My new Citroen Hybrid is too expensive to charge and cheaper to run on petrol? Yeap, it's bizarre.

Grumpy_chap

Gobsh said:

Citroen advertise it gets 30-40 miles on a full charge
 Citroen just think it's funny that I believed the guff.

I don't think it is "funny" that you believed the guff, but I also don't think it is any different to the way mpg is expressed for ICEs.

The EV has a standard test cycle that determines the range that the manufacturers quote.  Usually expressed as "distance travelled" rather than "distance per energy unit".

Likewise the ICE has a standard test cycle that determines the mpg that the manufacturers quote.  Usually expressed as "distance per energy unit (gallon fuel)" rather than "distance travelled".

In the real world, the mpg for an ICE is rarely achieved.  It is no different to the EV range not being achieved in the real world.

(Unusually, there was one version of the 2008- Citroen C5 which was advertised as having a range of 1,000 miles between fill ups.  I could never achieve that.)

Mildly_Miffed

Ectophile said:

The WLTP test is the only official one that manufacturers can quote.  It includes very little motorway speed driving.  It's mostly simulating urban travel.

Not true.

The full test cycle is 30 minutes long, and the last 13 minutes (2/3 of the distance) is at "high" and "very high" speed, with the last five minutes at speeds almost entirely in excess of any UK limit. Only the first five minutes stays at speeds mostly within UK urban speed limits. Much of that "low" speed section is above the 20mph limits encountered in many UK urban areas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Harmonised_Light_Vehicles_Test_Procedure

Car_54

Ectophile said:

They run the battery flat quite quick at motorway speeds (wind resistance is proportional to speed cubed).

The reverse is true for petrol cars.

Squared, not cubed.

And it’s the same for ICE cars. And indeed trains planes and ocean liners.

Herzlos

You don't notice the efficiency drop with speed as much in ICE, since about 2/3rds of the fuel goes to heat and noise anyway. 

paul_c123

Gobsh said:

 unless my maths are wrong,

What do you think?

I think your maths are wrong. In that, the battery isn't being discharged from 100% to 0%. It will be some fraction of that because a plug-in hybrid deliberately discharges the battery only to a certain point, after which it uses the battery in the same way a regular hybrid car does. Also you need to factor in it may use a combination of petrol+electric; and charging losses.

WellKnownSid

paul_c123 said:

Gobsh said:

 unless my maths are wrong,

What do you think?

I think your maths are wrong. In that, the battery isn't being discharged from 100% to 0%. It will be some fraction of that because a plug-in hybrid deliberately discharges the battery only to a certain point, after which it uses the battery in the same way a regular hybrid car does. Also you need to factor in it may use a combination of petrol+electric; and charging losses.

19 miles with 11.5kW usable would be a tiny 1.65m/kWh.  At 25p per kWh that's 15p per mile

58mpg at £1.35 per litre = £6.14 per gallon = 10.6p per mile

On that basis it's 50% more expensive than running on petrol.

Obviously that can be mitigated by cheaper overnight electricity - however the real issue is the poor m/kWh which most PHEVs suffer from in the winter.

Bigwheels1111

So you believed the marketing o well there’s a sucker born every minute.
Did you do any research at all before buying.

I was not an EV fan.
I thought my next car would be a Toyota Corolla estate.
But after today both them statements have been switched.

I drove a Toyota Corolla estate today and hated it, seating position was not right.
, felt like I was enclosed in a prison cell, breaking, steering and accelerating were just not right.
I now drive a 400,000 to 550,000 EV every day, 
And love them.
It’s a bus by the way.

Goudy

When PHEV's came on the market I had a suspicion that they were a cynical attempt by manufacturers to meet the fleet wide EU emission targets and nothing has changed my mind since.

I can understand the logic behind them. Start off from home on urban roads for a few miles on (cheap) electric which is more efficient before using the ICE when you are up to speed on roads like motorways where batteries and efficiency take a hammering, particularly for range, which should mean the combined figures are beneficial.

Turns out very few people drive that way. 
The battery isn't big enough to handle more urban driving before the ICE kicks in and as we know, that type of stop start motoring sees the worst from an ICE anyway, but now it's dragging around a dead battery and idle electric motor repeatedly up to speed making the issue even worse.

Throw cold weather in the mix and battery efficiency drops and you are effectively getting less of electric driving and more lugging a dead battery and idle electric motor up to speed and you suddenly realise it's not really worth it.

Now with a HEV (commonly referred to as a self charging hybrid) you get both working together pretty much all of the time but the ICE tends to work differently.
It runs a more efficient cycle (Atkinson cycle) as it doesn't really need to produce the same torque as a straight ICE, it gets that from the electric motor.

So you have a more efficient ICE constantly working with an electric motor that has the ability to change what it's doing (charging or powering the wheels) to run most efficiently in all conditions, urban and motorways.
Okay, you are not pre filling the battery with cheap electric but I think in everyday motoring you should get better efficiency overall.
Things might be different if you drove differently, by that I mean your trips. If you used it for a 4 miles each way for the school run then the PHEV should be more efficient, but like I said, we generally don't drive like that often enough to make it better overall.

Yes, overall efficiency can plateau on the motorway a little as regen from braking is limited (or used to be) but overall I think this system suits (compared to PHEVs) the sort of trips most tend to do everyday.

I'm not comparing either to EV by the way, they are a different kettle of fish.

Today we are offered a wide range of propulsion for our cars and if we just took those headline efficiency figures to work out which is best, a lot of us would probably end up with the wrong one and all of those not get anywhere near those figures.
There are more variables to throw in the mix these days to work out what is best for you and your trips.

shera12

You’re not alone. A lot of plug-in hybrid owners find the electric range isn’t quite what’s advertised, especially in colder weather or on longer journeys. Official figures are based on ideal lab tests, so real-world results are often lower. If your petrol economy is good, it can definitely end up being cheaper to run on fuel alone. It’s frustrating, but sadly it’s pretty common across many PHEVs, not just Citroen.

shinytop

WellKnownSid said:

The problem is that hybrid mpg drops to that of a straight petrol in Winter, and a PHEV will have a much more basic battery setup - just some cooling.

Without preheating, a stone cold battery might take 20 miles to warm up to a level where you're getting reasonable mileage - by which time you've already run out of juice.  Cabin heat might also knock a couple of kWh from your battery in that distance.

When it hit -5 last week our Zoe dropped to 2.7m/kWh for the early morning school run - that included 10 minutes of de-icing (3kW) via the app followed by a 20 mile round trip via the motorway with the speed pegged at 70mph + 3kW of heat pump + seats and steering wheel on full - which is about 2.8 pence per mile.

AI suggests your battery is about 11.5kWh usable which means you're seeing around 1.65m/KWh which is bad but not surprising for a car which is part petrol / part EV

It doesn't work like that in my Kia PHEV.  The traction battery doesn't run the heating or AC. When it's cold and/or cabin heat (or AC) is needed, the petrol engine runs. On a very short, slow, cold journey the range doesn't deplete at all because the engine is charging the battery as well as running the heating.