Cutting car emissions by 50%. Cheaply & cleanly

Let's look at the petrol (gasoline) consumption and pricing of the Toyota Corolla Sedan Hybrid compared with the petrol-only ("un-electric") version of the same car.  I've taken the data from CarAdvice's review:

While stop-start drudgery wasn’t a part of the program, a mix of open road and some heated pedalling through the fun stuff delivered decent fuel consumption results. Toyota suggests the petrol auto is capable of 6.0 litres per 100km, while we saw 8.0L/100km. The hybrid offers an official 3.5L/100km (better even than the 4.2L/100km hatch), but in the real world ended up at 4.0L/100km. [That's 29 MPG for the un-electric and 59 MPG for the hybrid.]

In terms of equipment, none are missing anything, but of course the range of features and trinkets grows as you step up through the range.

Crucially, all variants come with safety kit including autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection (day and night) and cyclist detection (day), seven airbags, lane-departure alert with steering assist, road sign recognition, active cornering assist, two ISOFIX and three top-tether child seat mounts, and a reverse camera.

Automatics feature lane-trace control for more accurate lane centring and all-speed cruise control. The manual Ascent Sport has ‘high-speed’ adaptive cruise (from 30km/h and up) and misses out on trace control. The SX and ZR also pick up blind-spot monitoring.

Pricing starts from [A]$23,335 for the manual, [A]$24,835 for the petrol CVT [Continuously Variable Transmission], and [A]$26,335 for the hybrid (before on-road costs).

This will prolly be the car I buy.  I have a Toyota Corolla Sedan now, and I like it.  Getting a hybrid will only cost A$1,500 more, and I will cut my petrol bill by 50%.  It will pay for itself within 3 years.  My only complaint is that it is so ugly.

But the key point is this: we can transition to hybrids and cut emissions by 50% for very little.   As I said here, EV-promoting policies such as subsidies and EV targets should not discriminate against hybrids.  Although they only cut emissions by 30-50%, because the cost difference is so small they are much more likely to be taken up by consumers than full-on electrics.  Which means we get a real cut in emissions immediately, without having to wait for EVs to have sticker prices below ICEVs.  And when battery prices do fall enough, the transition from hybrid to electric will be seamless and natural.  It'll simply become cheaper to put in a decent battery pack with a single (electric) engine than to have two engines with a much smaller battery pack.   If you think it'll take a long time for manufacturers to transition to hybrids, consider this: 2 years ago, Hyundai had no electric cars at all in its line-up.  Almost all manufacturers now have HEVs and PHEVs as part of their offering.  Governments everywhere could reach 100% electric car sales within a couple of years, at low cost, if they're prepared to accept hybrids as a bridge to full electrics later this decade.

We have to cut emissions and we have to cut them now.  HEVs aren't perfect, because they still produce CO2 and pollution.  But waiting for the perfection of EVs means big delays, which we can't afford.  And in the meantime, we can cut our car fleet's emissions by 30 or 40 or 50%.