I don't understand how PHEV is better for the vast majority of people. People just haven't used an electric car. Never having to go to a gas station is a nice bonus. Education is the issue.
The two biggest real issues are price and charging if you don't own a house. Apartment buildings should have a mandatory 1 charging port per apartment. They don't need to be fast chargers, but it needs to be something where you can plug in after work and you're good to go in the morning.
You can plug your car into a regular wall outlet and get all the charge you need overnight. If you plug into dryer outlet, it's even faster. It doesn't necessarily require special equipment and you don't need to drive to some gas station to use their equipment to put liquid energy into your car. It's simple and convenient. I what way does charging suck?
The only time you might have an issue is a long road trip. You're probably fine with electric, but it does require slightly more planning. If you don't want to do that, for the few days you're doing thar trip just rent an ICE vehicle. It not that hard to handle. It's like people thinking they need a truck because they carry a few boards once every few years. Just ask someone for help or rent a uhaul or something. Why waste your money on that vehicle when you rarely use it for it's purpose? (Not saying you don't, but the vast majority of truck owners have never put anything into the bed of their truck.)
Have you ever run an extension cord out to do a project outdoors? That's electricity, and it can charge your car battery. Pretty much anyone who isn't in an apartment can do it trivially. We do need solutions for people in apartments though, because that's a huge group and they're reliant on greedy landlords to decide to add access for them.
As for renting, assuming EV prices are reasonable, the savings from electric should pay for your rental, if it were really required. Likely your electric is fine but if you had to it's an option and it's not that bad.
It's a great stop gap and it's the bridge we need. It would reduce the great majority of emissions (those produced by commuters) while allowing people to drive longer distances without worry.
It buys us time to build out charging infrastructure and introduces people to the concept of a plug in vehicle.
Expecting everyone to switch to full electric overnight is unrealistic. There are still a lot of logistical issues we have to solve.
Nobody is expecting people to switch 'overnight'. At best it's only at 2035 and it will probably be later. With how fast charging infra is going it's mostly just a behavioural issue.
It's not though. There are lots of use cases that electric vehicles are not suitable for (many covered in this thread). Sure there's people who could switch and don't out of fear or unwarranted concern but that doesn't change the fact that they're simply not feasible for a lot of people currently and PHEV's are a great middle ground that can still vastly reduce emissions and that's the goal here isn't it?
If there's a usecase that electric is truly not suitable for at 2035 or even 2040. Then it will be hydrogen or a PHEV with shitty electric range.
You think all those new phevs will be charged literally every trip? Nah it won't, people are too lazy for that. If the vastly improved electric in 2035 isn't good enough then a small ass battery phev won't do shit either.
Charged overnight most PHEV's have plenty of range for the average person's daily commute and there's really no reason range can't be improved. That's a huge reduction in emissions.
PHEV is the worst of both worlds. You have to do maintenance that you would normally do on an ICE. The up front cost is often the same or more than EV or ICE.
Most new car buyers don't care about maintenance. It's not expensive. My 3 year service check was $175. All of it easy to do if I wasn't a lazy bastard. Oil changes are $50 and I get a rental for 2 hours.