Golf GTE hybrid

moohound

What are peoples experiences of electric hybrids are they easy to charge up from home, and are they reliable? Does having 2 engines mean more thing to go wrong?

forgotmyname

Generally yes, the more parts you have the more there is to go wrong.

When i read the bangeronmics thread and see some of the cars people choose i think, so much to go wrong.

Having a car with less cylinders and fewer sensors and engine management controls the better, similar inside the car, electric adjustable and heated everything is nice until they start to age and fail.

With an electric motor and an engine it may mean you can keep moving to some degree, unless its the system that switches from one to the other of course.

Do your journey's justify the extra cost and weight of the electric system?

When running on fuel your lugging that extra weight around which will affect the fuel
economy. A petrol or diesel engined car maybe a better option.

moohound

It will be a subsidised lease car and is 20% less expensive than the diesel or petrol version, I do short journeys mostly. I do need reliability though, and I don't know anyone who has a hybrid. It will be a 2 year lease if I choose to go for it.

The lease includes tyres, servicing, breakdown and insurance.


To be honest I was very surprised at how cheap it would be for me, as the car retails at nearly £34000 and it was less a month than a C3 Picasso, a Skoda Fabia or a Ford Bmax, which all cost half that to buy.

gzoom

We've changed from a diesel Civic and petrol BMW to a hybrid Lexus and full electric Nissan Leaf.

The GTE is a half way between the Non-plug in Lexus and the full battery Leaf.

The hybrid drive in the Lexus is the same as found in Prius, which has proven it self to be as reliable as any petrol car. This is mainly because the battery in the setup isn't 'stressed' much, and is never allowed to run to less than 40% charge and never over 80%.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2011/02/the-200-000-mile-question-how-does-the-toyota-prius-hold-up/index.htm

The battery in the Leaf is pushed much harder, though even in the Leaf the software will never allow the car to reach a true 100% charge. So far Nissan haven't had to replace hardly any batteries under its 5 year, 60,000 mile warranty.

Infact one UK Taxi firm just hit 100K on one of their Leaf, and found hardly any drop off in battery performance (less than 10% loss in charge capacity).

http://mnewsroom.nissan-europe.com/uk/en-gb/Media/Media.aspx?mediaid=132843

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/25/99-99-nissan-leaf-batteries-still-operation/

Interms of the motors, the electric motor is far more reliable than any petrol engine, so you should have no worries about that. The rest of the petrol engine and DSG gear box will be like any normal car.

For charging, I believe the GTE has a 8.7 kWh battery. A normal 3 pin plug can deliver over 3 KW of charge with no issues, so even using a 3 pin plug you can recharge it fully in a few hours. But been a hybrid it'll run fine on just petrol so having a full charge isn't a massive issue compared to my Leaf!!

You can also get a home charger installed which the government will pay the most of the cost for. These can recharge at 7KW, so will fully recharge a GTE in less than 2 hrs.



I've had my Leaf now for 4 months, done over 1700 miles, I absolutely love it, for me EVs are the future of motoring

gzoom

I should add our Lexus can return some stupid mpg figures for a petrol car with a peak power rating of 220bhp. I've seen close to 70mpg on a 120 mile trip from Leciester to London with the last 30 miles of been standstill traffic around the A406.

If you plug in the GTE nightly, I would expect your see 100mpg+ regularly.

Electricity is very cheap compared to petrol, I pay 12.2p per kWh, that's the equivalent of 2.5p per mile in fuel costs for the Leaf. You need a petrol car to return 120mpg+ to get any where near the same refuelling costs.





As I've mentioned the only concern about hybrids and full EVs with large batteries is longterm battery degradation, but if it's a 2 year lease you have no worries.

I fully expect our hybrid Lexus and full battery Leaf to be much more reliable than our previous cars :)e

moohound

Thanks for the info, really helpful

gzoom

moohound wrote: »

Thanks for the info, really helpful

If you do go for a GTE, have a look at getting a subsidised EV charge point installed at home. I got it free, but its still cheap at present. As far as I'm concerned EV/hybrids are the future, so if there are offers going now, why not make use of them

http://www.nucharge.co.uk/domestic/apply

moohound

There was an offer with the electric BMWs for a free charge point with a lease car last year.

gzoom

moohound wrote: »

There was an offer with the electric BMWs for a free charge point with a lease car last year.

So I see you been keeping an eye on EVs for a bit...I encourage you to make the jump to the GTE, but I warn you, once you have tried the full EV experience (Which the GTE can deliver for a decent numbe of miles), you wouldn't want to go back to an ICE (internal combustion engine) car

That's how I ended up in a Leaf, my wife bought the hybrid Lexus, and I simply couldn't get enough of its 'EV' mode, but the Lexus can only do a few miles in full EV mode so I wanted a car that could do EV all the time....and like you I than noticed some amazing PCP/lease deals on the Leaf, despite its relatively high list price....and the rest is as they 'history':D

I can understand you been nervous about new technology but trust me once you try any electric vehicle your soon realise they are the future of motoring!!

This forum below has lots of info, but there are some properly 'enthusiastic' people on there :rotfl:
https://speakev.com/forums/introductions/

forgotmyname

Its the future, But the future is not now.

When they can do 500-600miles+ miles on a charge even on a freezing cold night with all the electrics going then the future will have arrived.

I was reading a review on a road trip in a Tesla last night and they were less
than impressed. Even with the fast charging and dedicated satnav that works out
where you need to charge. After getting over 50% of the way to the next charging
station the stanav said turn around and go back to the previous station.
But that was now further away than the next one.

gzoom

forgotmyname wrote: »

Its the future, But the future is not now.

When they can do 500-600miles+ miles on a charge even on a freezing cold night with all the electrics going then the future will have arrived.

I was reading a review on a road trip in a Tesla last night and they were less
than impressed. Even with the fast charging and dedicated satnav that works out
where you need to charge. After getting over 50% of the way to the next charging
station the stanav said turn around and go back to the previous station.
But that was now further away than the next one.

I take it you mean this article...

http://blog.caranddriver.com/alexander-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-tesla-model-s-p85d-road-trip/

Yes I agree it does show the problems associated using a pure battery EV for long distances, but if you read the article properly your see the main points are to do with the rubbish sat nav and also the driver been not confident enough to cover 200 miles non-stop even though the Model S can cover 250 miles + if driven sensibly.

In addition the journey was nearly 800 miles so not something 99.9% of the population will ever do and the cost of the refuelling was FREE.

I've had my Leaf for 4 months now, and covered now over 1800 miles. I know the limitations but it covers my daily commuting needs perfectly. I've used mainly free public rapid charging for most of my trips, total cost of 'fuel' to me for the 1800 miles is about £7 or 0.4p per mile. As well as been cheap to run, it's actually a much nicer driving experience than any conventional car. There is no engine noise, transmission jerks, it's simply nice to drive.

More to the point, the OP was asking about a HYBRID. So actually if the OP chooses to he/she can never plug the GTE for a charge, and essentially run it like our Lexus Hybrid. Which despite not needing to be plugged in still returns a true 65mpg+ on long trips and 50mpg+ in city traffic.

If the OP wants to look at the Tesla, here are some more reviews of one, including from the same website that did the write up about the 800 mile road trip....

http://m.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-s

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/tesla/model-s

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-reviews/tesla/tesla-model-s-p85d-2015-review/