Today, perhaps the biggest mistake made by the automotive sector, except for Toyota, is to rush the transition to electric vehicles without making the necessary investment in hybrid technologies.

So what is a hybrid?

Hybrid vehicles use multiple sources of energy: a gasoline (or much more rarely diesel) engine works together with an electric motor to propel the vehicle. Depending on the vehicle, both motors can be independent or work together. There are two types of hybrids: Mild Hybrid Electric Vehicles (MHEVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs).

In a mild hybrid, the electric motor assists the internal combustion engine in a vehicle. It comes into play particularly when a large amount of fuel is consumed during acceleration and can help increase the engine's power during acceleration. This allows for reducing fuel consumption and emissions in mild hybrid vehicles. Batteries are recharged automatically by regenerative braking, which captures and converts energy created by braking friction into electricity and stores it in the battery. Therefore, mild hybrid vehicles do not require charging stations.

Plug-in hybrids, also known as PHEVs, have both internal combustion and electric motors. Each of these motors can operate the vehicle independently. These vehicles can be plugged into a power outlet to recharge the battery in addition to using regenerative braking as an energy source. Thus, when a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) is parked at a charging station, it has the capacity to recharge its battery.

Advantages:

• Significantly reduce fuel consumption, especially in urban areas.
• Have lower emission values, pollute the environment less.
• Have more impressive initial accelerations, bridging the torque gap of ICE engines.
• Unlike Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), there is no fear of "running out of battery and being stranded" issue.
• In urban areas, albeit for a limited time, they can travel quietly without being exposed to engine noise. Similarly, the traditional noise during the initial startup in the mornings also disappears.

Disadvantages:

• Their prices and maintenance costs are higher compared to equivalent diesel vehicles.
• They are much heavier than traditional vehicles.
• To mitigate the extra weight, smaller batteries and electric motors are used, and suspension components are sacrificed, reducing handling.
• Their performance is weaker compared to equivalent ICE-powered vehicles and especially EVs.
• Batteries and electric motors take up extra space, reducing luggage space in most cases.

The solution lies in the past

The BMW Group, including Mini and Rolls-Royce, sold 28% more electric vehicles in the first quarter of this year compared to the previous year. During the same period, EV sales of all European competitors declined. Although there may not be an obvious technical superiority, BMW's current success in EVs has its roots ten years ago.

In 2013, BMW took two major steps towards the future with two hybrid models, the i3 and i8. While many hybrid and electric vehicles today are built on the infrastructure of traditional models due to high costs, BMW at that time produced a carbon chassis from scratch for these two models and equipped their interiors with lightweight, recyclable materials. In many ways, these two revolutionary cars also eliminated many of the flaws associated with hybrids, especially thanks to their lightness: the i3 was almost 200 kg lighter than a similar-sized Nissan Leaf, resulting in a 0-100 value that was 4 seconds faster.

Today, instead of releasing 10 EVs that seem to come out of the same mold for every hybrid, if brands took the risks BMW took ten years ago and showed the same courage, car customers would not be exposed and dependent on EVs that do not yet have a clearly ready infrastructure and the various problems they bring with them.