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Original poster

Can someone explain electric cars, hybrid and any other options

105 replies

m00rfarm · 18/08/2022 21:31

I am honestly not a stupid person, but I really cannot get my head around what I should be looking at purchasing. I find something that looks interesting, then find there is a hidden battery cost per month for example.

I really want an SUV type electric vehicle (well, I think I do). But would a hybrid be better?

Any simple explanations would be greatly appreciated.

OP posts:
IsItHotAgainTomorrow · 19/08/2022 00:38

What sort of driving are you doing? - If (for instance) the vast majority of your journeys are short (school, shops etc) then if you had a hybrid with (say) 35 miles range then most of the journeys would be 'on electric', but you would not be paying the premium (for the car) that you would if you bought one with battery capacity for (say) 325 miles, which you might only do once in a while.

Conversely, if you do lots of long trips, a 'full' electric will be cheaper per mile, but more expensive to buy

Batteries are not yet that cheap, so a long range electric costs a bit (eg Tesla Y - which is SUV size - is £55000 (from memory).

The other factor is that some people are happier with a hybrid since the 'range anxiety (where do I get my next public charge from) is taken away since you just need the nearest petrol station.

The other question is whether this is the only car 'in the pool'. We had an electric BMW for 7 years (which had a restricted range, as all early electrics did) which was used for 'local' and a conventional petrol used for the longer stuff. That might (or might not) be another option.

Does that help (or pose more questions?)

Rummikub · 19/08/2022 00:45

I’m glad you’re asking this op as I’m confused too.

Ford do a mild hybrid but that seems to be really a petrol car with a shot of electric?

Are there hybrids that charge whilst driving? Or a hybrid that’s mainly electric and petrol as back up?

i do a lot of motorway miles and been thinking petrol cost might be worth investing in an electric car instead. But it’s really confusing

hellsbells99 · 19/08/2022 02:07

The Toyota Corolla is a self charging hybrid. But I don’t know much more about it!

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

Cars & vehicles
HeartofTeFiti · 19/08/2022 05:45

Try googling a car forum like pistonheads - EV or hybrid. You’ll get a better range of answers.

DH has a hybrid Porsche, it does about 14 miles on pure electric which covers most journeys, for short journeys it is cheaper than petrol right now (even with the election price rises, although I think that is at tipping point now) and we are installing solar panels on our house to help with cost. It does recharge whilst driving, but not a huge amount so it uses petrol when you are on a longer trip. The onboard computer handles it all - it decides when it’s efficient to be on petrol and when to try and recharge itself on a journey. It has a beautiful display screen on the dash that shows what mode it’s in, and you can view the battery life and how efficiently you are driving. It is like being in a spaceship, I love it!

Ours is second hand and an older model, so it charges quite slowly. We haven’t had a single issue with it.

To note this was a compromise car - DH wanted something flashy and I refused on grounds of poor efficiency, so DH proposes a hybrid which has a combined mpg of about 40mpg.

DH is campaigning for me to invest in a fully electric SUV type of car so I’m interested to see what other replies you get!

FixTheBone · 19/08/2022 06:17

As above, all depends on the type of driving. I have a tesla model 3 and do around 100-150 miles a day easily, and charge at home, which is the other factor that hasn't been mentioned... I charged for free on public chargers due to a local scheme for the first year, which was nice financially, but a bit of a ballache if I'm honest, adding 40 minutes onto a 13 hour day.

Still not sold on hybrids, seen an increasing number of reports that the real world efficiency isn't anywhere near the published data, and it never made sense to me how a petrol engine lugging a battery and motor half the time, plus an electric motor lugging an ICE the rest of the time could be more efficient. - first rule of physics - energy is never free.

To give you an idea of how much more efficient electric cars are, I saw an experiment where they took a truck and put a litre of fuel in and drove it 7 miles, took the same truck with another litre of petrol and towed a tesla to charge its battery, the truck only did 4 miles, but the tesla then did 11....

LaPufalina · 19/08/2022 06:34

I'm looking into our next car at the moment, I've had company cars the last 13 years but the next one might not be.
We currently have a Toyota chr engine hybrid which I adore, it sometimes gets 80mpg on a run, usually 60 for shorter journeys. The battery charges itself from braking etc. Next time we'll probably go for a plug in hybrid but the power points look v expensive to install. We only have one car else I'd a Tesla.

Oblomov22 · 19/08/2022 06:37

What sort of driving do you do? Dh and I have 2nd hand hybrids. He plugs his in. Mine is self charging. Hyundai iconiq. I love it, it so smooth, powerful, get great miles to the gallon. Love it!

Caspianberg · 19/08/2022 06:51

We have full electric. It’s a suv. It’s has a huge amount of km per charge. I wouldn’t bother with a hybrid.

PermanentTemporary · 19/08/2022 06:56

Dp does mostly short trips with long weekend drives from time to time - no long commutes. He's found a full electric works brilliantly for him once he got used to it (things like the range being significantly shorter in cold weather). We've adjusted how we do long holiday drives with the regular breaks. He doesn't yet even have a home charging spot, as there's a couple of paid chargers very near to him. I think if he were commuting by car he would definitely need a home charger. He's got an eCorsa.

JustALittleHelpPlease · 19/08/2022 07:01

I'm interested in knowing more about plug in hybrids. Some seem to get incredible range on electric but I'm not clear how it gets that, does it self charge to a certain extent? I'm totally lost in it all to be honest!

I sort of feel that a hybrid is convenient and comfortable because it has petrol but doesnt having a petrol engine undo a lot of the supposed good of the electric part?

