EDIT clarifications:
- the article is from the European Commission. This thing comes from a serious study based on hard facts and data.
- Check this comment by @wooster@startrek.website, who reported the data.
- Note that plugin hybrids are still better than pure ice, but they were expected to be much better.
It’s not a typo: plug-in hybrids are used, in real word cases, with ICE much more than anticipated.
In the EU, fuel consumption monitoring devices are required on new cars. They studied over 10% of all cars sold in 2021 and turns out they use way more fuel, and generate way more CO2, than anybody thought.
The gap means that CO2 emissions reduction objectives from transport will be more difficult to reach.
Thruth is, we need less cars, not “better” cars.
When I saw the headline, I thought this was clickbait, since the headline and the linked article avoided quantifying how much CO2 the vehicles said they consumed vs the real world usage.
If you dig into the cited materials, it turns out it wasn’t hyperbole.
That said, I still consider it extremely poor form to omit the information the study was centering its argument around.
Honestly I thought that, being the article on the European Commission website, was a good enough sign of trustable source.
I added a disclaimer at the top of the post hoping to make things more clear
To be fair, I’m really just judging the EC’s article writer. Not the trustworthiness of EC or the study itself.
I dont get it. The numbers are all less for the hybrids
They are a less than full gas vehicles, but they output considerably more CO2 than they are tested and marketed to output.
Many people buy them because they believe they are a green form of transportation based on the marketing. But the real world pollution they cause makes them not very green at all.
This is a significant report, especially when you consider the source.
Thanks. It sounds like they are greener in all cases. But they’re not as green as the industry expected because people aren’t actually charging them
Marginally greener when compared to the most environmentally harmful modes of transportation (I.e. other cars and trucks), but not even close to green when compared to alternative forms of personal and/or public transportation.
Definitely walking or bicycles is best.
This is the problem, people who are nervous about charging, or unable to charge at night but want EVs think that a plug-in hybrid will somehow come close enough.
The plug-in bit is key though, otherwise you’re just lugging around a few 100kilos of dead weight.
That and from what I understand of them they only cover about 25 miles. The reason to get a plug in hybrid vs a full plug in is generally because you need to drive more than that on average. I have a full electric from 2015 with a horrible battery, and on a single charge I can get ~50 miles at most in greater Atlanta area, GA, USA.
That’s mostly fine for me, but I once looked up the plug in hybrids for trios etc, and I sometimes forget to charge and have issues having to charge on the road. A plug in Hybrid would have saved me those minor problems, but not because of the electric part. I have a feeling anyone using a plug in hybrid is barely using the battery part of it. I get by because I mostly use the car for shopping, so on average it’s once or twice a week, all within 1 battery’s usage a day.
Or because 90% of the time you only go 25 miles and you want to occasionally go to DeKalb market a few times per year
Sure, my comment doesn’t cover every use case, and apologies if it sounded like I was accusing anyone who had one. I’m just saying I know my limitations somewhat helps me decide not to do certain driving, and the ability to just drive without worry might have me drive more often beyond the 25. Even my own driving would often go beyond 25, as H-mart alone would eat 25 for me, so I’d make half my trip on gas everytime.
I don’t live in a car-dependent location, so forgive my ignorance, but wouldn’t renting a petro car for those few times a year be cheaper and better for the environment to boot?
The issue become, Can I get to a rental place? Do they have something to rent to me suitable for my use? Will they even rent to me? How do I get the vehicle back to the rental place? Can I afford the high cash outlay right now?
It’s not so easy to rent a car. There are lots of hoops to jump through.
@SnipingNinja
Exactly, have a small electric car for everyday, and a few time you rent a car for the purpose. For example a pickup for carrying stuff, RV for the holiday, or something large and comfy for large distances.
So much cheaper and you always get a brand new car.
@delirious_owl@SnipingNinja @delirious_owl city residents does the same, even with petro cars: they have small city cars, just to go cheap everyday, and rent bigger comfortable cars for long trips.
Places with car sharing programs where you rent by the hour, yes.
Cities where you rent cars by the day, no.
from what i understand, the real world hybrid data is significantly worse than its WLTP test data. so much worse that it’s only a 25% improvement over petrol/diesel instead of the 75% improvement that would be expected given the WLTP.
Wait don’t they only get like 25 percent better milage anyway? Why would that translate into 75 percent better CO2
Because if they are charged regularly then they’ll be operated in EV mode most of the time emitting 0% carbon. Plug in hybrids also usually do worse in mpg when in hybrid mode compared to standard hybrids, so if someone buys a plug in but doesn’t charge it, it’s actually worse than buying a standard hybrid.
Today I learned there are apparently diesel hybrids. Huh.
