Plugins weren’t a thing yet iirc, at least not from the large mainstream brands. Prius was just normal hybrid without charging.
Imo it’s impossible to say what would have been, in a what if scenario like this. Without Tesla, large battery tech would probably/maybe/possibly be a lot less developed than it is now and we might not have seen plugin hybrids become mainstream just yet. Personally, I do think that Tesla deserves credit for accelerating the development of these technologies, and I drive a hybrid and generally loath Elon Musk :)
That is just it. If we are saying we can’t make educated guesses based on situations and trends then we also cannot make any claims that musk’s tesla was a net good.
But once we look at the past decade or so: We see hybrids pretty much universally get shit on for “not being worth it” and “a step in the wrong direction”. Which… there are merits to those arguments. But they are still better than pure ICE vehicles.
I did not see hybrids universally get shit on. I do know one person with that opinion, but I wouldn’t call him universal and I don’t put much stock in his opinions anyhow, he had had more weird takes before he spouted that one.
Plugins weren’t a thing yet iirc, at least not from the large mainstream brands. Prius was just normal hybrid without charging.
Imo it’s impossible to say what would have been, in a what if scenario like this. Without Tesla, large battery tech would probably/maybe/possibly be a lot less developed than it is now and we might not have seen plugin hybrids become mainstream just yet. Personally, I do think that Tesla deserves credit for accelerating the development of these technologies, and I drive a hybrid and generally loath Elon Musk :)
That is just it. If we are saying we can’t make educated guesses based on situations and trends then we also cannot make any claims that musk’s tesla was a net good.
But once we look at the past decade or so: We see hybrids pretty much universally get shit on for “not being worth it” and “a step in the wrong direction”. Which… there are merits to those arguments. But they are still better than pure ICE vehicles.
I did not see hybrids universally get shit on. I do know one person with that opinion, but I wouldn’t call him universal and I don’t put much stock in his opinions anyhow, he had had more weird takes before he spouted that one.