They’re the perfect stepping stone for those who are curious, but afraid to make the leap.
Hybrids have all the maintenance cost of ICE vehicles and twice as many drivetrain components to break. The extra cost to keep a hybrid on the road easily cancels out the gas savings.
Buy an EV and you have a simple drive train that will rarely break and has no maintenance.
Hybrids shift all of the hard work to the dead simple electric motors, and allow the gas engines to stay in their happy zone. There’s a reason why priuses and other hybrids are know to be stupid reliable. Maintenance is also a lot less frequent because of that. So while you technically have to do it, you go MUCH longer in between doing them. I’d be comfortable doing 15k mile oil changes on a hybrid, but not on a gas car.
Granted this is GM so I’d expect them to fuck something up about these cars. But it’s their trucks and those are like the only good things GM makes.
There are several different configurations of hybrids so most of them don’t drive the wheels with only the electric motor. Most of them operate just like a gas car with twice as many parts to break by assisting the gas engine with the electric motor for a short range.
Gaskets and seals and spark plugs and air filters and fuel filters and all the maintenance items and fluid changes are often recommend based off time/mileage whichever comes first. So while you may not be adding up the miles as fast, the times between service is the same.