Mary Barra Tells ICE Fans EVs Are the End Game PHEV s Don t Make Sense

Mary Barra has come out and made some comments which have, for some reason, become controversial. I don't know why they're controversial because the facts say that what she said is correct, but people are reacting to this in a way I didn't expect. And the thing is, the data shows Mary's right. In fact, Mary Barra is going beyond this. She's saying, hybrids don't really make sense. Electric, fully electric cars are more logical than a hybrid. To hear this from a CEO, I think this is the first time we've heard this, but it confirms what I've been saying here on the channel, what many of you have been saying as well. Now, Mary Barra, she's come out and said, plug-in hybrids don't work because people don't plug them in. And whilst that may sound insane to you, when I first started talking about this stuff on the channel a few years ago because we saw the data from Europe, I thought, this can't be true. I mean, it's so stupid. It doesn't make any sense. Surely people are plugging them in, at least using this excess solar they're generating to power their cars for free, but people actually don't do it. On paper, China's Chevy Equinox Plus plug-in hybrid, you would think they'd make that in the US, right? The Chinese plug-in hybrid, it's a practical crossover body. It combines a gas engine with a battery for more than 600 miles of range. Now, of course, this is a Chinese General Motors vehicle. So General Motors doesn't even really make it themselves. It's their joint venture partner that makes it. Some Americans are saying, you should be bringing that car to America. And the press is saying, why aren't you doing it? But for a litany of reasons, it's not coming to the US market, leaving Americans with the gas Equinox and the EV Equinox, which is actually quite a good vehicle. General Motors in the US has pretty much stayed away from any kind of hybrid vehicles, and Mary Barra has said why. She says the end game is not hybrids. She says the end game is everything will be electric. So it is interesting to hear a CEO say, we're all gonna end up in one place. There will be no internal combustion cars. Now, I can tell you from my conversations with many people over the last few years, that almost no Australians believe that's gonna happen. They think they'll be able to continue buying antiquated V8 diesel gasoline powered vehicles forever. They literally believe that. I find that incredible. They think that that's gonna continue, but they do. But Mary Barra says, no, you're wrong. That's nonsense. If you'd like to book a paid consultation, you can do so. And I'll put a link in the description below if you want advice on what electric car to buy, solar systems, all that kind of stuff, you can do that. At the Automotive Press Association Conference in Detroit on Monday, Barra spoke an uncomfortable truth about plug-in hybrids in America. What we know today with plug-in hybrids is that most people don't plug them in, she said. So that's why we're trying to be very thoughtful about what we do from a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid perspective. So one thing Mary Barra is saying is that within five years, General Motors will be able to make more compelling electric cars with more range than today, faster charging speeds, more range, and a similar price to an internal combustion car. So how are they gonna do that? Well, two ways. Number one, using lithium ion phosphate batteries. They're licensing the technology from CATL. That will mean that cheaper, more affordable EVs will be able to compete on, well, charging speed for one. We know those lithium ion phosphate batteries can charge up to 1,000 kilowatt, 1,000, with very limited battery degradation. We also know they're very, very affordable and they last an extremely long time, much longer than an internal combustion engine is ever gonna last. But secondly, General Motors have been working on their, it's an interesting hybrid battery. It's like combining lithium ion phosphate and manganese. So they're working on this hybrid lithium manganese battery, which they believe will have the energy density, it's a lithium ion phosphate manganese battery, it's gonna have the energy density of an NMC battery, so a ternary battery, and it'll basically cost them less to produce than today's existing lithium ion phosphate. Now, I don't know if that's accurate, but even if they cost the same as lithium ion phosphate batteries and have the energy density of NMC batteries, that will help to bring the price down and it will increase range as well. So it is, there's quite a few manufacturers working on this, LG Chem, by the way. I did a video on this about six months ago, which for some reason everyone else ignored. LG Chem are working on these batteries with both General Motors and I think Tesla as well. So Barry's comments, I think, are really interesting, really interesting to see that CEOs of companies, automotive industry companies, are saying, it doesn't matter how you feel about this, even if you're our hardcore fans. I mean, General Motors has, what, millions of hardcore fans who just, they just love paying a ---- ton of money for gasoline. They love it. They love big V8 engines. They love, this is their thing, right? They also complain that they're poor quite often as well, but they, for some reason, love to spend huge sums of money on their internal combustion cars. They love fixing them. They love paying more money for filters and they love having to do spark plug changes. They love having to do new filter changes all the time and having to do new oil changes. She knows that is a huge contingent of their current buyers and she's telling them, well, it doesn't matter what you think or how you feel, the end game is for the electric. Plug-in hybrids obviously combine a, usually a smaller internal combustion engine and a battery. And the idea is, right, you get home at nighttime or even during the daytime, because actually a lot of people just leave their cars at home during the day, and you can plug in and use your excess solar or use your solar or use cheap electricity during the day, and then you can run your car at a much lower price. It is a lot cheaper actually to do it that way. A lot of plug-in hybrids have between 30 to 50 miles of real world range, but newer ones coming from China particularly have more than a hundred miles of range. In fact, some of them have more than 200 miles of range. They're more e-revs though, but anyway, that's still a thing. And a lot of Chinese companies are going all in on them. But plug-in hybrid sales haven't really been increasing in China, whereas EV sales have. Last year in 2025, EV sales increased in China by about 26%, whereas plug-in hybrid sales only increased by around 5%. So I believe that they're not gonna happen. And in fact, I did a video not long ago saying that hybrids are dead. And what I did, I didn't mean that they're dead tomorrow, but I meant the trajectory for them shows that they are dead, which clearly Mary Barra believes is accurate. So in 2024, there was an actual, a study in Europe, and there was also one in 2023, and there was also one in 2025. Those studies showed that only about 30% of plug-in hybrid owners actually plug their cars in. That's pretty terrible. In addition to that, this was also found. In current FEVs, electric drive shares are much lower than assumed in EPA labeling. In other words, the International Council on Clean Transportation said that a consequence of this comparatively low electric drive share is that real-world fuel consumption is 42 to 67% higher than EPA-label fuel consumption. So a lot of people say, oh, the electric cars that they're buying don't have anywhere near the range that they've claimed, but it's much worse for hybrids. The difference is 42 to 67% less. In the real world. And here's the other problem that I see. Because most of these hybrids, outside of China, about 90% of them have less than 100 kilometers of EV range, in fact, probably 95%, it means after you've done probably your 70 kilometers of real-world EV range, or realistically on the average EV, it's about 50 kilometers, after that happens, you are then dragging around a very heavy battery and an electric motor. You're literally dragging it around. So that's another reason why the efficiency claims are nowhere near the real-world numbers that we're actually seeing. So in other words, because drivers don't plug their cars in, they're not getting the benefit from their powertrain. And you can't really change people's decision not to do this. They aren't doing it in Europe, they're actually not doing it in many cases, most of the time in Australia or in the United States. For this reason and others, I believe that buying a hybrid is not a good decision. They're also extremely complex vehicles, and in my opinion, are much more likely to break down. Now, one ending point is this, a lot of people want a safe car. They buy a car because they think it's boring and it's safe, and that's why Toyota sells so many cars. But a lot of people, if they wanna be safe, shouldn't really be buying a plug-in hybrid, considering they're about 100 times more likely to catch fire than an electric car, and more than 100 times more likely than a gasoline-powered car. Guys, what are your thoughts on all this? Do you agree with Mary Barra? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for watching. 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