Tell me about your plug in hybrid

[BooksAndChooks]

My old banger of a car will need to be replaced soon. We have solar panels, so I have been looking at fully electric cars, as we could obviously charge them very cheaply/free.

Another option is to go for a plug in hybrid, but I'm a bit nervous that it will spend little time using electric and a lot on petrol and I will still be facing high petrol costs.

Can anyone with a plug in hybrid give me an idea of what make and model they have and how often they're using petrol instead of electric?

The car would be used for shorter distance driving, mostly under 10 miles and not on the motorway. I would love to be able to cycle but there are no cycle paths, the roads are very dangerous and I need to drop kids off at school etc.

I was talking to someone who has a hybrid the other day and she said that it only uses the electric under 40 mph. If that’s true then it’s great for pottering about, but not much good to those on motorways.

I think they are daft.

My mum has one that you don't plug in and she says it hardly ever goes on to the electric and my friend has one where the first thirty miles are on electric.

Just get an electric car.

We have a self charging hybrid and it often switches over to electric - we can see on the panel when it does it. Mileage is excellent. I would recommend a Ford Puma.

This is what I definitely don't want to happen.

There just seems to be a greater selection of hybrids, much less choice on solely electric. My budget isn't massive either.

They are quite different to the plug in hybrids though. I think with the plug ins you can go faster and for longer before it switches to petrol.

But is that a plug in or a self charging one?

Didn’t ask, it’s a Mercedes.

It would be a plug in hybrid we would be considering rather than a self-charging hybrid.

Used to run a plug in hybrid before going fully electric. Good for short local journeys in the summer - about 30 miles on electric only. Good economy on longer journeys (around 60 mpg once the petrol engine kicked in). In colder weather we were surprised to find that the petrol engine kicked in straight away to power the heating in the car. We got used to switching on the heated seats and steering wheel rather than the main heating. You would need a charge point or the ability to plug into an external socket to charge at home. Electric car owners get quite pissed off if you are using a public charger when they need it!

As regards a fully electric car, we run ours mostly on solar (free off the roof) but make sure you get a charge point which will work with the solar panels. We have Zappi which can be set to charge only when there is enough solar to power the house and the car or to charge only overnight when we are on cheap rate electricity - Octopus Go rate, currently 7.5p per KwH for 4 hours overnight. In the summer we run the car almost entirely on free solar power. Currently charging the storage battery in the garage but will start charging the car when it is full.

You asked for make and model. Our hybrid was a Hyundai Ioniq PHEV and we are currently waiting to take delivery of a Hybrid VW Multivan.

Drove Staffs to Bristol and back the other day. In electric car it cost us £13.60 in paid for electricity (the rest from solar). In our non electric van it would have cost us £74 in fuel.....