“Carbon dioxide emissions from plug-in hybrid cars are as much as two-and-a-half times higher than official tests suggest.
Plug-in hybrid vehicles are powered by an electric motor using a battery that is recharged by being plugged in or via an on-board petrol or diesel engine, suggestions are they emit an average of 120g of CO2 per km comparing with the 44g per km in official "lab" tests. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are sold as a low-carbon alternative to traditional vehicles and conventional hybrids - which cannot be recharged from an external source - and are proving increasingly popular.” - Dave
For tax reasons PHEVs will often be the choice for business use with drivers that don't bother charging them so drive continuously on the engine. The fuel consumption of the petrol engine hauling around the dead weight of the battery and motor will be worse than the equivalent standard petrol only car so its not only the environment but the tax payer as well that loses! I also wonder what the effect on the battery would be when its not used for a couple of years? How about the unsuspecting second owner? I know of someone who had a PHEV for two years and the charging lead was still in the same unopened bag!
However, I would like a PHEV as I have solar panels and would like to use some of the power which I lose back to the supplier. There are controllers which can detect this and only charge the car when conditions are right. I do worry though about how much fuel this sort of car will use on a 200 mile journey. I think the fuel consumption figures published should be for only when the petrol engine is used alone. This would tell you much more and would enable meaningful comparisons to be made with other PHEVs.
Next door has a plug-in Golf and I've never seen it plugged in. There's certainly no external charger point.
Conversely one of my neighbours further down has a plug-in Mitsubishi and after about six months a warning light came up to say it had to switch to petrol since they hadn't used ANY in that period. They had to run the tank nearly dry so that fresh petrol went back in. They charge it free from solar panels.
That's an interesting point, a petrol engine that sits there for months on end not being used! I don't suppose that will do it any good and the petrol goes bad after a while, but I think that takes a year or so.
The quoted fuel consumption figures for a PHEV may well be for example 150mpg. This seems to assume that the electricity used from your house comes free of charge because no mention is made of that!
What would the actual fuel consumption be of gloucester's neighbour's PHEV who never uses the engine, infinity mpg? The actual fuel consumption of the other neighbour's PHEV may well be 30mpg.
An average electric car will do about 3.5 miles on a kilowatt hour which costs about 14p. My petrol car will do about one mile for 14p
