Are Plug-in Hybrids Utterly Pointless?

[Music] for some people electric cars simply aren't good enough they love the idea of zero emissions motoring and the smoothness and quietness that these cars provide but absolutely cannot live with the range or lack of range but they don't want to rely exclusively on petrol either it's expensive it pollutes and nobody wants to spend any more time than absolutely necessary at a petrol station so the solution in some people's eyes is simple get a plug-in hybrid these cars use an electric motor connected to a decent sized battery pack that would allow you to drive 20 to 30 miles on a single charge and they also rely on a petrol engine and a good old-fashioned tank of fuel which means they also offer the option to go on longer journeys on paper plug-in hybrids are the best of both worlds but are they really well the benefits are pretty obvious they're perfect for local journeys but don't restrict you you get freedom and flexibility they're an important part of the automotive landscape as well to be clear i think they're brilliant but i also think that for many people they are quite possibly the worst type of car you could buy let me explain a plug-in hybrid or phev or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle or fev usually uses a small battery pack that's around 12 kilowatt hours in size that's anywhere between about a quarter to a half the size of the battery you get in a battery electric vehicle or beth bev you can either use the full capacity of this battery in a dedicated ev mode to travel 20 to 30 miles or you can run it in hybrid mode where the batteries spin the motor to help drive the wheels to take the strain off the petrol engine because the petrol engine isn't working as hard that means it uses less fuel clever you might have seen some pretty astonishing fuel economy figures from plug-in hybrids the ds4e tents that i've currently got on test for example delivers around 230 miles per gallon the non-plug-in hybrid ds4 only manages 43 so it looks like a complete no-brainer the fuel tank capacity is 8.8 uk gallons if you're getting 232 miles per gallon for the entire tank then that gives the car a range of over 2 000 miles sign me up except nothing's ever quite as good as it seems is it you see the problem with these cars is that once the battery starts running out and the motor becomes weak and no longer has a full source of energy to lend a hand it becomes a burden your empty battery and your motor and your electrical components all become dead weight suddenly they're not helping you along they're holding you back and at some point during your time with a phev this is going to happen and that brings me to how on earth can they claim such massive numbers for economy in the first place well all cars in europe and this includes ice bev and fev use the same wltp test cycle where cars are tested in a lab on a rolling road along a 23.25 kilometer virtual journey it takes 30 minutes and is split across 52 urban and 48 non-urban with a maximum speed of 81.3 miles per hour but because the test is carried out with a theft that usually has a fully charged battery the ice engine usually has almost nothing to do the car can go a lot of miles or not a lot of gallons that's why you get the massive figure once the battery's gone though perhaps after that 30 minutes of testing it's all downhill i should clarify that the battery in a fev is never totally dead there's always a certain portion that's reserved to protect the battery from becoming damaged when it's totally flat and a fever will also be able to regenerate some electricity whenever you hit the brakes or cruise downhill just like a normal electric car the engine will also feed some power back into the battery and the battery will always feed some power back into the motor so complete death is never likely if you like an empty fev isn't like a complete corpse it's more like a zombie in terms of its ability to help out so how bad is it when the battery goes nearly flat i'll use the ds4 as an example but this applies to all fevs instead of getting 233 miles per gallon or whatever during normal driving with an empty battery i was getting 29 miles per gallon which is less than you get in the standard petrol car you're paying more for all the batteries and stuff but the economy is less if you drive it a bit faster and with more enthusiasm that number dropped for me to 18 miles per gallon fair enough if you drive any car like an idiot 18 miles per gallon is never far away but it just goes to show phevs work best when you use them like you're supposed to if you don't there is no point but that's the problem a lot of people don't use them like they're supposed to there are people out there who are buying phevs who don't have any ability to charge the car at home they buy them and think hey it doesn't matter if the battery goes flat i'll just keep on driving i've got petrol and they're not realizing that they're getting horrendous fuel economy quick mass if you're getting 18 miles per gallon which is totally possible and you've got an 8.8 gallon tank your range is 158 miles worse than pretty much any normal electric car now some of you might be saying yeah but you can refuel the thing again in minutes yes and no yes you can go to a petrol station but in order to recharge the battery on a plug-in hybrid you're gonna need at least a couple of hours typically these cars don't have rapid charging they charge from a standard three-pin outlet in around seven hours if you've got a dedicated ev charger at home the charge time is around two hours in other words if you don't have off-street parking and a proper charging point attached to your home it's going to take you the entire night from the time you go to bed to the time you wake up before the car can recover its ability to drive as intended i've said it once and i keep saying it a thousand times if you don't have a home charger don't get a plug-in hybrid even if you don't have all street parking it's still better to get a proper electric car and here's why proper evs have much better range and faster charging if you buy one that does 200 miles on a single charge that might last you an entire week without having to recharge and then when you do have to recharge they're compatible with rapid charges so you can pop down to your local toby carvery once a week have lunch fill up your battery in around 20 minutes and then you're good for another week look i've got nothing against plug-in hybrids i think they're brilliant i actually think they're an essential part of the solution when it comes to weaning us off our dependence on fossil fuels they're actually perfect for a lot of people in fact they're perfect for me and they're an important stop gap until battery technology and recharging infrastructure improves however a lot of people don't understand the technology and quite frankly are using the cars in a way that makes them more part of the problem than part of the solution speaking of solutions what's mine go ahead buy them sure but only buy them if you know what you're getting into only buy them if you're able to charge them at home they're called plug-in hybrids for a reason you gotta plug them in all right peeps thanks for watching and thanks for letting me vent i hope you learned something new today and i hope that you agree if you don't then drop me a comment down below and as always don't forget to like subscribe and i'll see you on the next one peace you

Channel: AutoTrader

Views: 584,276

Keywords: plugin hybrid, phev, should I buy a plugin, should I buy a hybrid, hybrid vs electric, best hybrid, car explainer, car podcast, worst car, are electric cars, best phev, Rory reid, Autotrader uk

Id: PsQORFOUgTY

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 17 2022