Plug In Hybrid Cars

gubble

There's some wealth of knowledge here and wondered what people's thoughts are on Plug in Hybrids?

I've just received one as a company car (an Audi A3 etron) and having now spent a couple of days with it i have mixed feelings on it.

I have two different commutes. A 20 mile journey too and from one office and another office i visit at least once a week which is a 270 mile round journey.

I can do the 20 mile commute on battery alone (just) and charge the car either at work or at home and for this it is truly fantastic. The novelty of silent running hasn't worn off yet and in stop start traffic it's much better than a regular petrol engine.

The longer journey however it doesn't make much sense. From a full charge the battery will have drained itself even in hybrid mode after less than an hour and then i'm on petrol alone averaging about 45mpg. I've been used to averaging 70mpg on a run in a regular diesel engined car.

As a practical car it's not great either. Ok the A3 isn't a huge car however the boot is really quite small due to the batteries being stored under it. I've no idea how i'm going to fit a fender HRD plus two guitars in the car for gigs.

I'm under no illusion that a lot of these plug in hybrids are designed to make best use of the company car tax systems (this one included). I am however surprised that they don't do these cars with a small diesel engine rather than petrol. As that really would combine the best of both worlds.

Haych

Diesel is evil though - or at least that's the current message from European governments, which is why petrol/electric hybrid is in fashion.

I agree a diesel/electric hybrid would make more sense on paper, but, assuming your batteries run out in city traffic then you're on derv and your DPF isn't going to like all that stop-start malarkey and is likely to clog up and give trouble sooner if that's the type of driving you do most of - not saying it is in your case but it might be for many.

That then becomes a warranty issue for the manufacturer, so probably easier for them to build a simpler petrol/electric hybrid which is less likely to give trouble if lots of urban mileage is the norm.

I also expect governments to start hitting diesel with bigger taxation, this will also be a factor in what manufacturers are willing to build en mass.  Remember the early 90s when diesel was the in green thing, was cheaper than petrol and more economical per mile to boot?  Car makers couldn't build them fast enough.

Bridgehouse

Mrs B has a plug in Mitsubishi suv - she only does 20 mile max journeys moving dogs and all sorts of stuff. She’s only used 2 tanks of fuel since Feb as the rest is electric only and it’s been superb. 

crunchman

The company car tax systems are designed to incentivise these vehicles for a reason.  Whether they are petrol or diesel, the big advantage is that they aren't stinking up the air in cities when they are stuck in traffic.

The other thing to bear in mind is the extra weight of the batteries and 2 transmission systems.  I don't know whether you would get 70mpg out of a diesel hybrid on a run.  Hybrids are good for short distances and city driving.  The stop start nature of it means the regen braking is a significant benefit.  As soon as you get on a long run, any hybrid will be at a significant disadvantage because of all the extra weight it carries.  I suspect that you wouldn't get 70mpg out of a diesel one.  I don't know whether you would get 55mpg or 68mpg, but there would be some penalty.

The big problem with battery powered cars of any kind is charging them.  I've said in several other threads that hydrogen fuel cells are likely to be the better long term option than battery power.

Legionreturns

I get around 60-70 out of my ioniq hybrid even on motorways. It takes a bit of adjusting to get used to driving them economically 

jellyroll

As a family we have a similar dilemma. We only have one car - a 10 year old petrol Honda. We are keen to minimise our environmental footprint so I’d like to replace it with an electric car. That would be fine for our regular inner city pottering. But we would be stuffed taking the car out on a “road trip” as availability of charging points would be uncertain. We could get a hybrid but, as the OP asks, is it really the best answer? 

Haych

crunchman said:

The big problem with battery powered cars of any kind is charging them.  I've said in several other threads that hydrogen fuel cells are likely to be the better long term option than battery power.

Where is all that Hydrogen going to come from?  The major sources are fossil fuel based and as a result a by product is a number of different greenhouse gasses.

Sporky

Haych said:

Where is all that Hydrogen going to come from?  The major sources are fossil fuel based and as a result a by product is a number of different greenhouse gasses.

