earlier.)

That EV life, then — are we getting warmer?

A stunning survey made headlines this week, boasting that only one percent of current EV owners would give up the electrons and return to gasoline, if forced to replace their car tomorrow. Four percent would switch to a plug-in hybrid or standard hybrid, but 92 percent would absolutely buy another EV. Over 23,000 people across 18 countries, including the U.S., responded to the survey, commissioned by the Global EV Alliance. Owners cited the reduced operating costs of EVs, purchase incentives, and environmental reasons as winning attributes of EV ownership.

Funny thing though: just a few months back, consulting giant McKinsey published a report touting that 29 percent of global EV owners that it surveyed planned to switch back to an internal combustion car with their next purchase, with that number rising to a staggering 46 percent of American EV owners. Subjects of the McKinsey study cited charging issues as their main impediment to EV ownership, and also that the total cost of ownership was too high.

So, what’s up with that difference? Let’s look at the sources.

The Global EV Alliance conducted its survey using its own membership, who’ve hand-raised as EV enthusiasts, and it was a voluntary survey, so it’s no surprise that the respondents were likely evangelists of all things electrified.

And while the McKinsey study came from the firm’s ongoing Mobility Consumer Pulse survey, which we can assume to be a bit more scientific, it’s important to also consider that McKinsey’s client list includes some of the biggest fossil fuel producers on Earth, and they’ve recently come under scrutiny for “quietly fuel[ing] the climate crisis,” per a major investigation in The Guardian.

For reasons I’m making clear with each post, I want as many of you as possible to be in that enthusiastic group of EV-loving converts. But it’s really about making sure the EV life is right for you before forking over your hard-earned money at the dealership. And I can tell you the absolute best source for determining whether a transition to electrified driving will work for your lifestyle. No, it’s not this Hybridiot.

It’s not McKinsey, or a gaggle of plugged-in partisans. It’s you. And if you’re seriously considering making the switch sometime before the Trump administration goes all DOGE-y style on the current EV tax incentives, I have a cost-effective solution that will afford you some experience behind the wheel of an EV without the hassle of spending a single moment at a car dealer until you’re absolutely ready.

Use Turo. It’s Airbnb for cars. (Note: I am not being paid for this post whatsoever.)

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I discovered Turo through an ad on Doug DeMuro’s YouTube channel a few years ago, and I’ve used it several times to, as Doug put it, rent more interesting cars than you can get at the rental counter. But I’ve realized it’s a bit more specific than that. Normally, when you rent a car (or a hotel room), you rarely get to pick the specific one; it’s assigned when you check in. On Turo, you’re renting someone’s actual car, the exact one you see in the photos. And while this can be fun for renting a convertible to go to Palm Springs, it can also be useful for scheduling an extended test drive.

Browsing Turo in most major cities and filtering by “electric” will give you access to pretty much every EV on sale today, from a basic Nissan Leaf to an electric Mercedes G-Wagen and everything in between — which means a lot of Teslas. Enter your dates, find something that seems appealing, and make a booking — like my family just did.

We used Turo to reserve a Hyundai Ioniq 5 for Thanksgiving, essentially giving us a five-day period to learn everything about the car. We installed our toddler’s car seat, used it to run errands, drove on the highway, used the cruise control, observed the range, and charged it as needed.

Most of us have been there: When you drive a car for 20 minutes off the dealer lot, usually accompanied by a salesperson, how much can you actually learn, especially if you wind up with one of those chatty ones? Sure, you can (and should) take as much time as you can muster at the dealership once you have a vehicle for test driving, but wouldn’t you rather bring it home and not be rushed?

We began to decide whether the location of the USB plugs was annoying or not, whether the lane keeping assist felt intuitive or felt like fighting a weak-armed robot for control of the vehicle, whether the trunk worked for carrying a stroller and a grocery run. We marveled at the intensity of the tush toasters and my son continually commented on how quiet it was inside. When you’re spending tens of thousands of dollars, it’s worth spending a few extra dollars on a rental so you don’t end up buying something that marginally annoys you in small ways over the course of a decade.

