Plug in Hybrid

Morning all.......anyone got a plug in hybrid? If so a they any good?

A know zero about cars other than fact I’m getting ****** every time I go to garage

 

I personally haven’t had one but my neighbour recently had a Vauxhall Hybrid as a courtesy car for about a month and said it was a really nice drive and it’s great how the car picks between petrol or electric or that you have the choice on what option to drive with so you can balance between the two meaning you don’t have to keep filling the car with petrol or having to charge it daily.

 

330e which I admit is much better than I anticipated. Electric distance is suppressed by temperature, say 25m in the winter c40m in the summer but thing this is the case for all of them. Great for the tootalling about town say sub 35mph. My moan on the whole plug system or is this just BMWs is that surely it could harvest more electric power whilst driving on the ICE say on the motorway or faster roads. Most I’ve got was 3 miles after a 4 hour drive.
It’s a top car, really quiet the technology is moving fast so in a way it’s all aged by the time you drive it - but then again the ICE is the ultimate aged tech.

 

It did cut down the fuel I put in by at least half per month - which was good when the price of juice has shot up, plus when there were queues to the forecourt

 

My mate has had a self-charging hybrid and now has a plug in hybrid. He reckons he was getting late 60s per gallon from the self charging (Toyota Yaris). He has a short commute to work and charges his PHEV (some mitsubishi thing) nightly so he's effectively all electric for that. For longer runs though it's all on petrol and struggles to beat 40mpg on motorway runs.

So I think you need to look at what distances you regularly drive and choose accordingly

 

I’ve had a couple of PHEV’s… main advantage of them over a standard hybrid is you can run the fully electric, although range is normally quite limited about 30 miles.. and so is the speed the engine will kick in if you go above 57mph.. but are a good option if you don’t travel far and want to dip your tie into the electric market, without fully committing. I find them quite responsive as the electric motor kicks in and helps with acceleration. All in all this helps with the MPG I’m currently getting about 63 mpg from my Audi. Also the battery will charge through normal day to day driving without having to be plugged in.

 

I have one, mate. Personally, I really wouldn’t get one. I think I have posted on this subject before and my opinion hasn’t changed since then.
Mine is an Audi A3 40 TFSIe. Lovely looking car and nice to drive, but how on Earth these can be described as clean and efficient is beyond me.
FIVE hours of plug in charging (baring in mind the price of electric) gives a range of just 30 miles, but in reality, even driving like a nun, air con switched off etc, your 30 miles is more like 15.
So when your five hours charge ( for 20 mins driving) has gone, it switches to petrol mode, but as you are then carrying the additional weight of a boot full of flat batteries, your fuel economy is >30mpg!!!
Supposedly a ‘green’ car, yet I genuinely think that every time I start the engine, 9 polar bears will die!!
Father in law has a Toyota ‘summat’, self charging hybrid. Far, far better car.
I think the whole charging infrastructure has to come on leaps and bounds, yet, before everyone is forced to make the change.
But I hugely miss my last car which was a diesel and cleared 700+ miles per fill up.
This is only my experience, and others may well rate these as brilliant. But I, personally, am very underwhelmed.

 

Currently have a Kuga on hire which is plug in hybrid, 35 miles pure electric went to Southampton and back with the regen and the in and around town bits I got 112 miles of electric driving, petrol MPG was around 48. I have a full electric MG ZS which I absolutely love and would definitely recommend.

 

I would agree with this, apart from the 'Toyota self charging hybrid is better' bit. They may be decent cars but I loathe the green washing bit about calling it self charging. They even have adverts showing them driving past someone charging their car and laughing as if their car is a better EV because it is 'self charging', as if it is magic. People believe this **** and it should be banned.

But back to the topic, yes agree with @Julian Broddle's Perm. At least, consider how you will use it. People sometimes buy them because they do long trips and range anxiety stops them going EV. But once the electric range has gone, you are tramping down the motorway using petrol only and carrying an empty battery and an electric motor around doing nothing except hammering your fuel efficiency. So they are not great for long journeys.