The hydrogen proponents' plan seems to be that filling stations will have solar panels and will separate water to hydrogen and oxygen on site.

I am not sure they've done the sums to see if that'll work.

crunchman

jellyroll said:

As a family we have a similar dilemma. We only have one car - a 10 year old petrol Honda. We are keen to minimise our environmental footprint so I’d like to replace it with an electric car. That would be fine for our regular inner city pottering. But we would be stuffed taking the car out on a “road trip” as availability of charging points would be uncertain. We could get a hybrid but, as the OP asks, is it really the best answer? 

The best answer is to keep your old car if you can.  The environmental footprint of building a new car is very big.  If everyone kept their old cars longer so the lifespan of the average car was 20% longer, we could manufacture 20% less cars.  It's also not like a new electric car is great for the environment.  It's a lot of energy to make, there are issues around the toxicity of the materials used for the batteries, and a lot of the energy to charge it will be from fossil fuels.

Thinking about it, the best way to improve your environmental footprint is to use a bike or public transport more.

If you do need to replace it, there are competing considerations.  For your city driving, electric would make sense, but if you do need to do longer journeys it is a problem.  We are probably in a similar situation.  Our council has installed some charging points on lamp posts in our street in London (although 3 between 59 houses is nowhere near enough if everyone goes for battery powered cars).   Most of our driving is around town, so it might work with more charging points.  Last week we went to see my family though, and I didn't see any electric car charging points there.  Plus you start to run into range issues.

The other issue is the weight of batteries in fully electric cars.  Since the government announced a ban on ICE cars by 2040, the car manufacturers have been lobbying for them to allow plugin hybrids.  They are arguing that the weight saving from having smaller battery packs will be better overall than having purely electric.  I haven't looked at it in detail, but there is some merit to that argument.

m_c

Hydrogen fuel cells avoid the need for lithium (some 'green' types like to ignore the huge environmental cost of Lithium batteries), and mean you're not dependant on a single source. It can be produced in different ways, and you can quickly refuel.
But there are still a few obstacles stopping them from becoming a reliable solution. Reliable production and distribution is probably the biggest hurdle at the moment.

I do think they are likely to be a far better long term solution, as if everybody went to battery power, the current power system just wouldn't cope. Most people seem to have no idea about the power requirements of all these superchargers they seem to think are the solution for electric cars.

Travisthedog

Unless you have a 20 mile commute they dont make sense. I work for Defra and am in charge of a small fleet of 12 cars. by 2020 we have to all be in electric or hybrid cars - that policy form the top. Thats fine when i commute into the office but the majority of my team do 40k mile per year and many of our journeys can me well over the range of most if not all electric cars, for instance one of my team left for Northumbria this morning, Unless we all get the top whack tesla - nothing has that range.

I am borrowing the volvo xc90 T8 hybrid in a few weeks for my boys holidy to the hebrides and looking on line at the realtime figures, ill need my own fuel tanker to follow me up the motorway.

We seem to be a long way off getting the hybrid thing right. what it needs is for the governmnets to say "right as of 2020, all petrol and disel cars will be banned", that would speed up the development a bit.

Haych

Love him or hate him, he has a point.

jellyroll

You’re probably right @crunchman, keeping the car going is probably the best environmental answer. We are in London too and actually dont use the car very much (30,000 miles in 10 years on one family car). Kids walk to school and we tube to work. Most of the miles are out of town trips plus weekend kid shuttling.

Aside from the environment, there are two other factors leading me to think about changing car:

i) GAS. I’m bored of the Honda
ii) Concern over the safety. I don’t want to be driving on the motorway and have metal fatigue on some crucial bit of the car (is this a valid concern or am I overworrying on this point? Are new cars “safer”?)

ICBM

gubble said:

There's some wealth of knowledge here and wondered what people's thoughts are on Plug in Hybrids?

I've just received one as a company car (an Audi A3 etron) and having now spent a couple of days with it i have mixed feelings on it.

