Octopus agile/PV/Home battery/EV

matt_drummer

GerbilsNuts said:

matt_drummer said:

badger09 said:

@JohnJ_3

We’re considering a hybrid as our next (& probably last) car 

I would advise you to think very carefully about that.

If you intend the hybrid to be your last car and you would like to drive using battery power most of the time, you may well end up disappointed in a very short time.

Hybrid cars are not kind to their batteries and they are unlikely to last as long as you might think.

I had a plug-in hybrid (Kia Niro PHEV) for 4 years and the battery capacity hardly dropped at all in that time, giving me 36 miles on a full charge and 65mpg when on hybrid-only (i.e. minimum charge in the battery). Obviously, a PHEV is somewhat different to an HEV, and maybe HEVs are less kind to their batteries.

Your battery won't have suffered much degredation in four years but it will  be just around the corner.

I will explain.

I have a Tesla Model 3 with 360 miles of range from its 78kWh battery.

If we both did 36 miles in one hour your PHEV will have used 100% of its battery power and capacity to do that journey, my Tesla would have used only 10%, which battery had the easier time?

These batteries have a `life' of 1,500 cycles.

If we both did 36 miles a day the PHEV would have to be charged every day, my Tesla would need a charge once every 10 days. The Tesla battery is going to last 10 times as long, obviously.

The life of the PHEV battery is 4.11 years (1,500/365)

The life of the Tesla battery is 41.09 years (1,500/36.5)

The Tesla only needs charging 36.5 times a year compared to 365 times for the PHEV to cover the same distance on electric power.

The charging of a PHEV is more aggressive, at 7kW it's less than 10% of the battery capacity, on a PHEV 7kW charging is 50% or more.

You will also be charging the PHEV battery to 100% most of the time and discharging to very little on longer journeys, giving the battery a much harder life.

The KIA PHEV will do 54,000 miles on its battery (36 x 1,500) before you see any serious degredation in battery performance whereas the Tesla will do 540,000 miles (360 x 1,500) before the battery is in the same state as the KIA PHEV.

With petrol at £1.40 per litre 65mpg is 9.78p per mile

My Tesla charged at 15p per kWh costs 3.57p per mile

Even on electric only the PHEV will not be as efficient as the full electric version of the car.

In a PHEV you are carrying around a petrol engine and gearbox all the time even though you are not using it.

In a PHEV the electric motor has to drive through a gearbox, it has nothing like the performance of the full electric version of the car.

So, the PHEV needs charging 10 times as often, doesn't perform as well, you still need to go to a petrol station every so often and you have all the maintenance costs that go with an ice vehicle.

Where's the advantage?

Not having to stop to charge on a long journey, or maybe not so often at least.

They're a poor idea, worse than an electric car nearly all of the time. If you do mainly short journeys get an electric car, if you mainly do long journeys, get a petrol or diesel car. 

A PHEV is the worst of both worlds.