Some of you might recall I was wibbling recently about a new car. After test driving some, and discovering the lead times are such I'm unlikely to get anything before the next century, I decided to pick a lightly used Skoda Superb "to tide me over". I had a Skoda Octavia, so it's "the next one up", as it were.
It's a top spec L&K with more toys than I've ever had, which pleases me mightily.
It's a plug in hybrid, and as I have a charger (from my Zoe days), I can charge it easily. The battery is widdly though it takes three hours to fully charge. And it will take you for about 20-30 miles apparently, which is feeling about right. It does recharge itself as you drive as well though, when you brake or go downhill, so you gain a few extra as you go.
I've only done three journeys so far. It will be interesting long term (to me anyway) to see what you actually get in terms of mpg.
I can tell you so far that according, of course, to the trip computer:
Back from the dealers. No idea what I was doing, no settings played with, just drove it like you drive a car. 60 miles, country roads, A roads and 9 miles of the M1. End result - 96mpg.
To local town yesterday for shopping. 16 miles return, it didn't turn on the petrol engine at all, so end result as reported: 300 mpg.
Finally, run out this morning for a walk - 40 mile round trip, and it went 74% of the way using battery. End result: 136 mpg.
It's clever enough, if you tell the satnav where you are going, to save enough battery such that in your final home stretch, in this case the village, it will run on battery only, so it uses petrol only on the open road if it can.
I'm enjoying it a lot so far.
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That sort of battery mix is what would suit me best. A 40 mile electric range would cover the vast majority of journeys but with the flexibility to go on petrol when required.
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Thanks for the mini review CC.
I didn't have the choice for my car and budget for a proper hybrid last year, but I do think they make good sense if you do a lot of small trips and some occasional longer journeys.
As for MPG, my 1.7TDI diesel Tucson auto did about 45MPG. I wasn't too impressed, but it had the aerodynamics of a brick. The new one is a 1.6TDI MHEV, the hybrid bit only helps with acceleration and there is no option to plug in. It's 136BHP compared to 148BHP for the older one, but I don't notice any difference. The MPG is much better, I am getting about 58MPG, though I think I am driving more sedately, due to the higher fuel costs.
The MHEV element seems to work for a few seconds only, but does give a noticeable boost to acceleration.
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My last car (Vx Ampera) did up to about 45 miles in the summer solely on leccy. That covered 90%+ of my journeys thus was very economical on fuel.
I drove through London and back round the M25 this week in the current car for about £1.80 (150 miles or thereabouts).
Went past the end of the street where Zero lived as a nipper...
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>> It does recharge itself as you drive as well though, when you brake
>> or go downhill, so you gain a few extra as you go.
Doesn't the engine re-charge the traction battery at all?
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It seems the answer is "it depends". You can apparently do things like tell it not to get below a certain percentage for reasons of your own and then it will charge the battery from the engine, yes.
Or you tell it to sort itself out as it goes as it thinks fit.
Or you tell it to run entirely EV, and then it will either not charge the battery after it runs out, or will, if you have gesture ticked box three in menu settings manage subsystems vehicle right swipe car mode battery up screen management mode seven. I think. Or asked the in car assistant, called Laura. So saying "hey Laura" might be fun when you have a passenger of the same name, as I will tomorrow.
So far I've just let it do what it wants.
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CCs is more sophisticated than my old one, in which you had Mountain Mode, which was designed to provide electric assistance to the engine on steep inclines - but if you ran in that mode on the flat when it was below ?20 miles it would put some charge back into the EV battery. But of course you'd be working the ICE engine a bit harder so whether it was that economical I'm not sure.
Other than that it's really just KERS from, as CC says, mainly from slowing/braking. You can usually set the amount of "engine" braking - current car has 3 settings - and this determines how aggressively it brakes and thus charges the battery. On mine, the harshest setting is allegedly sufficiently fierce that the brake lights light up when you lift off (though I've not seen it happen on mine).
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Nice car - we were behind a 4x4 estate the other day - maybe next time !
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The new car - Bobby
