worth switching to plug-in hybrid?

aoleks

I currently own a relatively new (69 plate, bought Jan 2020) petrol car, I drive about 1000miles/month. Car is very cheap, I managed to negotiate 30% off list + free servicing, so it's costing me peanuts, especially when compared to today's prices. it is on finance, but if I sold today, I'd probably end up with in between £4000 and £5000 "equity", depending who I sell to.

Car does anything between 35 and 40mpg, depending on weather, journey, driving style. Needles to say, fuel costs a bit. I'm considering swapping to a PHEV, but I have a few questions:

1. Considering the car is always charged overnight (full) and mainly short-ish journeys (20 miles morning, 20 miles evening + some weekend driving to supermarket and friends), what is a realistic mpg for these cars? I know the numbers published are exaggerated, so what should I work with? 60-70mpg?
2. What am I looking at in terms of charging costs? Let's assume an average battery and a home charger with an output of around 7KWh in the current (beyond April) energy market: how much will I pay extra to charge the vehicle?

Any help or advice is welcome, I just need to know whether the extreme price of such a car can be offset against a realistic mpg and current electricity prices.

Thanks!

mysteryUser

I've just recently bought a 7 year old Golf GTE for £14000.

It can do around 20 miles on a full charge. A full charge being around 6kWh - On my home tariff that's £1.16 to charge. So it's 5.8p per mile. I've not had it too long but apparently on a longer run when using petrol it can do around 50mpg, so 13.6p per mile at £1.50 per litre. 

If I charge it at the public charger near the gym it's 33p per kWh, working out at 9.9p per mile which is still a bit cheaper than petrol. 

My general thoughts are the cost savings are possibly not huge and I do have the concern that my servicing costs are going to be higher. 

I do like the idea that I can drive around town/cities without polluting the air though and the drive is very smooth and pleasant. 

[Deleted User]

I think that many people that are considering the move to electric or hybrid cars often look at the wrong numbers and concentrate on the pence per mile or mpg but the total cost of ownership over a period of time is more relevant.

For example you could spend say £14,000 on a car as per the above example and save 7p a mile which might save £700 per year over 10k miles, over 3 years say £2,100.

Or you could just go and buy a £11,900 priced car and save the same amount on day 1.

Obviously more factors including VED, insurance, servicing costs, depreciation and so on to consider as well but my point is that chasing better MPG / pence per mile has a cost in itself, and just buying a cheaper car can easily make the same money savings if that is all you are looking for.

Anyway, a lot more details needed as in the current car model / future car, mileage, type of driving etc to understand whether it will be a benefit for you.

ccluedo

Possibly also have to take into account the resale value of hybrid/ full electric v petrol/diesel cars a few years down the line and the closer to 2030 we get (not that I'm sure that date is realistic)

Grumpy_chap

Has the OP considered selling the current car, taking the £5k equity, add a little bit and get an early Leaf?  Full EV, no half-way-house and seems to match the OP's use profile...

born_again

2.
Charging rate is set by car not the wall box supply limit.
Many PHEV will only have a 3.6kW charging limit.

@1000 miles a month. Might as well go Full EV if you are going to charge at home.

aoleks

thanks all, good advice.

some more details:

1. we always looked at the cost of a car as a monthly transport cost. not having a car is not really an option with 3 children and a daily commute of around 20 miles each way. there's the practicality issue which trumps any cost, but even without that, public transport is just much, much more expensive than owning a reliable, properly negotiated car. I'm paying less than the cost of a monthly travelcard for a premium saloon that has a list price of £30k.

2. without a car, transport wouldn't be free, a bicycle wouldn't be an option, so I'm not looking at the monthly cost alone, but the difference between baseline transport and private car. it's peanuts, but given the engine efficiency, petrol costs are fairly significant. we're not in any financial trouble, we can easily pay £3/L if it has to be, but I'm looking for savings where possible.

3. the car I'm looking at does 40 miles on the battery only and can take up to 7.2KWh charge, so that's a given.

4. I'm not considering a full EV, it's simply not suitable for us. two main reasons: I'm a car guy and I want that traditional feeling when going for a ride, but we also go on holiday across Europe and most countries we visit don't have electric chargers, so I'm not even considering it.

5. the longer term cost of ownership is secondary in our case, we're trying to minimise the monthly cost of running a car. With insurance, road tax and consumables being the same price regardless of vehicle (assuming similar vehicles, of course), fuel is the main running cost. if, for example, my current car costs £200/month, but I pay an additional £200 on fuel, it might be cheaper to get a £300/month car, but only pay £50 in fuel, if that makes sense.

what's a realistic fuel consumption for a modern PHEV that's charged daily?

iwb100

I don’t see how we have the infrastructure to support full EV adoption given the implications of that within the next 7 years. Imagine a bank holiday weekend on the M5 for example. How could we cope with everyone needing to charge their cars to get to Cornwall? It’s ok when it’s a minority of drivers. When it’s the majority…I don’t see it. I really don’t.

As for PHEV you likely can do 20 miles plus with zero fuel consumption if just a stop start round town journey. 

But like people say they aren’t really cost saving. Just climate saving. 

mysteryUser

The Speak EV Forum has a lot of useful threads. A fairly recent VW GTE on there is showing 64.8mpg over 1402 miles of driving. I think a lot of people with PHEVs don't plug them in often (lots are company cars and are there for the purposes of reduced tax). If you actually plug it in often then it's a benefit for the environment and should reduce running costs too.

The second hand car I bought has a problem with the fuel system/filter - I suspect the previous owner has done many EV only miles. This is a bit bad too, as the fuel / fuel system / engine etc. are all sat around not doing much, engines benefit from regular use. 

A disadvantage of the PHEV is you have to plug them in very often. Once you have the issue of a failed charger / cable / charging flap / charging port or similar, you've quickly wiped out the couple of hundred pounds you've saved in petrol in the past many months. 

A bit off-topic, on the subject of full EVs - I recently had a VW ID.3 for a couple of weeks. Around 180 miles range from 100% battery in this weather. I done over 1500 miles in it in the two weeks to get a good understanding of the public charging networks and they certainly do need more work! Mainly I think I got lucky, often turning up to chargers and people pulling away just as I arrived, however as mentioned above bank holidays and the like are going to be a nightmare for those doing long trips in their EVs with the current infrastructure. I'm pretty happy I opted to buy a PHEV. 

Steve182

I'm (or my company) is replacing my 2016 BMW 330E which has been my company car from new with a Tesla 3 LR in 2 weeks from now.

The 330E has worked out well in that I pay only 1/3 of the CC tax compared with a 330 IC engine car. My daily commute to the office is circa 10 miles and I can more or less make the journey 1 way on a single charge. I then have to charge again at home/work for the return journey. I think if I did >10K miles/year the loss in efficiency due to carrying around the extra weight might offset any benefit from the initial charge. However most people with similar cars probably don't care about that as the CC tax benefits are the main incentive.

Based on a 3 hour charge @ 2.5kw with electricity cost of circa 20p/kwh it costs me £1.50/charge when at home. That's 15p/mile.

Petriix

One massive advantage of getting a plug in car is that it gives you access to Octopus Go at 7.5p per kWh. That alone could save you £hundreds off your household usage before you even think about the mileage costs. 

A PHEV makes sense if you'll regularly be driving over 200 miles in a day. If it's only occasionally then an EV would be a better option. I strongly recommend taking a test drive in one before writing them off: the instant torque and smooth driving is addictive. 13,000 miles has cost me just £150.