PHEV: The truth about buying a plug-in hybrid EV. Is it worth the $$$? | Auto Expert John Cadogan

if you're thinking about buying a plug-in hybrid ev a so-called fev whether this is a good idea or not depends mainly on you and exactly why you are motivated to buy it in this report we're going to look at the objectively good reasons to buy a plug-in as well as the objectively bad ones do not hand over that big fat stack of cash without watching this report first i'm phil logan from autoexpert.com what are you and i get new cars cheap australia only fiercely website card perhaps it's because mitsubishi just launched the outlander plug-in hybrid ev but my inbox is currently awash with inquiries that go something like this with the price of petrol so astronomical i'm thinking about buying a plug-in because i'm not yet ready for the jump to a full ev but i want to start saving money on fuel another class of inquiry is i feel like i need to buy a plug-in because if i buy a conventional internal combustion car it's going to be worthless in the future or it might be when i trade it in because of the imminent transition of the vehicle fleet to you know electric this and that and i'll be saving money on fuel we're going to deep dive into that in just a sec this video is supported by olight i carry one of these every day which is why i have no hesitation recommending it to you it's this the warrior mini 2 it's a great flashlight look at how bright that is they're quite tough too i'll just whip it on and give it its thrice daily durability test bear with me certainly more than adequate to the slings and arrows of fat cave operation frankly you know these are the best torches i have ever used and that means if you're scratching around for a father's day gift and there are no rules of which i am aware which preclude you from buying a gift for yourself if you're a dad then i think we've found a winner there's an olight sale today it's wednesday the 17th of august as i record this and it goes until friday the 19th i'll put a link with full details in the description the new 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because it's got this thumb switch on the back that you can always get to and it's super bright at 1750 lumens and you could beat a zombie to death with it if necessary except that they're already dead obviously so that's a paradox now look finally if you just read the entrails or something and they're predicting a full-on zombie apocalypse in the near future led perhaps by p-dut truly horrifying stuff in other words then upgrade to the warrior x-3 max this thing is a two and a half thousand lumen powerhouse like virtually a lightsaber it's the full-on tactical option which you could shove in a pocket if needs must but it's going to be far more comfortable on a duty belt in a pouch etc in a backpack whatever you versus a horde of undead vermin bad for the vermin and there's a glass breaking bezel on the front with these three super hard zirconium beads against which a tempered car window stands absolutely no chance just remember not to hit a dead center dude look for a 90 degree corner up where the roof line meets the pillar okay that's where the residual stresses from tempering the glass are at their most unbalanced every window on every car is just kind of gagging to break right in that corner pro tip so look after your dad or you know a dad or even you if you're a dad between now and the 19th link's in the description and thanks once again to olight for sponsoring this unbelievably excellent if somewhat highbrow youtube report right now fuel is expensive relatively expensive with a plug-in you might drive to work and the shops just like an ev and charge at home and only buy liquid fuel for long trips this could be your thought process and this might seem like a no-brainer right the proposition is i'm buying a plug-in hybrid to start saving money on fuel to which i would retort bad idea dude objectively bad indefensible complete fantasy here's why taking the new outlander plug-in as an example the internal combustion one the exceed tourer internal combustion only outlander is 57 000 bucks drive away in new south wales the same thing but plug-in is 74 000 bucks it's 17 000 more for the plug-in and i'm not saying this is a rip-off there is a dirty big battery down there that's huge plus an inverter there's control architecture an electric motor generator unit and none of this hardware is especially cheap you have to pay for it but let's look at the argument and let's give it the best chance of success okay let's say you have rooftop solar so electricity for you is quote unquote free and the car is at home when the sun is shining for recharging and you always plug it in and let's say you only ever drive it in ev mode now i cannot be kinder to this argument than that but i suggest we are basically off in la la land here because you did actually pay for the solar it's not free and in practice it is very difficult to operate plug-ins only in ev mode even the outlander with its official 84 kilometers of ev only range which is quite impressive i'm just trying to be overly generous to team saving money on fuel okay if you do this you will sidestep burning 8.1 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers which is officially the internal combustion outlander fuel consumption that's the combined cycle test which means it's probably more like 10.5 for the urban part actually if memory serves it is exactly 10.5 for the urban part with that vehicle and even that's not especially realistic so let's say for argument's sake it's actually going to be drinking about 12.5 liters per hundred out there in service on urban roads with you driving if you went that way if petrol is two bucks a liter that's 25 bucks for every 100ks 250 bucks for a thousand k's worth of money saved if you buy the plug-in and operate it as discussed only in ev mode with free electricity every four thousand k's is going to be a thousand bucks that you save and you have to save 17 grand to break even okay so you need to drive at least very best case scenario 68 000 k's in ev only mode to break even post covert that's going to be six or seven years of driving from many people at least maybe not everyone but certainly many people drive less today than they did before the pandemic that's to break even you have not saved one cent at this point you're about to start saving money dude this is the best case scenario for breaking even for many people it's going to take substantially longer most new car buyers don't even own their cars for that long three to five years is far more common so the average new plug-in buyer is never gonna break even you are never gonna save money on fuel the second major point here about plug-ins is this general fantasy people have about ev only driving and how accessible that is manufacturers are going to put the