Caspianberg · 19/08/2022 07:08

Our home charger was mainly paid for by subsidies here. I think it was €700 plus €250 installation ( they added huge up to 50kw cable capability for future). Government pay back €650 in e subsidy. They also have a large e car bonus which covered a good amount of the deposit

hattie43 · 19/08/2022 07:09

I'm shortly at the stage where I need to get a new car but I'm worried that all this electric / hybrid is faddy and will change with the dire economic forecasts we're having . I'm not sure if the government will stick to green / eco plans if people can't put food on the table and electric costs being sky high what running costs will be saved .

Newnormal99 · 19/08/2022 07:12

I looked at a jazz self charging hybrid I think it was but I was told you can only have those in automatic as you cannot have them changing between petrol / electric when you are changing gear.

I hated the one automatic car I had so it's putting me off.....

Caspianberg · 19/08/2022 07:12

As a comparison cost wise. Our petrol was last €90 per tank. It was a small car. Current much bigger and around €7 full charge.

rookiemere · 19/08/2022 07:19

We have just got a BMW hybrid.

It can do around 30 miles on electric only, then petrol. There are various settings so you can use a mixture of electric and petrol for longer journeys and petrol only for short trips.

Having just been on a touring holiday around UK I'm glad we have a hybrid not pure electric.

The downside of electric only to me is constant searching for a charging point and the time taken to charge it, also with the price of electric at a commercial charging point - I'm not sure it's much cheaper than petrol.

There's already been a few threads about possibly of charging an electric vehicle at friends or a holiday cottage and it's nice to not to have to worry about that with a hybrid.

All our short trips are on electric.

BarbaraofSeville · 19/08/2022 07:33

You have to decide whether the extra cost of an electric or hybrid over a petrol car is worth it to you in terms of miles driven.

If you drive longer journeys in a large hybrid car regularly, it's likely to work out quite expensive. I drive a lot of hire cars for 2-400 miles in a day or so that are often hybrid and it's shocking how much petrol it takes to fill them up after the journey.

Be aware that electric from service stations costs a lot more than it does at home, reducing savings made vs petrol. With petrol, you can buy it from the cheap place near home and be good for 400+ miles. With electric you could be forced to buy it while out a lot more often.

MN loves electric cars but many fail to acknowledge that in many cases they're a lot more expensive than petrol and/or have significant inconveniences if you don't have time to hang around service stations drinking coffee you wouldn't have bought if you didn't have time to fill while waiting for your car to charge.

They're probably good if you do a lot of short to medium length journeys (so do enough miles to recoup the extra cost over petrol) but only rarely do very long journeys so you can charge the car at home, or work rather than having to pay commercial prices for electricity.

HappilyHadesBound · 19/08/2022 07:44

I have an electric car and a hybrid, and have had both types for years as well as a plug in hybrid in the past- but we really can't answer without knowing your usage.

Penguintears · 19/08/2022 07:52

I have a hybrid Toyota CHR and love it. Zippy, powerful, smooth and so easy and fun to drive. Don't have to worry about charging as it does it all automatically while driving.

rookiemere · 19/08/2022 07:52

@BarbaraofSeville we find it's not too bad filling up the BMW hybrid as it gets roughly 45 miles per gallon on long journeys. Maybe it's because we moved from a bigger engined Volvo.

PermanentTemporary · 19/08/2022 07:53

Dp is saving a lot of money with an electric car though I can imagine the differential is not as great when liquid fuel costs aren't so high. Service costs are a big saving for him too.

Original poster
m00rfarm · 19/08/2022 08:29

Thanks for the input so far. I do around 500 miles a week. Im not in the U.K. so no worries about colder mornings etc.

OP posts:
Rummikub · 19/08/2022 09:23

I do 300 miles a week motorway and petrol prices are horrific

Rummikub · 19/08/2022 09:30

If thought a hybrid did electric then switched to
petrol as a back up. But it seems it only does electric for a very short journey.

The other thing is read on here was that full electric can cause motion sickness! I suffer from motion sickness!

JS87 · 19/08/2022 09:50

I have a toyota auris hybrid 1.8. It's older than the chr but I rarely get 80mpg as a PP said for her CHR. In the summer I average 55-59 mpg for a tank and in the winter 45-50mpg. The temperature makes a big difference to the fuel efficiency. Not just if you have the heating on but warmer weather seems to make the battery hold its charge better.
Despite toyota saying you can put in pure EV mode for short journeys it won't stay in it unless you drive less than around 20mph and don't accelerate sharply at all. It also only does around 1 mile. I have never been able to use it on purely ev to do the very short journey t o the shop for example (usually a five minute walk).
Despite all that I love driving it (so smooth). Despite it being a 1.8L I get 350-450 miles from a 40L tank depending on whether whereas I used to have a 1.8L petrol which had a 60L tank which did 200-250 miles.
If I got a new car now I would definitely consider a plug in hybrid and maybe a full EV (downsides seem to be when you go on holiday not many holiday cottages allow charging - often they say it is a fire risk). However, they are much more expensive than a mild hybrid.

I'd never get a purely petrol car again though as the hybrids are automatic and so smooth to drive.

JS87 · 19/08/2022 09:54

Newnormal99 · 19/08/2022 07:12

I looked at a jazz self charging hybrid I think it was but I was told you can only have those in automatic as you cannot have them changing between petrol / electric when you are changing gear.

I hated the one automatic car I had so it's putting me off.....

Not sure about the jazz but the toyota aren't like petrol automatics. They are CVT so continuously change between around 20 gears. You never feel it changing gear and its very smooth. If you press your foot down its very responsive. Great if you drive in traffic as no lurching around in first gear when second is too high.