I’m not going to give you a test drive checklist; here’s a good one to follow. But when you naturally live in a car for a few days via Turo, you’ll get a far better feel for its ability to do what you need it to do, in your specific lifestyle. Just check with the owner in advance about any major questions, just like you would for an Airbnb. For example, is it okay if I install my car seat? Are pets allowed in your car? Basically, don’t be a dick.

Before picking up the car, I’d recommend watching at least two thorough reviews of that vehicle on YouTube from a channel like Auto Buyers Guide/EV Buyers Guide, Redline Reviews, or Driven. Take some notes and get familiar with the car’s capabilities and features. Write down things you definitely want to try out.

If you’ve never driven or owned an EV, you’re going to want to spend extra time getting comfortable with the differences in driving experience and the nature of charging vs. gassing up.

• EV acceleration is pretty instantaneous as opposed to your gas car, which takes some time to get up to speed from a stop.

• EVs have some form of regenerative braking, meaning when you take your foot off the accelerator, the car starts to slow down – this helps put juice back into the battery pack via friction. In most EVs, you can adjust the intensity of this braking, sometimes all the way to “one pedal driving,” meaning if you take your foot off the go pedal, the car will slow to a complete stop.

• These two facets take a little getting used to, so take it easy, if it’s your first time. There are no “gears” in an EV, so the driving will likely feel very relaxed and smooth.

• There’s a lot of tech in EVs. Familiarize yourself with it – while parked. A lot of the driving characteristics will likely be adjustable.

• Live your life. How does the range and efficiency hold up doing your commute to work? Picking up kids? Running errands? Hauling things and people? Throw your life at the car and make sure it holds up.

• Get familiar with how to charge. If you don’t already have a home charger, you probably know someone who does. Ask if they can show you the ropes. Then, find your local compatible fast chargers and give those a try. (I suggest watching this video first for a few charging tips for the newbies.)

• Take lots of notes (when you’re not driving, of course).

Going through this process will help you ascertain whether EV life is for you or not, long before someone from McKinsey comes calling with a survey to complete.

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It’s wild that so many things related to the health of our children are politicized these days, but I can’t imagine any parent watching a third grader suck down a cigarette and thinking: Yeah, that seems fine. Yet that’s exactly the impact the cars we drive can have on our most vulnerable — and that’s a big reason why Hybridiot exists.

Regardless of how folks might feel about the impact of car emissions on our climate (despite the, you know, heaps of scientific evidence), no one wants little Johnny to become the Marlboro Man. But if little Johnny lives in an urban area in the good ol’ US of A, he’s basically smoking nine cigarettes a year worth of pollution. And five-and-a-half if he’s living in an “average” American town.

All of that isn’t the result of passenger vehicles alone, but one to one-and-a-half of those smokes are shooting directly from our personal tailpipes into Johnny’s system. One cig over a year might not sound like a lot, but it’s one too many for me — I’m a dad. Go ahead and picture your own kid slowly smoking a whole cigarette, like I did, then come back to me. Still with me? K.

We can do better — have a look at Norway. The Scandinavian country managed to reduce its overall CO2 impact by 17.5% since 2007 via a number of national initiatives, including electric vehicle adoption. No, the journey and execution haven’t been perfect, but the results are undeniable, and their citizens’ shift to EVs can take credit for 40-50% of those declines.

Wildly enough, if Americans had only reduced each driver’s annual emissions by 2.7% starting in 2007, we’d be right alongside Norway today. And noted climate radical George W. Bush passed legislation in his second term that was meant to subsidize hybrid vehicle adoption (although the purpose was more about independence from foreign oil rather than environmentalism). A separate bill also proposed an average vehicle MPG of 35 by 2020; by 2023, we’ve only reached 27.1. You can probably guess why that’s all gone to shit.

Climate change is real, and it’s a real reason why many folks, myself included, love the idea of electrifying our personal vehicles. But even if you debate the science around climate, I challenge you to present a rationale for knowing we’re poisoning our kids and deciding to not do anything about it. Here’s what you can do.

