I’m contemplating a plug in hybrid ( 3x weekly visits to a care home, which is a 40 mile round trip). Not brave enough to go fully EV yet…my twice annual two month trips around the continent, where I wing where I go day by day, would necessitate too much forward planning.
Octopus are my current supplier and seem to have cheap charging tariffs, and even offer full installation ( I think) and I have a private drive and adjacent double garage where I keep my car so could locate a charger in either location.
Any advice from EV owners would be much appreciated.
Reason for plug in is that it has more get up n go than the self charging model I’m considering
|
As an EV owner I would say that but for your needs for your unplanned foreign trips your requirements would be better met by a BEV than a PHEV. 40 miles is beyond a lot of the cheaper models.
However since a BEV is not a practical option for your wandering I would recommend you stay with petrol,for the time being.
|
My daughter had just got a BYD plug in hybrid. Seriously nice bit of kit. I think her car is 18kw?
She looked at getting an EV charger but costs seem to be close to a grand with no grants available.
Instead she is granny charging. She is with British Gas EV that allows cheap charging between midnight and 5am. So every night she just plugs it in to the 3 pin socket on outside of house and as she rarely travels far enough to “drain” the battery then each night she is effectively just topping it up or sometimes fully charging it, depending on the usage the car has had.
And on the BYD, with the type of battery, there is no need to only charge to 80%.
Works well for her.
|
|
Not sure that would work for LL. With most PHEVs you would be completing a 40 mile trip at least partly using petrol especially in the winter. For the longer trips in rural Spain etc it would be running exclusively on petrol. Taking into account the extra complexity of a PHEV over either a petrol or BEV car it makes little sense.
|
I would say the opposite, I think it makes perfect sense if he is planning on going down the PHEV route anyway.
Many PHEV cars will run a lot on electricity even on long motorways journeys through regeneration etc.
also plenty of PHEV owners who have never charged the car ever.
But delete on his ultimate aim, is it to save money (not sure LL has that challenge) or is it just man maths justifying a new toy?
I am seriously impressed with my daughter’s car. Very state of the art. If I was buying a new car tomorrow I would be seriously considering it. But I haven’t been in a lot of very new cars so coming from a 2016 BMW, most new cars will be state of the art in my eyes!
|
“Many PHEV cars will run a lot on electricity even on long motorways journeys through regeneration etc.”
Very few will do more than 40 miles on battery power.
“also plenty of PHEV owners who have never charged the car ever.”
What on earth is the point of having a PHEV and never charging it?
|
>> What on earth is the point of having a PHEV and never charging it?
Something to do with tax on company cars meaning the PHEV was cheaper than the non plug in?
|
but there is no rational reason for someone to buy a PHEV with their own money and never charge it.
|
There were major savings for benefit in kind taxation for PHEV although this is now changing.
As most new cars are company purchases, employees were easily incentivised to choose a hybrid - employers typically pay the fuel bills so no great incentive to charge (even if they could).
As a purchase I would be concerned about the of complexity two separate power trains which need to interact.
It is also too easy to focus on the fuel savings which may be fairly trivial when compared to the other costs of car ownership. Assuming electric power is used for (say) 100 miles a week:
- at 4 miles per kwh would need 25kwh charge. Overnight rate of (say) 7p = £1.75.
- at 50 mpg would use ~2 gallons at £6 per gal = £12
£10 per week saving assuming one can charge using cheap night rates. Any saving largely disappears if public chargers used at commercial rates.. Contrast with lease cost (or depreciation) of £60-100 per week.
Last edited by: Terry on Tue 22 Jul 25 at 13:48
|
Agree Terry. Always need to take whole costs into account if you are buying purely on perceived running costs.
I wonder how many new cars are private purchases on HP ie owner is going to be the ultimate owner as opposed to lease/ PCP etc.
|
|
Correct Brompt. Many of the original Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV fell into this category.
|
CG the car switches in and out of electricity over the course of a journey. Just because a car has a PHEV range of 40 miles on one charge, doesn’t mean that a fully charged car on a 200 mile motorway journey will only do 40 miles in electricity.
It doesn’t work that way.
|
|
It means that a phev on full electric mode will only drive 40 miles on battery power before switching to petrol. That is exactly what it means.
|
Most people would not drive it that way on a long journey.
