Honestly plug in hybrids are the worst of both worlds.
There was a study recently from Europe that found the vast majority of people with plug in hybrids hardly every plugged them in, and drove them like normal cars. That defeats the entire point of a plug in hybrid, and now you are carrying a heavy battery everywhere that you are not fully using. Which makes the car less efficient than a normal hybrid!
I had an alcoholic neighbor with learning disabilities who had a PHEV minivan purchased for them, and they only kept the battery charged for the first few months of ownership. After that, they seemed to lose interest in plugging it in when they got home.
On the other hand, a friend of the family owns a PHEV sedan they keep charged religiously, and they need to buy fuel stabilizer because they almost never use any gas.
The second one sounds an awful lot like they would be better off with a pure ev rather than carrying around a complete ice setip plus tank of fuel.
It’s why plug ins rarely work for normal use, you’re either carrying around a heavy battery pack and motor you aren’t using or the ice and fuel you aren’t using.
Harry Medcalf loved his Range Rover PHEV because they only ever used it for short journeys, almost of all of which were on electric. It’s such a face palm moment making an already massively heavy car even heavier when a small EV with a small battery like a Leaf or even a small ICE would be far cheaper to buy and run, while fitting all of their actual requirements.
I get why people like them, as they let you dip your toe into evs but they just don’t offer the benefits that a straight ice or straight ev would.
I imagine that when the concept was first dreamt up they were thinking that cities would charge you if you entered using ICE, so the battery is for then and you get to the city using ICE savingyour battery. But that’s not happened.
That’s an edge case if it’s any more regular than could be addressed by hiring a car for those trips. And if it’s that regular, then a plain ICE would be a far far better fit as you aren’t trying to drag around a useless heavy battery and motor on them and you haven’t paid over the odds to do so.
It’s like the dumbasses that purchase a pickup truck for the flat bed, then use it at must a handful of times. For them, hiring a van or a trailer would be the sensible choice. If they ran a landscaping business or something, then yeah, a pickup is the way to go.
Buy the vehicle for whatever the majority of driving you need, not some random likely rare edge case, that’s dumb.
How long is a piece of string? So many variables with that you’d have to do your own numbers for your own situation and if you really can’t charge a long range ev for your trip.
However, most people who say they do big trips (more than 400 round trip) do so a handful of times a year where there is zero ability to recharge the car. That’s where I’d be looking at a hire car, and it’s going to be cheaper to do so.
A long-range EV works for me. About a third of my annual miles are towing on long trips (1000 mile round trips) with it, and it’s fine with planning.
Completely get why some people don’t want to do that, and for that, a suitable diesel is far better for them as its 10ks cheaper to buy in the first place.
PHEV makes fuck all sense for that sort of trip as it runs out of battery 30 miles or so into a 1000 mile trip. You paid for to buy it than a diesel, you get worse economy than a like to like diesel, just not good.
OK, so we’ve established a person can do the math and come up with some value of long trips where its not economical to rent.
Given that a person needs to make that many long trips, how many short trips would they also need to make for the gas savings from a PHEV in EV mode during short trips to exceed the gas loss from doing long trips in a vehicle that gets somewhat lower MPG on long trips compared to a pure hybrid?
How much value might a person reasonably assign to the flexibility to take a weekend road trip without having to plan ahead and make reservations with a rental company?
You can’t fix stupid. You can argue plugin hybrids are bad on the pragmatic argument that people don’t charge them and that’s fair, but to say they are the worst is just wrong. The have the potential to be the best.
Well let me clarify a bit why I think they are the worst.
They have the full complexity an an ICE car, with the added difficulties that arise in a full EV
You need to build and design a car that has all of the downsides of ICE cars. Complicated engine, emissions management, fuel, air intakes.
With a lot of the downsides of an ev. Large heavy, expensive batteries.
Meanwhile you get limited upsides. Evs get lower maintenance and transport costs and ICE cars get range.
Plug in hybrids will have harder maintenance than either, while not getting the fully reduced transport costs as it’s not as efficient as a full ev.
Here’s where traditional hybrids win out, their battery can be really small, correspondingly cheap and more efficient.
Lugging all that extra weight around decreases the efficiency of the vehicle, where for full ev that matters a lot.
When running in full gas mode your lugging around a heavy battery for nothing, and in a full ev mode your lugging around a heavy engine for nothing.
The High-medium range of full gas would be better served by a traditional hybrid, and the low-medium range would be better served for full evs.
I’m sure there is a narrow window for plug in hybrids, but again that is going to be rare and shrinking as evs get better.
While you can’t fix stupid, we do have to think about how a product actually gets used vs it’s design.
If nobody is plugging their plug in hybrid, then maybe the manufacturer should remind them, even if its only outlet level power.
To me it is also a symbol of overconsumption. Buying a vehicle that will cover 100% of your use cases vs buying for 99% and renting a more suitable option for that 1%.
I do think this argument for me would change if manufacturers took a different approach. If they took something like a traditional hybrid, like a Ford fusion, and stuck a modern battery in and added a simple plug would be great. Then increase the efficiency a bit and maybe someone could get 10 miles of battery from a regular outlet.
Honestly plug in hybrids are the worst of both worlds.