Let’s imagine that 25% of Americans drivers decided to move towards a cleaner, Norwegian-style fleet of passenger vehicles. It would only take an 8.4% increase in efficiency. It’s not a lot! That’s going from a 27 MPG vehicle to a 30 MPG vehicle. Across every single type of vehicle available on-sale today in this country, there’s an option that offers that level of increased efficiency over a standard gas model — or more! Or, there’s a fully-electric option, without any tailpipe emissions whatsoever.

And unlike in the 2000s, when George W. Freakin’ Bush was pushing hybrids, the cost difference between standard, non-plug-in hybrids and their gas counterparts is much tighter, especially when you factor in the fuel savings.

Just for a quick analysis, I focused on five popular vehicle types/models that have gas and hybrid (non-plug-in) options: Ford Maverick (pickup truck), Kia Sorento (3-row SUV), Toyota RAV4 (compact crossover), Lexus RX (luxury crossover), and Honda Accord (family sedan).

First and foremost, they all achieve a ton of added efficiency in terms of MPG:

Which leads to a big chunk of fuel savings annually:

Here’s how the hybrid price points compare to the gas models:

But, with the added fuel savings, you make up that cost difference over time (and most people, these days, own cars for 12.6 years!

Now, sadly, even with Norway’s aggressive maneuvers towards a greener future, little Johannes isn’t totally on the Nicorette: his annual habit still amounts to three cigs, with about a third of a smoke attributable to vehicular pollution. Still, that’s a third of what American Johnny’s sucking down.

Every twelve-step process begins with Step One. So, let’s begin.

I’ve been recommending cars for nearly 40 years. I’m also 47. Here’s my math:

Any ‘80s babies out there remember magazine drives? Your school or organization would raise money by encouraging the community to buy magazine subscriptions? This ‘80s baby would tick the boxes for Car & Driver and Motor Trend (along with Sports Illustrated and SPORT, and maybe Nintendo Power).

In the days before the Internet, I devoured car magazines from cover to cover, but it was always “normal” cars that captured my admiration. Like, there was a Lamborghini Countach poster up in my basement, but I’m not sure how it got there (probably my dad?). I loved being able to identify cars by their headlights or taillights while riding in my parents’ backseat at night. I remember mild obsessions with offbeat models: the Nissan Pulsar NX Sportbak, the Renault Fuego, the Merkur XR4Ti, the Honda CRX.

I channeled the supposed wisdom I’d gained by reading those magazines into a job as car-buying expert — like a juice box-sipping version of Tom McParland — and my first client was my grandmother, who was seeking a replacement for her withering Oldsmobile. My top recommendation, as an 8-year-old in 1986? A Ford Taurus. It was the cool car of the moment, a novel American effort to fight Accords and Camrys. I suggested she should opt for the SHO edition. She did not. Instead, she chose the No. 4 recommendation on my list: a Volvo 740 GLE. My pitch for the Volvo? “You’ll never need to buy another car, Grandma!” My mom gasped.

The rattle of internal combustion soundtracks my life. My dad’s ill-fated, secretive (but sort of precocious / Radwood-y?) purchase of an Escort GT in 1986 prompted the final blowout of my parents’ marriage. Then, my stepdad arrived in 1988 with amateur mechanic skills and a DeLorean, ’67 Mustang, and ’67 Stingray in tow. My mom and I crashed two of the three — he stuck around, so he must really love us. And his passion for cars deepened mine even further.

These days, I spend too many hours binge-watching car content on YouTube and watching auctions for attainable classics on car auction sites. I’ve also been a proud (used) EV owner, a strong believer in the future of electric mobility. And I’ve been casually back to my old tricks as a car buying resource for people I know and love, especially here in Brooklyn, as folks reimagine what car ownership means.

That experience encouraged me to start writing Hybridiot. There are some absolutely fabulous content creators in the automotive space (scroll to the end for a list of some of my favorites), and many of them approach their craft with the same deep passion for cars that I share. But sometimes, when I share their videos with friends who are car shopping, the level of detail can feel overwhelming.

On Hybridiot, my goal is to channel my passion into accessible, useful information for anyone interested in buying an electrified vehicle, new or used. Next to a home, a car is the biggest purchase many of us will make in life, and it probably will feel daunting, no matter how prepared you might feel. But it should also feel fun and exhilarating — those first minutes, driving off the dealer lot, can be one of life’s more amazing feelings, and it can feel even better if you’ve made a choice that’ll be better for the planet our kids will ultimately inherit.