ev only range right up there in lights for example the bmw x3 xdrive30e the plug-in one what a mouthful it's got a 12 kilowatt hour battery that's good for 41ks of official ev mode range what they don't say quite so obviously and this is all manufacturers not just the bavarians is that the maximum power output of the electrical side of the vehicle is limited in this case to 80 kilowatts total combined power of the platform is 215 including the combustion engine so if you're driving along in ev mode and you need to go up a really really steep hill or overtake a truck or accelerate moderately and your demand for power exceeds the electrical system's maximum 80 kilowatts what do you think's going to happen the internal combustion engine must activate to give you what you just requested so this fantasy about plugins offering you the first however many ks of driving in ev only mode and only then switching to combustion that is comprehensive dude unless you operate under the caveats of driving really gently below the threshold which demands combustion engine activation and also setting off every day with a fully charged battery speaking of which if you're not prepared to plug in kind of religiously only without the belief in all those fairies then owning a plug-in is going to be a complete waste of time for you see obviously the ev only driving aspiration is only possible on a fully charged battery if you let the battery become depleted the car is still going to drive okay using combustion it'll even regeneratively break like a non-plug-in hybrid but you are going to be carrying around a dirty big heavy battery a motor and an inverter system that achieves very little in these circumstances beyond merely being excess baggage and dude before you kick off in the comments with various takes on oh that's ridiculous mate who would do such a stupid thing the answer is plenty of people in fact in this 2022 report from the international council on clean transportation in europe they found that the actual consumption of plug-in hybrids on the road in europe was three to five times higher than the regulatory claims and this is not a manufacturer's cheating scenario it's generally just down to how the people who own those cars or who drive them actually use them see privately owned plug-ins were found to be three times higher than the official numbers and company cars an incredible five times higher this is generally a consequence of them not being fully charged before being driven humanity always invents a better idiot upliftingly it seems you can certainly count on that some significant wedge of society it just can't be asked to plug in okay of course if that's you and you bought the car to start saving money on fuel then the break-even period we discussed earlier is no longer going to be 68 000 k's it's going to be longer than the life of the vehicle okay so right about now i know that this report is sounding like a comprehensive hit piece on plug-in hybrids but i assure you it is not it is a reality check facts are facts dude and you don't even have to like them they're still facts however i'd suggest there are quite a few good reasons for you to own a plug-in hybrid if you do mainly urban commuting and you are prepared to plug in most days and operate your plug-in with a fully charged battery and drive gently to work or school or the shops whatever then you are going to be operating in ev mode often enough the real advantage of this as i see it is that you will contribute no tail pipe pollution to the air which we breathe i'm not talking about co2 so much here i'm talking about carcinogens and other nasties like nox and carbon monoxide tail pipe pollution actually kills more people prematurely than car crashes this is also a fact and it is rather a big deal in cities around the world also with a plug-in you get access to ev like transportation often enough without the far heftier purchase price of a full ev and if you do occasional long distance driving you can achieve that easily without military grade logistics planning which you actually do need to do in an ev given australia's breathtakingly crap charging infrastructure especially out there in the regions you don't have to go too far away from a city for this to be a big problem driving a full ev between capital cities here is a proper pain in the ass driving a plug-in is not it'll run just like a normal car for just as long as you manage to keep tipping liquid fuel into it one fairly exciting development with plugins is exemplified in the new outlander that vehicle has a 240 volt ac supply so you can plug a conventional extension cord into it and siphon off mains type electricity and you can do this out in the boonies camping but more importantly you might be able to keep appliances and lights on at home in the event of a power failure and power failures have kind of been in the news rather a lot lately there are limits to how much power can be supplied obviously but 20 kilowatt hours is a lot of energy power and energy being different things so your vehicle could conceivably be a multi-day home power failure backup system and you could certainly offset part of the price premium against the cost of buying a completely separate power failure backup system for your home i recently looked at the bluet ac300 and b300 modular home battery backup system i'll put a link up there if my age adult brain can remember to do so that unit is three kilowatt hours of energy and three kilowatts of power and it costs about five thousand seven hundred dollars currently so that's a way to put the price premium of the outlander plug-in in perspective the final decent objective reason for owning a plug-in is one that really doesn't get as much oxygen as it should and that would be national energy security we are quite vulnerable nationally in australia to disruption of the international liquid fuel supply chain but just take a look at what mad bad vlad and his ukraine tantrum has managed to do to the price of fuel here more than half the world away and that's only a minor disruption for fuel obviously it's kind of a huge problem if you're in ukraine right now imagine what a full-on global geopolitical storm would do for fuel here i'm seeing cues over the horizon and empty shelves in the supermarkets the kind of thing from which only tom cruise and milo yovovich might save the world you can help reduce our national dependency on foreign oil albeit only infinitesimally each by buying a vehicle that's less dependent on liquid fuels plug-ins make complete sense here i hope this helps put the plug-in thing in perspective for you because it is rather a lot of money on the table thank you very much for watching

Channel: Auto Expert John Cadogan

Views: 121,512

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Id: GoZN828qnp8

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 17 2022