You select HEV mode or whatever is applicable for the car you are in and it will decide how best to run the car between ICE and EV.
|
When I had the Ampera, with its 35 mile range (40 on a good day) I rarely used petrol as most of my mileage was within that. I had absolute control over which energy source it used, and I could go for literally months without putting any petrol in. I wouldn't have had that car if I was doing a more serious daily mileage.
On a long journey I would select whichever fuel source I thought best for the circumstances. Usually, the slow bit to and from the motorway were electric then petrol on the faster bits. Maybe the car now takes care of that but I can't see how it can predict what sort of driving you'll be doing later in the journey.
SWMBO has a hybrid Yaris and I think the electric side is a waste of time. It is a 16 reg so maybe things have some on since then. but the EV light rarely lights up (showing you are using solely electric) unless you are coasting or stationary. I guess the petrol may be getting some assistance from the electric but tbh the mpg isn't all that spectacular for a smallish car.
My current car has a range around 220 in the summer which means I hardly ever public charge - again I don't do many long distance journeys, and at least two of my long journeys are to folk who now have a EV and home charger themselves.
I doubt you'll be surprised to hear that I have a lot of data on my own use of Octopus tariffs (including comparing tariff costs) but for ease of use with an EV the IOG tariff would likely be your best bet if you stuck with Octopus, although if you want to try Tracker then that generally works out better. I personally use Agile, on which the rate changes every half hour, and an OHME charger manages my charging to only use the cheapest rates, within the parameters I set (e.g. charge by 60% before 10:30 am tomorrow). Due to the way I use the car I can often go some time without charging so I tend to wait till the rates are on the pennies, or even negative, but my electricity cost is somewhat below 16p a unit at the moment as charging is a high proportion of my usage. I've even let my neighbour use my charger when it's negative or very cheap which helps keep the average down. He offers to pay me but on those occasions it's usually only something like 50p for 30kWh which is balanced out when he charges for free but the prices are negative :-)
I know it's about the total cost of ownership so here's another piece. I am looking at signing up for a main dealer service plan. 5 years of "low mileage" (< 10k pa) would be £1110.45. That includes AA membership each year but not the MOTs. I feel an ICE vehicle may be considerably more.
Having said all that, if I were regularly doing long journeys (where the round trip was beyond my range with no charging at the other end) I think I wouldn't drive an EV. Although the charging infrastructure is improving in leaps and bounds it is comparatively expensive (up to about 20p a mile - which is roughly the same as a petrol isn't it?) but it's more the thought you have to put into a journey which I wouldn't want to have to do on a regular basis (unless it was a regular journey wiht reliable known cxharging points!)
Last edited by: smokie on Wed 23 Jul 25 at 08:48
|
My daughter’s BYD has a “State of Charge” function whereby you select the minimum you want the battery to go to.
So if you select say 20% and start with a full charge then if you are in the BEV mode (I think) it will primarily use battery first and then as and when it regens it will keep using it down to that level.
Alternatively if you select say 70% then it will primarily run on engine and keep the battery fuller for example it are doing a long journey and no charging at other end then you would want to keep this high.
Further complicated of course that the BYD isn’t a traditional ICE but instead the engine generates the electricity to drive the wheels.
|
They all do regen don't they? My experience is that all proper EVs you can select how "aggressively" they do it - in my there are three settings, which is effectively increasing the "engine braking" to increase the recovered. power. It's usually the most aggressive which enables (near) one foot driving as it slows reasonably well without touching the brakes. I understand that even when you hot the brake pedal quite a bit of the retardation comes from regenerative braking by the motor rather than friction between the pads and discs. It's a fact that brake pads are more likely to need changing because of some form of corrosion through lack of use than being worn out - in fact I've seen on some forums quite knowledgeable people recommend knocking the car into neutral at high speed (effectively turning off the regen) and braking hard once in a while (safely, f course!) to avoid then brakes sticking.