Speaking of lasting relationships, I should wrap up the story about my grandmother. Magnificently, she outlived the Volvo, which ultimately became my hand-me-down college wheels when she bought a brand new Lexus in the mid-‘90s. We donated the well-worn Swede to charity in 1999, years before Grandma passed and with 160,000+ miles on the clock. If anything, this all goes to show that my recommendation chops pass the smell test (even if my delivery was a little bit off-putting, for an 8 year-old).

Hybridiot’s favorite YouTubers:

• Auto Buyers Guide. Formerly “Alex on Autos,” this channel offers truly thorough reviews of new cars from across the spectrum, from EVs to trucks to SUVs and everything in between. Alex covers every possible detail of each vehicle he covers, and you should definitely watch his videos before heading to a dealership to check out a car in-person. He also produces the EV Buyers Guide.

• Bjørn Nyland. This guy seems goofy at first glance, but he applies a lot of science to testing real world vehicle range and other characteristics in Norway, which is the world’s most EV-loving country.

• Driven. It’s a shame that The New York Times stopped producing Tom Voelk’s exceptional car review videos, but Tom has kept the series alive on his own YouTube channel. Look for Tom’s signature TP Test where he measures cargo capacity using Costco multipacks of the two-ply.

• The Fully Charged Show. All EVs all the time from this longstanding, UK-produced show, and while they do often cover cars that you can’t buy in the US, their reviews are thorough and fun, especially when 6’5” presenter Jack Scarlett tests interior roominess.

• Out of Spec Reviews. If you want to go extra deep on all things EV, then this is your channel. Host Kyle Connor is the most knowledgeable person I’ve ever seen on YouTube when it comes to electrified driving, and while I sometimes wish his videos were a little bit shorter (90 mins on 3 months of Lucid ownership, my dude?!), Out of Spec is great for real-world range tests, reviews, and ownership/buying advice.

• Redline Reviews. Lead editor Sofyan Bey, like Alex on Autos, is another super-thorough reviewer, and he gets pretty much every car through his tests in Pennsylvania. I always appreciate Sofyan’s candor about things that bother him with cars, like seat comfort, infotainment, and performance.

• The Straight Pipes. While this Canadian duo still loves a gasoline-powered V8, they also review tons of EVs and hybrids, and as new dads, they routinely talk about each vehicle’s ability to be used with kids and car seats.

If there’s anything predictable about life under a Trump administration, it’s contradictions — and the president-elect’s relationship to electric vehicles is no different. He’s made hating EVs part of the MAGA brand, but the world’s biggest EV maker is now his Dark MAGA paduwan. He’s depended on red states for support, yet those are the ones building brand new factories that’ll employ thousands to manufacture batteries and EVs for brands like Ford and Hyundai. He’s going to ramp up a trade war with China, who just happen to make 3/4 of the world’s lithium-ion batteries and supply the majority of rare earth materials used to produce today’s high-output power packs.

It’s going to be wild. Wild like Trump’s combover in a drop top Lambo wild. The answer is: we just don’t know. EV incentives in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act would need to be overturned by Congress, but Trump could close some loopholes via executive order or through the EPA. (I highly recommend this episode of Decoder for an enlightening convo on the subject.)

For now, though, electric vehicle purchases and leases can still tap into mega federal and state benefits and significant dealer markdowns, making this festive season an opportune time to get the lead out of your sled. But before you dump the pump, it’s crucial to figure out whether going electric makes sense for you, your lifestyle, and, of course, your wallet. Here’s how you can start making that decision.

(Of course, if you want to start emissions-free driving to save the planet, costs and barriers be damned — go for it, my dude. And read on for some crucial guidance.)

For the first EV ownership criteria, I’m borrowing the phrasing from Tom Voelk, the amazing writer and editor who runs Driven, an expertly-produced car reviews channel on YouTube. You have to charge where you sleep. This means installing a home charger. Here’s why this is essential:

1. You can charge when the car isn’t needed for anything else, as opposed to driving it somewhere and waiting for it to charge. About 86% of EV drivers have access to at-home charging, so they can always leave home with a full battery.

