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Hybrid car advice

I've never been able to see the point of a hybrid. To my mind, the benefits don't outweigh the complication if and when things go wrong. Either go full EV or stay with ICE, and pick your preferred marque.
 
James said:
I've never been able to see the point of a hybrid. To my mind, the benefits don't outweigh the complication if and when things go wrong. Either go full EV or stay with ICE, and pick your preferred marque.
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Totally agree. Particularly if running outside of warranty, you’re just buying added complexity and potential agro / big bills.
 
James said:
I've never been able to see the point of a hybrid. To my mind, the benefits don't outweigh the complication if and when things go wrong. Either go full EV or stay with ICE, and pick your preferred marque.
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Drive a modern one and you'll see. Lots of low down, easy performance from a small engine, great economy around town, you have saved enough on fuel that it it hands you a bill for batteries after 80k miles you are still in front.
 
Are there any hybrids that can do say 60-70 miles on electric? Never really looked into it, but if there were such
a thing that could be quite interesting.
 
stevec67 said:
Drive a modern one and you'll see. Lots of low down, easy performance from a small engine, great economy around town, you have saved enough on fuel that it it hands you a bill for batteries after 80k miles you are still in front.
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I'm sure they are very good these days, but the additional cost for the hybrid variant over ICE could also pay for a lot of fuel. I guess that depends on your priorities. When EVs reach price parity with ICE, hybrids will become irrelevant.
 
robs said:
Are there any hybrids that can do say 60-70 miles on electric? Never really looked into it, but if there were such
a thing that could be quite interesting.
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A 2 minute google popped up a Kia Niro PIEH hybrid, which has a battery of 11kWh. This is about 1/6 of the capacity of the one in the pure electric car with a range of 285 miles. That suggests the hybrid ought to do 45 miles or so. I suspect that your goal isn't far away. Bear in mind that there has been a version of the bmw i3 for a while that is a pure electric car with a small engine to charge the battery if necessary.
 
Interest piqued by James:
James said:
Either go full EV or stay with ICE, and pick your preferred marque.
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And maybe that is the issue for many. If there were something available that I could trundle to work or the shops or family in on electric, say 50-70 miles range, but would also allow long journeys without range anxiety and additional time for charging I suspect it would appeal to many people. I don't want two cars, and am very (extremely) skeptical that sufficient electrical infrastructure will be in place to make it anywhere near the targets...
 
My Lexus plug-in hybrid achieves 48 - 55 miles on pure electric mode, dependent on the season. I have a round trip commute of 40 miles and free charging at work (solar panels) so this is ideal. The 2.5L petrol engine takes care of long trips.

To put this in context, my previous car was a 340i M sport. Yes I do miss the performance of the Beemer, on the other hand I very rarely need to visit the filling station.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I think they can be charged 3 ways, usually: from the charging socket; from regen braking; or from the engine during certain driving modes. This may vary from model to model, perhaps?
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I was not aware of that, every day is a school day, the confusion comes from the manufacturers claiming their PHEV give xx miles only on electric whereas my Toyota hybrid does not mention how far it will go on electric only but it does use the battery almost half the time in 'Eco' mode which results in 75 MPG and in 'Power' driving mode it claims 0-62 in 9.7 seconds.
 
billo said:
Toyota hybrid does not mention how far it will go on electric only
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“about 1 mile. “. :0)

I have a Toyota hybrid based on the Prius drive train and I have tested this every day on my commute, when stuck in stop start traffic it manages about a mile then the engine kicks in to recharge the battery.

I too have managed 75mpg and regularly get 65 during town driving, it’s what they are all about.

I really like mine, it’s ten years old and drives as well as it did when I got it, I like the quiet running and good fuel consumption for a small to medium sized estate car. Having previously owned BMWs, Porsche and a Jaguar V8 I really wouldn’t go back to a big heavy car.
 
robs said:
Interest piqued by James:

And maybe that is the issue for many. If there were something available that I could trundle to work or the shops or family in on electric, say 50-70 miles range, but would also allow long journeys without range anxiety and additional time for charging I suspect it would appeal to many people. I don't want two cars, and am very (extremely) skeptical that sufficient electrical infrastructure will be in place to make it anywhere near the targets...
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Yes, I think this is the point. People don't want two cars, and a hybrid lets them run two cars in one. It'd work for my sort of usage: 25 mile daily commute (total), local shopping and errands, social stuff ~10 miles; then also regular 75 mile round trips to in-laws and occasional longer trips, eg Bristol show, holidays, the odd work meeting and events, etc. I could make an electric car work, but the longer stuff would require a level of organisation and co-ordination I don't have to do now, and if it's time-critical I have to build in contingency, which isn't always possible.
 
The Outlander PHEV (which I think is or at least was the most popular PHEV in the UK) does something like 20 miles or so just on the battery, but it's very dependent on stuff like temperature (including whether the aircon or heating is running) and terrain. Just on the petrol engine alone the consumption is 30-35mpg or so (which is to be expected as it's a pretty heavy SUV) but with a combination of use of the battery and petrol then I typically average around 40mpg or so on longer runs. That works well for us as my wife can do her in-town commute purely on the battery, but we get reasonable fuel consumption and no range worries on our regular long runs between Edinburgh and the Cairngorms.
 
The Range Rover plug in hybrids have batteries that are approaching 30kWh which would give a big enough chunk of range.

On the point of hybrids, mild hybrids are pointless as all they are is a slightly more efficient ICE car. All of the energy still comes from burning stuff rather than from the grid.

If the large majority of your journeys are within the standard electric range then a plug in could be best given the carbon impact of making batteries at the moment. That was my use case previously (and in any case when I bought mine the only car that could do the long range round trips I needed to do for work to places with no charging was the Model S which I couldn't afford). Now I have a longer commute (but to a much better employer) so I am working on getting a full EV.
 
gingermrkettle said:
The Range Rover plug in hybrids have batteries that are approaching 30kWh which would give a big enough chunk of range.
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I'd be wary of the Range Rover/Land Rover hybrids at the moment as I know people that have had them and they've had terrible reliability issues. My neighbour returned their lease car after 18 months as it'd spent nearly half the ownership time back at the dealership, and one of their parents had the Range Rover hybrid and has similar issues. Both have since gone back to ICE cars.
 
SteveG said:
I'd be wary of the Range Rover/Land Rover hybrids at the moment as I know people that have had them and they've had terrible reliability issues. My neighbour returned their lease car after 18 months as it'd spent nearly half the ownership time back at the dealership, and one of their parents had the Range Rover hybrid and has similar issues. Both have since gone back to ICE cars.
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Just as I do have a bit of a connection there, what particular issues were they having?
 
gingermrkettle said:
Just as I do have a bit of a connection there, what particular issues were they having?
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Lots of lots of issues on the hybrid side of the vehicle, then very long delays due to poor parts availability (in one case it was with the dealer for around 3 months). The frequency and type of failures meant they lost confidence in the vehicle as well, as often when something went wrong on the hybrid side the vehicle completely locked up and couldn't even be pushed to a safe location. The wife (who's a doctor) has parents that are very poorly and one reason for having a 4x4 was that she could visit them when needed (she's in Edinburgh and they're in Northumberland) whatever the weather conditions. She'd lost confidence in the car to the extent that she wouldn't use it any more (they were lucky if a full week went by without an issue) so used her 2 wheel drive BMW convertible instead. The husband is a lawyer and managed to argue their way out of the contract so it's now been replaced with a diesel BMW X3.
 
Quick question, on a full EV, what is required in terms of servicing and maintenance?
 
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