I have two different commutes. A 20 mile journey too and from one office and another office i visit at least once a week which is a 270 mile round journey.

I can do the 20 mile commute on battery alone (just) and charge the car either at work or at home and for this it is truly fantastic. The novelty of silent running hasn't worn off yet and in stop start traffic it's much better than a regular petrol engine.

The longer journey however it doesn't make much sense. From a full charge the battery will have drained itself even in hybrid mode after less than an hour and then i'm on petrol alone averaging about 45mpg. I've been used to averaging 70mpg on a run in a regular diesel engined car.

As a practical car it's not great either. Ok the A3 isn't a huge car however the boot is really quite small due to the batteries being stored under it. I've no idea how i'm going to fit a fender HRD plus two guitars in the car for gigs.

I'm under no illusion that a lot of these plug in hybrids are designed to make best use of the company car tax systems (this one included). I am however surprised that they don't do these cars with a small diesel engine rather than petrol. As that really would combine the best of both worlds.

This would be my problem with a plug-in hybrid as well - daily use which is within the range of the battery, but a weekly commute which would be almost all-ICE - but I think it's probably a relatively unusual use pattern.

45mpg is better than a lot of pure petrol cars manage on a long journey too, so it's not that bad. The only argument is whether the slightly greater efficiency of diesel outweighs the worse pollution it causes. (Remember that the difference isn't as much as 70/45, since diesel contains more energy per litre.) Even if it does, any time you find yourself using the ICE in traffic, petrol is the better choice - plus a diesel engine is heavier, which would tend to reduce the range and performance on battery power and hence make it more likely to be used. It's all a compromise since there is no solution which gives the best results under all conditions, but I see the logic in petrol not diesel for them.

Fretwired

Sporky said:

Haych said:

Where is all that Hydrogen going to come from?  The major sources are fossil fuel based and as a result a by product is a number of different greenhouse gasses.

The hydrogen proponents' plan seems to be that filling stations will have solar panels and will separate water to hydrogen and oxygen on site.

I am not sure they've done the sums to see if that'll work.

Japan is going the hydrogen cell route. The fuel will be made on site although solar won't provide enough energy. The peak time for manufacture will be at night when people are in bed and electricity is cheaper. Electric cars in overcrowded Japan won't work.

Sporky

Fretwired said:

Japan is going the hydrogen cell route. The fuel will be made on site although solar won't provide enough energy. The peak time for manufacture will be at night when people are in bed and electricity is cheaper. Electric cars in overcrowded Japan won't work.

So they're making hydrogen using electricity from fossil fuels. Yay etc. 

crunchman

Sporky said:

Fretwired said:

Japan is going the hydrogen cell route. The fuel will be made on site although solar won't provide enough energy. The peak time for manufacture will be at night when people are in bed and electricity is cheaper. Electric cars in overcrowded Japan won't work.

So they're making hydrogen using electricity from fossil fuels. Yay etc. 

You want to make it when there is a surplus.  It solves the biggest problem with solar and wind - that they are intermittent.

neilg

Sporky said:

Fretwired said:

Japan is going the hydrogen cell route. The fuel will be made on site although solar won't provide enough energy. The peak time for manufacture will be at night when people are in bed and electricity is cheaper. Electric cars in overcrowded Japan won't work.

So they're making hydrogen using electricity from fossil fuels. Yay etc. 

And if that wasn't bad enough it take 3 or 4 times as much electricity to make enough hydrogen to travel the same distance as it would in a fully electric car.

Sporky

crunchman said:

You want to make it when there is a surplus.  It solves the biggest problem with solar and wind - that they are intermittent.

So why make it at night? That means running power stations. 

crunchman

Sporky said:

crunchman said:

You want to make it when there is a surplus.  It solves the biggest problem with solar and wind - that they are intermittent.

So why make it at night? That means running power stations. 

Solar is probably going to be the cheapest electricity generation method in the very near future, so logically it's going to be the reverse.  You would expect the biggest capacity during the day.

Sporky

So why are Japan making it at night?