And if all you ever do is short journeys, you are carrying around an engine that never gets used. Seriously, why would you? Just get a short range EV.

They are a compromise in the short term to let people keep their ICE under the bonnet but still think they are going green. They are hideously complicated, when you consider the tech needed to seamlessly jump from engine to electric and back again, with even more parts to go wrong than a traditional ICE car.

I can see that, in some use case scenarios, they may be the better option, when people do mainly local mileage but think they can't afford an EV, as they are generally a bit cheaper than EV. But they are also generally a good bit more expensive than the ICE equivalent model. I wouldn't.

 

Bare in mind that these a very complex machines and the repair costs, should you keep it a long time, could be horrendous.

 

Internal Combustion Engine.

Just a term that seems to have come in to use to describe petrol or diesel without having to say both

 

The thing I don't get about PHEV is the official efficiency numbers. I have seen some quote absolutely fanciful numbers like 250 miles per gallon, that must draw people in like moths to a flame. But where on earth does that number come from as it has to be based on so many variable factors it might as well be made up. It is misleading in the extreme for punters.

If you buy a PHEV and then make it spend the majority of it's time doing 70mph on the motorway, you will get lower miles per gallon efficiency numbers than a regular petrol.

 

We bought a one year old Toyota Yaris 1.5 automatic hybrid two years ago and the overall mpg figure from 0 miles is 63mpg. I usually have the display set to from start of journey and it’s not hard to get a reading over 80mpg when driving sensibly.

I wouldn’t buy a purely electric vehicle for reasons of cost in the main. These cars, and hybrids, are more expensive than petrol engined cars so what you might save on fuel is wiped out. I like the Yaris very much but comfort levels are a big step down from my previous car - BMW X3 - but the change had to be made when the old car was starting to eat money. I had 8 happy years driving it around the country, and Europe, but the pull of new technology was irresistible.

 

Waiting for my Honda HRV self charging hybrid/1.5 petrol,which is due for delivery end of month.

 

We’ve a just got a new 308 GT premium Hybrid. It’s a stunning thing, looks amazing and drives really well. The other half uses it for work (8 mile round trip) in electric mode.
I’m a VW group fan (I have to be as I work for them) but id recommend the new 308 to anyone

 

I had an Audi a3 phev, the range as someone else said was only about 15-20 miles. Main thing for me though was the boot was so small. Changed to a Skoda superb phev and much happier. Range is more like 25-30. Have to say I've been getting 50-70 mpg out of both of them, but that would be dependent on your typical journey. I'm working from home permanently now, so most journeys are short and fully electric. I'd say it depends on your budget and journey profile.

 

What I don't get about this push for electric Cars is that we use Gas to generate our electricity. I assume the idea is that will change over time? Also curious about the longevity of these cars with Batteries? Will they last as long as current cars?

 

Most EV batteries are guaranteed for 8 years and also guaranteed to have above 70% capacity. In those years.
I think you should be good for 10 years plus.

 

We already generate around 40% of our electricity using renewals, mainly wind, and that number is increasing every year. The aim, particularly with the way that the world is these days,must surely be to be self sufficient in energy generation as soon as possible so, along with the environment angle, that's 2 reasons to keep going and increase that number as fast as possible.

We already have the single largest off shore wind farm in the world, Hornsea 2, and soon that will be overtaken by another one that's bigger, at Dogger Bank on the North East coastline.

In terms of the battery, they are warrantied by the manufacturers for 7 or 8 years. I don't know of any manufacturer where the warranty is less than 7 years. What the warranty states is not that the battery will be replaced if it is dead, but that the battery will be replaced if its capacity reduces to less than 70% of what it was when new, within that 7 year period. That's what is considered to be excessive battery degradation and liable to replacement. But even that threshold is highly unlikely to be reached in anywhere close to 7 years, otherwise the manufacturers would be spewing money left right and centre replacing everyone's batteries. The reality is that they lose 1 to 2% a year capacity, and will generally outlive the rest of the car.