afbadfatdh

>The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is abysmal.

The Chevy Volt was pretty sporty (damn the suits who killed it), and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI-DUULV1tE

>The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace their BMW or Mercedes

Well there's your problem. The fact that EVs are toys is making you think PHEVs are also toys. There are PHEVs currently on the market that can compete with the Ford Focus and the Honda Accord.

>Driving an EV is a green status symbol now. I wonder if they could in the future be viewed as "battery hogs".

I already view them as battery hogs. It baffles me that anyone thinks they make sense. We have the battery supply to either make a small minority of cars EVs or to make all cars PHEVs.

PHEVs are cheaper, more practical, and more environmentally sound.

This makes very little sense. The complexity is an implementation detail. PHEVs are cheaper than EVs by a wide margin, complexity be damned, and are more practical to boot. Building PHEVs does not in any way reduce the amount that will be spent on battery R&D; PHEVs will consume all the batteries we can throw at them because we will still want the biggest battery pack available.

>Yeah, it’s been said that ffmpeg and vlc could play a vinyl record if you fed it to them.

ffmpeg is doing all the heavy lifting there. VLC mostly uses libraries from ffmpeg.

I have no idea why people are so impressed by VLC. Anything built on libavcodec can play all the same files, but they won't have VLC's deficiencies in performance, quality, reliability, or usability. ffmpeg is a great project and VLC an incompetent one riding its coattails.