-
I see I've triggered a few PHEV owners in this thread in the last 24 hours.
There are a few news reports and studies, including this US one from the end of last year that suggest two things:
- People aren't charging their PHEV at all or as much as they should be to come anywhere close to the claimed emissions figures
- Fuel consumption (and therefore emissions) are much higher in real life for PHEV than the stated emission per mile anyway
It's also worth noting that calculations for emissions for fuel consumed do not consider environmental cost of extracting, transporting, refining, transporting again, storage and delivery of fuel over electricity which, even when created through the burning of fossil fuels, is far better for the environment.
Sure there are people on this thread who own super edge case, no longer for sale, hybrid oddities or who charge every day but there are also loads of people who bought a 330e or an X5 hybrid on their company scheme because of the massively lower company car tax who haven't charged them once in their life.
Even if they do, the range claims are clearly false, with that Guardian article that started this discussed yesterday showing the BMW tested as spewing out 3x more carbon on average than claimed.
Finally, the vast majority of hybrids are also large vehicles. Toyota make a few small ones but most are large SUVs which only exacerbates the problem.
Con. Job.
- People aren't charging their PHEV at all or as much as they should be to come anywhere close to the claimed emissions figures
Soul-
I don't think getting a plug in hybrid to use the electric range is particularly edge case. Sure there's probably people cruising around in a company PHEV Merc that have never been plugged in but if you're spending your own money on it and all you do is motorway driving why wouldn't they just buy a mild hybrid?
-
Your criticism are right, but they’re right of all cars, not just PHEVs.
Car magazine tests never match claimed miles per kw on a straight EV or fuel consumption on an ICE car.
SUVs are just as big and heavy with ICE and more so with EV.
-
It's also worth noting that calculations for emissions for fuel consumed do not consider environmental cost of extracting, transporting, refining, transporting again, storage and delivery of fuel over electricity which, even when created through the burning of fossil fuels, is far better for the environment.
They did when I used to do LCA. You have two issues with current large, longer-range EV vehicles:
1) there's a circa 100kWh lithium battery onboard and this weighs in the order of 700kg. This is enormously energy-intensive and polluting to produce, compared to anything previously made by the car industry. It's an enormous one-off environmental impact that hugely eats into any benefits of electricity vs fuel during the use phase.
2) most bigger EVs do closer to 2.5 miles per kWh in real life than their stated mileage and that's not very efficient. That means it's very difficult to offset/recoup/justify that impact from the battery manufacture during the use phase.It's a completely different story with small EVs. 25-30kWh batteries are 25-30% the environmental impact and the car travels almost twice as far per kWh.
triggered
super edge case
oddities
Ok Soul. Yawn.
-
Con. Job.
And EVs aren't? Once again, it's worth pointing out that EVs don't save the planet, they save the car industry. The environmental impact of EVs is slightly less than fossil fuel powered cars, but we should still be aiming to reduce the use of cars as much as we possibly can.
Sumo
Hefty
Jonny69
andyp
Is this true though based on real world actual use?
We do a few medium journeys, occasional long journeys, but lots of short journeys - eg 5 miles p/d to nursery, 8 miles p/w to tennis, etc. etc.
I bet a 15 mile range would cover 80% of our driving.
I can believe rep spending their week on the M4 would be better with a modern diesel over a PHEV, but the majority of UK drivers? I struggle to believe it.