Plug-In Hybrids? Worth it? Money Saving?

[Deleted User]

He ain’t gonna impress the neighbors with a second hand leaf!

feolojad

born_again said:

Which I guess is a high polluting diesel. 

It's a Euro 6 so it outputs 0.50g/km of CO, half the CO of a Euro 6 petrol and within 0.02g/m of NOx a petrol does. Particulate matter emissions are identical.

shinytop

Jlawson118 said:

So I'm in the market for a new car. I currently have a 4 year old diesel Audi A3 that I've owned for 3 years. It's been a great and reliable car over the last few years but unfortunately don't do enough mileage like I used to, to warrant the high diesel mileage requirements. Over the last three years I've had the car I've moved a lot closer to work, I no longer travel on the motorway to university often, nor do I visit my friends who live far away as often. Lockdown has contributed but this was becoming the case before.
Yet I feel if I jump back to a petrol car, this is going to cost me a fortune in filling it up often and even more so when I do go on long journeys and on my day to day mileage barely warming the engine up.
I've been looking at the BMW 330e and test drove one in December. Really nice car, comfy drive yet still quite sporty and fun. Tested out a decent run with hills for the regenerative braking and managed to generate a fair bit. The vehicle offers up to 40 miles on pure electric, and when studying my daily mileage more, I tend to do between 17 - 20 miles on average per day so this would be perfect. I only travel to work, go shopping, visit my grandma and run errands for her, and picking my girlfriend up from work.
I wouldn't be able to charge at home, but my workplace have chargers that are free to use. Worked out if we were to go anywhere at weekends where we'd usually visit, there are charging ports available. Fancying a trip to Scotland (covid permitting) in the Summer time and worked out charging points near hotels and places we'd like to visit. 

Overall I feel like going hybrid, I'd be saving a fortune. But then I'm thinking of the negatives;

• In 5 - 10 years time when the high voltage batteries deplete, how much are these to replace? you won't have to
• Is it bad on the petrol engine to mostly use the electric motor when driving short journeys? No
• These vehicles are significantly expensive compared to their petrol only models. Would fuel savings really be that much to make up for it? No
• I would be able to charge it at work now but there's always the potential I could change jobs without these facilities. If you couldn't charge it you'd end up with a more expensive, heavier hybrid

I'm curious as to whether these cars are worth it just yet? I train out electric vehicles as part of my job and do really like them but I just don't feel like the infrastructure is quite in place yet.

See answers above.  Unlike most people who have replied I've had a PHEV (Golf GTE).  My driving habits were different to you;  I was doing 40k miles per year and could charge at home.   My PHEV was great to drive.  The combined EV/petrol performance was very addictive, as was the EV-only on short journeys.  You'll  save a bit of money when you use EV miles but, as others have said, not enough to make much difference.  Think of it as a really nice petrol car that has a bit of a party trick up its sleeve of being able to do 15-20 EV miles.