Regardless of how it is powered, bringing thousands of pounds of steel and plastic everywhere you go to get to work, grocceries or other daily needs, is ineffecient.
But most importantly, it spends about 95% of its life parked. Such as waste of resources and space. I hope actual automatic cars in the future will allow people not connected to public transportation to avoid needing an individual car.
Often parked on prime real estate, or in a sea of wasted spaces that are rarely ever at capacity, sometimes both.
It should be noted it’s comparing the claim vs the cars actual co2 output, which for PHEV is laughably incorrect in real world use. I’m amazed a class action hasn’t been made againts these car companies. They knew what they were doing and its nothing short of environmental terrorism levels of deceit.
That said, Plug in hybrids are still ‘better’ than petrol or diesil cars for overall emissions. The title makes out they’re worse. Which is untrue.
The reason a class action hasn’t been filed, is because it is not their fault. The emissions are measured in a certain way, and that is kinda favorable for PHEV-s. Of course this is besides the point. The ORIGINAL reason hybrid cars are popular, is because they are cheap to maintain, but pretty good on fuel. The fact that they kinda cheat these newer emission tests, is more of a side effect.
That said, Plug in hybrids are still ‘better’ than petrol or diesil cars for overall emissions. The title makes out they’re worse. Which is untrue.
A title is a title. I added a clarification at the top post. I have mo intention to deceive anyone
Wouldn’t plug in hybrids largely depend on use? If I only use gas with it twice a year, it’s got to be better than if I’m commuting long enough to need the gas motor five times a week, right?
A key issue with many PHEVs is that the “P” is in name only. Their batteries are generally too weak to work without the ICE engine at least some of the time (eg high speed up a hill or when partially discharged). In my view this is quite deceptive, as many people would think (and many PHEVs allow) that you could effectively use the PHEV as a “pure” EV for the majority use case.
@dillekant @Anamnesis There is also too many PHEV’s that are given to people as work vehicles when they have no option to plug in. Ideal, the right user and real world can all be very different scenarios.
Don’t take any numbers at face value, actually understand what is being measured.
Wow I knew hybrids were not that great and WLTP would be off, but 250% off how is that even possible? There’s practically no difference between plug-in hybrids and standard cars.
Edit : So people are buying plug-in hybrids and just not charging it- why ?
At least where I live in Europe you (used to?) get subsidies for buying hybrid cars or EVs. So people would buy them for the discount and then never actually charge them 🤷🏼♀️
Edit : So people are buying plug-in hybrids and just not charging it- why ?
One possible reason could be that they picked a plug-in hybrid over a pure EV in the first place because they had nowhere to charge it.
how is that even possible?
Several reasons I can think of.
- the lab tests are highly flawed.
- the marketing is downright misleading.
- people aren’t charging them.
- people are using them in ways that don’t take advantage of the battery.
Hybrids are really only “green” when you use them for very short trips at low speed. In that context, any other form of transportation will be better, in my opinion.
Yes, I think EVs in general (and especially hybrids) are a way to justify not investing in alternative modes of transportation for cities.
As for users you feel good about being “clean”, but in reality you are still polluting 10x as much as with public transportation.
PHEVs should be able to charge off of regenerative braking. You don’t need to plug them in to get benefits from the hybrid system. The stated fuel economy for the vehicles assumes that there will be a certain amount of electric-only travel. The article doesn’t say it, but most PHEVs advertise that you can use the battery for most of your day to day travel, and only use the ICE when you are making longer trips. So the takeaway from this article shoud not be “hybrids are bad, just keep making gas cars” but instead should be “testing and assumptions about the fuel use of these vehicles needs to be changed to more accurately reflect reality.”
Plug in hybrids usually do worse in mpg when in hybrid mode compared to standard hybrids, so if someone buys a plug in but doesn’t charge it, it’s actually worse than buying a standard hybrid. Regen braking is awesome but it won’t charge a plug in’s battery. The energy you get from braking 45-0mph would likely only get you back up to 15 to 30mph due to all the efficiency losses, plus you still need more energy to maintain speed.
As long as the system offsets it’s additional mass, it is a net benefit to the total economy of the car. Consider that an equally sized ICE vehicle loses 100% of that braking energy, and still has to accelerate that same 15-30 mph. You’re also leaving out that electric motors are much more efficient at accelerating a vehicle at low speeds than an ICE.
I’m just comparing a plug in that never gets charged to a standard hybrid. If you aren’t going to charge it regularly, you’re better off with a non-plug-in. Both are better than a non-hybrid, but if only the last 5% of battery capacity is being used that all the resources that go into the other 95% of the battery are wasted.
Makes sense to me. Not much point in hauling around more battery than you are going to use.
