EDIT clarifications:
- the article is from the European Commission. This thing comes from a serious study based on hard facts and data.
- Check this comment by @wooster@startrek.website, who reported the data.
- Note that plugin hybrids are still better than pure ice, but they were expected to be much better.
It’s not a typo: plug-in hybrids are used, in real word cases, with ICE much more than anticipated.
In the EU, fuel consumption monitoring devices are required on new cars. They studied over 10% of all cars sold in 2021 and turns out they use way more fuel, and generate way more CO2, than anybody thought.
The gap means that CO2 emissions reduction objectives from transport will be more difficult to reach.
Thruth is, we need less cars, not “better” cars.
Wow I knew hybrids were not that great and WLTP would be off, but 250% off how is that even possible? There’s practically no difference between plug-in hybrids and standard cars.
Edit : So people are buying plug-in hybrids and just not charging it- why ?
At least where I live in Europe you (used to?) get subsidies for buying hybrid cars or EVs. So people would buy them for the discount and then never actually charge them 🤷🏼♀️
Several reasons I can think of.
Hybrids are really only “green” when you use them for very short trips at low speed. In that context, any other form of transportation will be better, in my opinion.
Yes, I think EVs in general (and especially hybrids) are a way to justify not investing in alternative modes of transportation for cities.
As for users you feel good about being “clean”, but in reality you are still polluting 10x as much as with public transportation.
PHEVs should be able to charge off of regenerative braking. You don’t need to plug them in to get benefits from the hybrid system. The stated fuel economy for the vehicles assumes that there will be a certain amount of electric-only travel. The article doesn’t say it, but most PHEVs advertise that you can use the battery for most of your day to day travel, and only use the ICE when you are making longer trips. So the takeaway from this article shoud not be “hybrids are bad, just keep making gas cars” but instead should be “testing and assumptions about the fuel use of these vehicles needs to be changed to more accurately reflect reality.”
Plug in hybrids usually do worse in mpg when in hybrid mode compared to standard hybrids, so if someone buys a plug in but doesn’t charge it, it’s actually worse than buying a standard hybrid. Regen braking is awesome but it won’t charge a plug in’s battery. The energy you get from braking 45-0mph would likely only get you back up to 15 to 30mph due to all the efficiency losses, plus you still need more energy to maintain speed.
As long as the system offsets it’s additional mass, it is a net benefit to the total economy of the car. Consider that an equally sized ICE vehicle loses 100% of that braking energy, and still has to accelerate that same 15-30 mph. You’re also leaving out that electric motors are much more efficient at accelerating a vehicle at low speeds than an ICE.
I’m just comparing a plug in that never gets charged to a standard hybrid. If you aren’t going to charge it regularly, you’re better off with a non-plug-in. Both are better than a non-hybrid, but if only the last 5% of battery capacity is being used that all the resources that go into the other 95% of the battery are wasted.
Makes sense to me. Not much point in hauling around more battery than you are going to use.
@Bytemeister @hobovision which is another reason the range anxiety narative is harmful: people buy EVs with batteries larger than they need
I don’t recall saying anything about range anxiety?
@Showroom7561 @ByGourou any other form of transport is better than any form of car ;)
One possible reason could be that they picked a plug-in hybrid over a pure EV in the first place because they had nowhere to charge it.
Just my personal 2 cents of owning a plug in hybrid : i sometimes drive with an empty battery because the range is 50km max, and my landlord refuses to allow me to install the infrastructure to charge at home, even if i’d pay 50% of the costs. There are also people parking in electric parking spots without charging OR being an electric car, denying me of charging publically. Its a whole mess…
That said, 40% of all km i drive are full electric.
I feel like this is a large portion of the missing puzzle pieces. The difference between real world and advertised ICE stats are somewhat padded, but not significantly. You’d expect the hybrids to have a similar degree of discrepancy, but it’s wildly out of range of expectations. It may simply be that the manufacturers are giving idealized stats, since while testing they would have access to their personal charger in a laboratory environment. But in the real world, owners cannot guarantee working/accessable chargers or even that they can charge at home, which would dramatically impact the results of this study.
Or at least, I’d assume that’s the case in the US. I don’t know what EU’s charging infrastructure is like, where the study was preformed.
