Plug-In Hybrids Can Be more Expensive To Run Than Diesel
Friday, 13. April 2018
I’ve written about this before but as the Government is putting the squeeze on fleets, private drivers and manufacturers to push the green agenda and at least take the first step along the greener road by moving to hybrids or plug-in hybrids, car warnings were issued by fleet experts that they could be costing more to run than diesel cars.
Employees love the idea of plug-in hybrids as they dramatically drop their benefit in kind tax. And some individual drivers have moved from say their Prius hybrid to a plug-in hybrid and wondered why their fuel usage has gone up when they haven’t been charging their new car from the mains.
First, let me explain the difference. The original hybrids, cars like the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight were petrol driven but with rechargeable batteries, like the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) system on Formula 1 cars. When freewheeling or braking energy would transfer to the batteries giving you a small boost whenever you needed it from traffic lights or pulling away on a roundabout, the times when the engine burns most fuel.
You didn’t need to do anything – just drive and you would achieve better fuel consumption and emit fewer CO2’s than your old petrol or diesel engine. The plugin hybrids go one step further with some manufacturers claiming 140 + miles per gallon. But to achieve this fuel consumption you need to plug in the car in order to charge the batteries as the car is far more reliant on the battery power.
The problem is that many companies, under pressure from over-taxed employees, adopted a plug-in hybrid approach, only to see fuel consumption higher than it was with their diesel fleet. The problem is that if you don’t charge the car and drive it as you would have driven a Prius the 140 MPG that you should be achieving drops to around 25 MPG.
So if you’re thinking of going greener by taking a plugin hybrid (PHEV) make sure you are able to plug in your vehicle, either at work or at home, and if you are supplying company PHEV vehicles to staff, in order to save them BIK tax, make sure that the employees are able to and more important, willing to, plug them in at night and use them as they were intended. By Graham Hill