@Bytemeister @hobovision which is another reason the range anxiety narative is harmful: people buy EVs with batteries larger than they need
@Showroom7561 @ByGourou any other form of transport is better than any form of car ;)
Just my personal 2 cents of owning a plug in hybrid : i sometimes drive with an empty battery because the range is 50km max, and my landlord refuses to allow me to install the infrastructure to charge at home, even if i’d pay 50% of the costs. There are also people parking in electric parking spots without charging OR being an electric car, denying me of charging publically. Its a whole mess…
That said, 40% of all km i drive are full electric.
I feel like this is a large portion of the missing puzzle pieces. The difference between real world and advertised ICE stats are somewhat padded, but not significantly. You’d expect the hybrids to have a similar degree of discrepancy, but it’s wildly out of range of expectations. It may simply be that the manufacturers are giving idealized stats, since while testing they would have access to their personal charger in a laboratory environment. But in the real world, owners cannot guarantee working/accessable chargers or even that they can charge at home, which would dramatically impact the results of this study.
Or at least, I’d assume that’s the case in the US. I don’t know what EU’s charging infrastructure is like, where the study was preformed.
At least in my country public charging is popping up everywhere, but slowly. Not enough resources is poured into it because they think charging is not a thing yet. Thats bullshit ofc, and there is a reason i have my hybrid car. Also, you can charge at home from a regular power plug, and hybrid cars shouldnt need more than that to charge overnight or over 5h time. However, if you live in an apartment like me, you are royally screwed if the owner doesnt comply. Same with solar panels, but thats a different discussion for a different time haha
Last place I was at completely screwed me over when it came to charging my electric car. I was leasing a Leaf and had been running it entirely off of the 120 charger. Lived at this place for a year and had no problem. Then someone on their HOA got a wild hair up their ass and said I couldn’t do that any more. They began by making up bullshit excuses, trying to say that it was a hazard to the landscapers. Except my roommate was the landscaper, and he didn’t give a shit. Blatant fucking lie from the HOA. Then they tried to pivot and say it was the insurance company that was prohibiting it. I offered multiple solutions including expanding the electrical for the covered parking, running power to the curb, or even getting an entirely new line run from the city. Emailed all this to them and hear fuck all for eight months. Then they send me a registered letter with a cease and desist. Had to early terminate the lease on my car.
Landlords and HOAs are some of the biggest inhibitors of EV adoption, and they can all go fuck themselves.
Be careful, not all landlords are pieces of shit. If i was one i’d do it, and im sure im not alone :)
I’m guessing a lot of people don’t use them optimally. They used them how they originally used a ICE car. Unfortunately, that means they are lugging a large battery around for no significant reason.
I would also query how the hybrids are being designed however. There should still be a saving due to efficiency gains, since the engine can run at optimal RPM most of the time. The values scream that the manufacturers have over optimised for performance, rather than efficiency.
Looking at the above data, these hybrids do reduce fuel consumption. About as much as you would expect from a non-plugin hybrid.
It is rather that the WLTP figure vastly underestimates the fuel consumption.
In germany we had subsidies for hybrid company cars, so companies bought hybrids. But: If employees would charge these in their home garage, they would pay for the electricity. If they get gas, the company pays. So they are practically just regular cars with a ton (probably literally) of extra weight. Unfortunately there’s barely a single law related to cars in germany that makes any sense (apart from just randomly gifting tax payer money to car companies). It’s like gun laws in the US. The area-wide corruption is immense.
Edit : So people are buying plug-in hybrids and just not charging it- why ?
Why is the open point. Maybe the range is not enough for the majority of owners, maybe they are too lazy or maybe gas prices are too low to justify the charge?
I really hope there will be a follow-up study trying to answer this point
I have both a full EV that can be charged on any standard power plug and a classic gas car. I barely ever use the gas, and only use the EV because of how much cheaper it is. I would’ve expected everyone to do the same, but maybe as you said gas is not expensive enough for most people so they don’t care.
In my country all the electric charge companies made a cartel and they’re selling the electricity at 1000% markup.
Nobody charges at 1 euro per kWh
Because you buy one thinking you’d charge it more often. Maybe it’s slower to charge at home than you anticipated, or maybe it’s just more convenient to go to closest gas station than charging station - also WAY faster.
It’s like when you buy a box of chocolate thinking you’d just eat few pieces
I don’t think it make sense to go to a charging station to charge a PHEV with a 30-80km range.
It’s like going to the gas station to only put 3 liters in the tank.
Yeah maybe not, unless if you can go shop or something while the car is charging
There is a difference. Hybrids pollute less. See the articles sources.
It pollutes less, 20% less than classic cars on average in real life use. That’s barely anything.
That’s apparently when the user doesn’t charge the damn thing. That’s a problem with the user.
There are a lot of possible avenues to cheat.
