Personal opinion here but we're picking up our first ever hybrid today. We discounted the mild hybrid as was lacking power and mpg was around 4-5 mpg below the self charging hybrid. We also discounted the plug-in hybrid despite it being a claimed 200 odd mpg better than the hybrid (only if you did less than 30 miles between charges!) as the extra cost of the vehicle plus the cost of a home charger installation wouldn’t be worth it for us and the mpg when not running in electric mode was worse than the HEV due to lugging around the larger battery. Who's to say that the price of electric charging won't sky rocket once enough people have been converted, like we were persuaded to 'convert' to cheap diesel engined vehicles many years ago? Something has got to replace the governments tax take that will be lost on petrol and diesel sales. There was also the possibility that after the initial novelty was over, we'd not bother plugging it in every night and of course, there is no space for a spare wheel in the plug in as the battery takes up that space. Have we made the wrong decision? Who knows, but we thought we'd give it a try. Only time will tell if it’s best for us.
Avocet has already given a decent response.
Here's my two penneth:
Agree on the plug-in hybrid being a farce.
It would cost near £1k for a home charger.
You'd have to remember / be bothered to use it.
You'd have to charge at non-peak rates, to gain full benefit.
One of the powertrains is always lugging the other around, which is not efficient.
A whole load of added complexity, without a whole lot of benefit.
Self-charging is less crap but, in my experience, still not great.
Fuel economy is worse than pure ICE.
One of the powertrains is always lugging the other around, which is not efficient.
A whole load of added complexity, without a whole lot of benefit.
For me, I'd always go either pure ICE, or pure EV.
And Avocet has already covered the possible "futures" wrt the government replacing ICE taxes with EV taxes.
No-one knows what the future will bring but, for my money, it will be a very long time before EV becomes as expensive as ICE is now, and it will likely always remain cheaper.
And, the whole hydrogen thing is a dead end, in my opinion: complexity, huge infrastructure investment required to both produce and distribute it, worse range and efficiency than EV, the way batteries are coming on will make charging close to hydrogen fill-up times, for the range gained..............