There was a study recently from Europe that found the vast majority of people with plug in hybrids hardly every plugged them in, and drove them like normal cars. That defeats the entire point of a plug in hybrid, and now you are carrying a heavy battery everywhere that you are not fully using. Which makes the car less efficient than a normal hybrid!
Yeah, it depends on the user.
I had an alcoholic neighbor with learning disabilities who had a PHEV minivan purchased for them, and they only kept the battery charged for the first few months of ownership. After that, they seemed to lose interest in plugging it in when they got home.
On the other hand, a friend of the family owns a PHEV sedan they keep charged religiously, and they need to buy fuel stabilizer because they almost never use any gas.
An alcoholic neighbour and someone purchased a car for them?
don’t get me started
The second one sounds an awful lot like they would be better off with a pure ev rather than carrying around a complete ice setip plus tank of fuel.
It’s why plug ins rarely work for normal use, you’re either carrying around a heavy battery pack and motor you aren’t using or the ice and fuel you aren’t using.
Harry Medcalf loved his Range Rover PHEV because they only ever used it for short journeys, almost of all of which were on electric. It’s such a face palm moment making an already massively heavy car even heavier when a small EV with a small battery like a Leaf or even a small ICE would be far cheaper to buy and run, while fitting all of their actual requirements.
I get why people like them, as they let you dip your toe into evs but they just don’t offer the benefits that a straight ice or straight ev would.
I imagine that when the concept was first dreamt up they were thinking that cities would charge you if you entered using ICE, so the battery is for then and you get to the city using ICE savingyour battery. But that’s not happened.
Cheaper to own one car than two.
Exactly. You can’t choose to occasionally take road/business trips into the under developed parts of the world in a Leaf.
That’s an edge case if it’s any more regular than could be addressed by hiring a car for those trips. And if it’s that regular, then a plain ICE would be a far far better fit as you aren’t trying to drag around a useless heavy battery and motor on them and you haven’t paid over the odds to do so.
It’s like the dumbasses that purchase a pickup truck for the flat bed, then use it at must a handful of times. For them, hiring a van or a trailer would be the sensible choice. If they ran a landscaping business or something, then yeah, a pickup is the way to go.
Buy the vehicle for whatever the majority of driving you need, not some random likely rare edge case, that’s dumb.
How frequently would you need to make that trip for it to be more expensive to rent a car each time?
How long is a piece of string? So many variables with that you’d have to do your own numbers for your own situation and if you really can’t charge a long range ev for your trip.
However, most people who say they do big trips (more than 400 round trip) do so a handful of times a year where there is zero ability to recharge the car. That’s where I’d be looking at a hire car, and it’s going to be cheaper to do so.
A long-range EV works for me. About a third of my annual miles are towing on long trips (1000 mile round trips) with it, and it’s fine with planning.
Completely get why some people don’t want to do that, and for that, a suitable diesel is far better for them as its 10ks cheaper to buy in the first place.
PHEV makes fuck all sense for that sort of trip as it runs out of battery 30 miles or so into a 1000 mile trip. You paid for to buy it than a diesel, you get worse economy than a like to like diesel, just not good.
OK, so we’ve established a person can do the math and come up with some value of long trips where its not economical to rent.
Given that a person needs to make that many long trips, how many short trips would they also need to make for the gas savings from a PHEV in EV mode during short trips to exceed the gas loss from doing long trips in a vehicle that gets somewhat lower MPG on long trips compared to a pure hybrid?
How much value might a person reasonably assign to the flexibility to take a weekend road trip without having to plan ahead and make reservations with a rental company?
For what exactly? Hire cars exist.
You can’t fix stupid. You can argue plugin hybrids are bad on the pragmatic argument that people don’t charge them and that’s fair, but to say they are the worst is just wrong. The have the potential to be the best.
Well let me clarify a bit why I think they are the worst.
They have the full complexity an an ICE car, with the added difficulties that arise in a full EV
You need to build and design a car that has all of the downsides of ICE cars. Complicated engine, emissions management, fuel, air intakes.
With a lot of the downsides of an ev. Large heavy, expensive batteries.
Meanwhile you get limited upsides. Evs get lower maintenance and transport costs and ICE cars get range.
Plug in hybrids will have harder maintenance than either, while not getting the fully reduced transport costs as it’s not as efficient as a full ev.
Here’s where traditional hybrids win out, their battery can be really small, correspondingly cheap and more efficient.
Lugging all that extra weight around decreases the efficiency of the vehicle, where for full ev that matters a lot.
When running in full gas mode your lugging around a heavy battery for nothing, and in a full ev mode your lugging around a heavy engine for nothing.
The High-medium range of full gas would be better served by a traditional hybrid, and the low-medium range would be better served for full evs.
I’m sure there is a narrow window for plug in hybrids, but again that is going to be rare and shrinking as evs get better.
While you can’t fix stupid, we do have to think about how a product actually gets used vs it’s design.
If nobody is plugging their plug in hybrid, then maybe the manufacturer should remind them, even if its only outlet level power.
To me it is also a symbol of overconsumption. Buying a vehicle that will cover 100% of your use cases vs buying for 99% and renting a more suitable option for that 1%.
I do think this argument for me would change if manufacturers took a different approach. If they took something like a traditional hybrid, like a Ford fusion, and stuck a modern battery in and added a simple plug would be great. Then increase the efficiency a bit and maybe someone could get 10 miles of battery from a regular outlet.