2. It’s immensely more affordable than charging at paid facilities:

   1. Per the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average price per kwH is $0.16, so to charge the average U.S. EV with an 80 kWh battery from 0-100%, you’re talking $12.80.
      Just for context here, an EV with that sized battery would get about 280 miles of range. The average U.S. car gets 27 miles per gallon of gas, so with gas around $3/gallon, that would cost about $31, so nearly 3x as much.

   2. At a paid Level 2 charger, the rates are higher ($0.20-0.25), so you’re looking at $16-20 for a full charge, which would take 7-9 hours. Most folks use paid Level 2 chargers at work or school, where they can get a little charge during the day before returning home.

   3. At a “fast charger,” aka Level 3, the rates are even higher, up to $0.60 per kWh, so that same charge would be a whopping $48. Fast chargers are best only for quick top-ups and road trips.

3. If your power company has cheaper overnight rates, you can program your car to charge during those hours and reduce your costs even more.

4. With most public chargers currently set up in parking lots as opposed to gas stations or busier facilities, some find home charging to be a safer-feeling solution.

So you’re convinced and you want to get a home charger? Here are some things you should know:

1. Many automakers offer incentives for home charger installation to sweeten the deal when you buy your car. Ford, for example, is offering free home chargers and money toward home installation with EV purchases before the end of 2024.

2. Some states offer tax incentives for installing home EV chargers, like Maryland, New York, and Connecticut, which is great because CT has the most expensive electricity in America (with the exception of Hawaii). In addition, many utility companies offer their own incentives for home EV chargers. Check with yours to find out.

3. You can also “Level 2” charge an EV with an installed 240V plug (aka a “dryer plug”). The benefit of the actual charger is being able to control and monitor the charging with an app.

If you can’t install a charger where you live, you’re not totally up shit’s road with a dead battery. In cities, some parking garages offer EV charging at a monthly flat fee. Also, some people can charge at work, which might be enough. And more and more urban areas are installing affordable Level 2 chargers.

When paid fast chargers are your only option, and you’re not getting some package of free charging as part of your vehicle purchase (which does exist, mainly among luxury brands and only for a limited time), EV ownership might not be for you — unless, as I said, you’re a no-cost-is-too-costly zealot.

But if you can charge where you sleep, then one important box has been emphatically ticked. Now that we know you and your awesome EV can recharge simultaneously, it’s time to discuss whether you can coexist harmoniously. Next time…

In the handful of hours since Jaguar launched its provocative rebrand, I’ve already watched half of a Chris Harris on Cars video starring four men in opulent environs who are older than turns-47-tomorrow me. They seem befuddled and disgruntled in their “emergency podcast.” One YouTuber ranted about “soy infused vegan turds” running the company who have made “the quintessential woke advert” while pivoting to an all-electric future. (Don’t click on his link — he appears to be a sad man shouting about wokedom while surrounded by HR Giger toys.)

Here’s something more poignant: a friend on LinkedIn talked about a granddad who saved and treasured Jag badges and hood ornaments like jewelry. Does the old cat badge below look like the jewelry a well-to-do thirtysomething would treasure today? Or something that should be collecting dust in granddad’s den? And then there’s the old logo, a safe and bland look that adorns the company’s current lineup of safe and bland vehicles. Who would even wear that on a t-shirt that wasn’t being paid to be at an auto show?

This rebrand is designed for vehicles we haven’t even seen yet. A lot of commentary I’ve seen today shouts that Jaguar should certainly know its place in the market, so why on earth would it pivot like this? Its place in the market right now is irrelevance. This provocative rebrand has tens of millions of impressions already and, if they can reveal vehicles to match their new “copy nothing” tagline, I think folks will be happy to gaze out onto their driveway and see those interlocking Js glistening back at them.

And maybe that’s actually not such a stretch for the legacy brand, after all. Once upon a time, in the 1960s, the E-Type shocked the world and became the must-have vehicle for every it-celebrity of the moment.

Could jaGUar be poised to claw its way back into pop culture relevance? The proof will be in the sheet metal.

Watch Jag’s 30-second spot below.