The Ampera was more manageable than the BYD, you could just select by button which mode you wanted at any particular time, and swap on the move if you wanted. For me that was preferable to letting the car manage it. It was quite an innovative design in lots of ways given it was pre 2010 design.
|
|
Smokie, the BYD also allows you to pick what mode you want eg EV only.
|
|
A plug-in makes sense if you can access cheap electricity. A granny charger is generally fine if the house wiring can cope with supplying 10A over an extended period. When I was commuting in the Mercedes B-Class, I would charge every day and run just on the battery. For longer trips, it would run on battery only, then around 10% charge I would swap over to 'sport' mode, i.e the engine with assistance if needed, and it would slowly recharge the battery due to braking.
|
Should I change the Vitara, it won’t be until after my next Spain/Portugal road trip Autumn 2025, and probably pre my April/May 2026 trip.
The plug in variant has more oomph than the self charging and as stated, doubt it will be used much, if at all, on the long trips. Useful for running around locally purely in EV mode in the UK, but insurance may be more, and other whole use costs taken into account such as installing a home charger circa £1k.
The NX will be second hand, should I go down that route, probably 2 or 3yo…but no other Vitara replacements are currently floating my boat.
I think old age has finally caught up with me..
|
Unless you are very good at trading cars, every change probably costs £1-3k. Going EV adds another £1k.
There needs to be a better reason to change to EV than saving money - it will take several years to pay for itself on fuel savings alone.
Good reasons include current car is too small, not fit for purpose, unreliable etc. Other less justifiable (although legitimate) reasons (just be honest about it) may include better performance, more gizmos, boredom with current wheels etc.
Using fuel savings to justify EV (or even more economical ICE) is questionable man maths. Feeling virtuous by going green, saving the planet may make little financial sense but deliver lots of emotional brownie points.
|
I bought an EV three years ago. The main reason I guess is that I think they are the future and I wanted to be part of that. I liked the way they drive, the quietness and the fact that I was no longer poioning the atmosphere. An EV did also fit well into my lifestyle.
Getting back to the original post a hybrid would be a poor match to LL’s advised usage. Electric motoring would probably not be available for all of his 40 mile trips and certainly not on his long trips which probably constitute most of his overall mileage. Carrying a heavy battery and motor around if it is seldom used makes little sense and taking into account the added complexity of a hybrid over a petrol makes it difficult to recommend a hybrid .
|
|
Is it really important that every financial decision makes sound economic sense? I do try to be not too wasteful, especially where it's easy, but OTOH I regularly buy stuff I fancy but don't really need on a whim, and not only cheap crap from China. I even let SWMBO go for a Costa coffee sometimes!! :-)
|
>> Is it really important that every financial decision makes sound economic sense?
when it comes to something as boring as a run of the mill EV, yes,
|
>> Is it really important that every financial decision makes sound economic sense?
No of course not but from the original post that seems to be the motivation. If electric motoring. Perhaps LL can clarify why he wants a hybrid.
|
More than happy to clarify.
As I now seem to spend 7/8 weeks, twice a year, touring Spain ( sometimes Andorra, this year northern Portugal as part of the trip) it would be nice to have a more luxurious means of transport…reliability is now my main consideration and has been for years.
Nothing wrong with the Vitara, but if you can afford something better, and hopefully as reliable, then why not.
Obviously a Lexus NX ( post 2021) will cost a whole lot more to run, and a heck of a lot to buy…my mum was diagnosed with dementia 3 years ago, her care home costs £1850pw plus extras , her life savings have now almost gone & I’m trying to sell her home to continue paying care fees.
On a personal level, I’m thinking why not spend your money whilst you can enjoy it. Hence a self charging NX350h… the 450h plug in has considerably more power. Obviously won’t be running on pure electric on my continental trips, but would most of the time in the UK a 450h would…electric range is circa 45 miles.
The NX gets good reviews for cabin ambience and reliability , which are the main things I’m looking for in my Vitara replacement.
Not bothered about sporty handling and ultimate grip…just something super comfortable for my 7k annual miles on road trips overseas.
|
|
Do they not do a straight hybrid version of that vehicle rather than a PHEV.? That would probably fit your intended usage better.
|
>> Do they not do a straight hybrid version of that vehicle rather than a PHEV.?
>> That would probably fit your intended usage better.
>>
Indeed they do. The self charging NX350h, the PHEV ( plug in) being the 450h. The latter having considerably more performance.
|
Suzuki - At home EV charging - CGNorwich
