Do you need a drive/garage to have a hybrid car?

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I'll have to get a new car in the next couple of years (current car is pushing 20 years old and won't last forever, although it's going fine at the moment). So I was thinking about going for a hybrid as a more environmentally friendly option. However, I can't see how I would be able to charge it.

I don't have off-street parking. Can usually park right outside my house. But how would that work? I can't see the neighbours being happy if I trail an extension lead from my house across the public pavement to the car. And I can't see the people I share a house with being happy at leaving a downstairs window open overnight to get the cable out. There are no public charging stations near where I live. The nearest one is 4 miles away, and not in an area where I would need to leave the car anyway (none near my work, for example, or where I shop).

Does anyone have a hybrid or electric car who doesn't have a drive to park it on? Would you recommend it? Any tips? It seems like at the moment there isn't the infrastructure to go with expanding the number of electric cars, at least around here (outer London), but I can't be the only driver in the country who doesn't have off-street parking!

My hybrid is self charging,so no

DS pays for fast charges. He lives/works on military base away from town (can't charge there), but somehow figures it all out.

I'm very surprised there's nowhere that does fast charges within 4 miles of an outer London residence.

I have a plug-in hybrid car and I wouldn't get one in your position. They generally have quite a short electric distance before they switch over to petrol. If you end up using mostly petrol then it will work out more expensive as they are heavy because of the dual power so the petrol engine is less efficient than it would be in a petrol-only car.

It works really well for me because most of my journeys are short local ones and I plug it back in every time I get home. Generally I only use the petrol on longer trips. I put petrol in when it's down to half a tank and that's usually every 2-4 months. If I didn't have a driveway I would consider full electric and take it to a charger every 5-7 days instead.

I wouldn't run a cable over a pavement, there's just too much risk for people with bad eyesight and it would be annoying for pushchairs and wheelchairs.

My colleague has an electric car and no drive. The local county council made a trench for the lead and it charges in the house, however it is very slow.

Another colleague doesn't have a home charger and just charges the car at work.

Some interesting points to consider, thanks. I hadn't looked into it that much yet so I hadn't considered a self-charging hybrid, that might be something to think about.

I wonder whether I should just hang on for a few years in the hopes that the range for fully electric cars will improve, and then I would get one. At the moment, although the majority of my journeys are short, I do a very long drive through Europe for work from time to time (plus a lot of driving on holiday) and I don't have time to stop for a 30 minute charge every 200 miles. If they got the range up to 500 miles I'd definitely go for one and take it to a charging point away from home every few days (when not on the long drives).

DH has a hybrid and used to charge it from a plug in the house. We have a drive and I now have an EV and we have a charger outside.
We have very different personalities. In your situation living in an urban area I could and would make it work by slotting in visits to LIdL or whatever. DH could not do that and would just run the car on petrol.it is a kind of impatience and anxiety in him that would inhibit him from changing his lifestyle. No criticism by the way but I think you need to think about the practicalities in your day to day life and how it would work .

There's plenty of fully electric cars out there and I don't know what you'd be waiting to improve before you bought one.

What it comes down to is that you need to wait until you live somewhere you can buy a hybrid or electric car and use it effectively. If you don't live in an area with the infrastructure in place to charge either hybrid or fully electric, then you need to live in a house where you can charge your car.

You are correct, you are not permitted to drag extension cables across pavements. I also doubt that you'll be able to effectively keep track of your electricity usage to prevent your housemates shouldering part of the cost to charge.

We have 2 fully electric vehicles, a longer range one and a short city type car. But we have a driveway and a charge point.