At least in my country public charging is popping up everywhere, but slowly. Not enough resources is poured into it because they think charging is not a thing yet. Thats bullshit ofc, and there is a reason i have my hybrid car. Also, you can charge at home from a regular power plug, and hybrid cars shouldnt need more than that to charge overnight or over 5h time. However, if you live in an apartment like me, you are royally screwed if the owner doesnt comply. Same with solar panels, but thats a different discussion for a different time haha
Last place I was at completely screwed me over when it came to charging my electric car. I was leasing a Leaf and had been running it entirely off of the 120 charger. Lived at this place for a year and had no problem. Then someone on their HOA got a wild hair up their ass and said I couldn’t do that any more. They began by making up bullshit excuses, trying to say that it was a hazard to the landscapers. Except my roommate was the landscaper, and he didn’t give a shit. Blatant fucking lie from the HOA. Then they tried to pivot and say it was the insurance company that was prohibiting it. I offered multiple solutions including expanding the electrical for the covered parking, running power to the curb, or even getting an entirely new line run from the city. Emailed all this to them and hear fuck all for eight months. Then they send me a registered letter with a cease and desist. Had to early terminate the lease on my car.
Landlords and HOAs are some of the biggest inhibitors of EV adoption, and they can all go fuck themselves.
Be careful, not all landlords are pieces of shit. If i was one i’d do it, and im sure im not alone :)
I’m guessing a lot of people don’t use them optimally. They used them how they originally used a ICE car. Unfortunately, that means they are lugging a large battery around for no significant reason.
I would also query how the hybrids are being designed however. There should still be a saving due to efficiency gains, since the engine can run at optimal RPM most of the time. The values scream that the manufacturers have over optimised for performance, rather than efficiency.
Looking at the above data, these hybrids do reduce fuel consumption. About as much as you would expect from a non-plugin hybrid.
It is rather that the WLTP figure vastly underestimates the fuel consumption.
In germany we had subsidies for hybrid company cars, so companies bought hybrids. But: If employees would charge these in their home garage, they would pay for the electricity. If they get gas, the company pays. So they are practically just regular cars with a ton (probably literally) of extra weight. Unfortunately there’s barely a single law related to cars in germany that makes any sense (apart from just randomly gifting tax payer money to car companies). It’s like gun laws in the US. The area-wide corruption is immense.
Why is the open point. Maybe the range is not enough for the majority of owners, maybe they are too lazy or maybe gas prices are too low to justify the charge?
I really hope there will be a follow-up study trying to answer this point
I have both a full EV that can be charged on any standard power plug and a classic gas car. I barely ever use the gas, and only use the EV because of how much cheaper it is. I would’ve expected everyone to do the same, but maybe as you said gas is not expensive enough for most people so they don’t care.
In my country all the electric charge companies made a cartel and they’re selling the electricity at 1000% markup.
Nobody charges at 1 euro per kWh
Because you buy one thinking you’d charge it more often. Maybe it’s slower to charge at home than you anticipated, or maybe it’s just more convenient to go to closest gas station than charging station - also WAY faster.
It’s like when you buy a box of chocolate thinking you’d just eat few pieces
I don’t think it make sense to go to a charging station to charge a PHEV with a 30-80km range.
It’s like going to the gas station to only put 3 liters in the tank.
Yeah maybe not, unless if you can go shop or something while the car is charging
There is a difference. Hybrids pollute less. See the articles sources.
It pollutes less, 20% less than classic cars on average in real life use. That’s barely anything.
That’s apparently when the user doesn’t charge the damn thing. That’s a problem with the user.
And that’s just tail-pipe emissions. PHEVs have much greater production emissions due to their batteries too.
There are a lot of possible avenues to cheat.
Obviously, every local law will be different, and What I’m saying below may not apply to certain areas. If auto manufactures are allowed to use labs of their choice for emissions testing, they may be able to engage in lab shopping to find a lab that will give them more favorable test results. If auto makers are required to use a government laboratory, it’s possible that in the process of developing the laws for testing, they’ve managed to work with lawmakers or regulators to ensure the tests are conducted in such a way that they get more favorable results than they would see in a real world scenario.