I picked up a Ford C-Max Energi last year and, while I just take regen for
granted in my full EVs, I actually appreciate the regen in the plug-in hybrid
more… When you’re taking a longer trip, and switch over to gas, the regen is
still working. So it’s regenerating electricity from kinetic energy that was
generated with gasoline. Sounds obvious, once you think of it, but I’d never
really considered what a benefit that is, nor how much better it would make me
feel about the gasoline portion of longer trips. Particularly in stop-and-go
traffic. It’s one of the things that makes me happiest about the car.
Another general observation about car satisfaction… There’s a real watershed
around 2011, where special “features” like proximity keys, automatic
headlights, bluetooth integration, MP3 indexing of USB storage devices, etc.,
became standard relatively far down the product lines of Ford-family and
Volkswagen-family vehicles. They’re huge companies, and put a lot of work into
making those things work in their high-end vehicles. They’re all features that
could be had, previously, in really expensive vehicles. But now that the
performance of the vehicle computer isn’t a contributor to the cost of the
vehicle, and the marginal cost of replicating the features in software is
essentially zero, there’s no reason for those companies not to roll many of
those features into their low-end vehicles, to make them more competitive than
similarly low-end vehicles from other manufacturers who haven’t done that work.
And it better amortizes the software development costs, over a much larger
number of vehicles sold. So they just do it. And it makes for a significantly
better car-ownership experience. If you haven’t owned a post-2011 vehicle, and
can afford to switch to one, you may find yourself happy with a cheaper car
than you’d expect. Those little things really add up, and make a difference.
-Bill
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