Obviously, every local law will be different, and What I’m saying below may not apply to certain areas. If auto manufactures are allowed to use labs of their choice for emissions testing, they may be able to engage in lab shopping to find a lab that will give them more favorable test results. If auto makers are required to use a government laboratory, it’s possible that in the process of developing the laws for testing, they’ve managed to work with lawmakers or regulators to ensure the tests are conducted in such a way that they get more favorable results than they would see in a real world scenario.And that’s just tail-pipe emissions. PHEVs have much greater production emissions due to their batteries too.
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hahahahaha
first the plastics recycling, now this
They always only ever lie
Shot: the plug in hybrids are still lower in tailpipe emissions in concrete terms than than the ice vehicles.
Chaser: the plug in hybrids have real world tailpipe emissions that are almost exactly what the ice vehicles are rated at
Morning after: this study doesn’t include the emissions from production of a new car
I own a plug-in hybrid, and wouldn’t really recommend one over full electric. That said, I average around 2.1L/100km.
Really? We have one and love it. What doesn’t work for you with yours?
I don’t have anything that I dislike in particular, I just feel that by trying to be two things, it does both poorly. My main criticism is the massive weight, which is inefficient. You’re either lugging a heavy (quickly emptied) battery around, or a heavy motor and tank of gas that you’re not using (I keep mine at a quarter full for that reason). I’m not saying don’t buy a plug-in hybrid, I’m just saying that I’d recommend going fully electric instead.
That’s kinda the compromise of the PHEV. It’s the best of both worlds…sorta. Yeah, lugging dead weight around compounds ICE fuel usage over the life of the car, but most people do all of their driving within a few miles of home, so even if your “E” part of the PHEV is lugging around a dead gas engine for these trips it’s still far better than running ICE for all these shorter runs. Earlier PHEV had awful battery life, 10-15 miles, but the newer ones are doing much better with ~20 miles or so. That’s way more reasonable. We’ve gone weeks without filling our car with gas, so FWIW over the life of the vehicle I think that makes up for extra battery weight when running gas.
I absolutely agree that PHEV weight, or even regular EV weight, is a serious concern. Disregarding efficiency issues the power output of some EVs is crazy, the mass and torque could be dangerous and potentially deadly.
If one can manage the infrastructure issues with EV charging, and the high price to buy in to a decent one, yeah, pure EV is the way to go.
I agree. The main advantage over an ICE is for small trips. Small trips is also the reason my gas consumption is so low. It’s also the reason I’m about to replace the car completely for a cargo e-bike and public transit ;)
Seems to be a repeat of the misleading (and outright cheating) scam that diesel emissions turned out to be, although presumably not quite as egregious as what VW did. Although perhaps part of the hybrid problem is that people aren’t actually charging them electrically most of the time, but that is also why hybrids are such a pointless half measure (even more than electric cars are a half measure compared to reducing car dependency).
TBH, the most astonishing reveal from the study for me was that Hybrid owners weren’t charging their vehicles. Unfortunately, the why isn’t covered in the study since it seems to just be hard math and statistical analysis.
Are they just not plugging in at night?
Too frustrated with the battery draining too quickly?
Driving too far for the battery to meaningfully contribute between charges?
Is the extra hardware mass making the ICE that much less efficient?
Laziness from having to fill both the battery and the gas tank?
I think this is the real question. From the stats you posted, I’d say that at most 10% of Plugin hybrid owners charge their vehicles.
Which is such a waste of ressources. Why does someone buy a car with 10 kWh battery and never even use it (beyond what the car charges itself)?
Especially given how much more expensive they are than conventional hybrids and the hoops you have to jump through to even grt one in my family’s experience.
The small battery capacity they have also means that any household outlet will charge them fine, so it would be really interesting to see why people are going through all the extra effort to buy one and then not use it.
Plug-in hybrids are relatively new. At least in Europe most newly purchased cars are leasing and company provided cars. These companies probably thought it would be nice green-washing to buy hybrids. They probably also do not have sufficient charging infrastructure at their parking-lots and do not refund their employees for the electricity costs when they charge at home (or rather it is too bureaucratic for the employees to bother with asking for a refund). Which results that these cars are mostly used the same way as regular non-plugin hybrids, which only the relatively modest fuel savings these provide.
Considering the stories I’ve heard from mechanics about people having their car towed in because they ran out of gas I think people don’t realize they need to plug in their plug in hybrid.
A lot of plug-in hybrid owners took the state support to buy an ICE with a smaller gas tank. And it also can drive electric, but nobody does that.
You don’t have to charge a hybrid to get the benefits of the electric motor. It can charge from regenerative braking. That being said, plugging in a PHEV will maximize the benefits of the system vs relying on regenerative braking alone.
EVs only recover about 90% of the energy used I’m braking with regenerative braking. That means they don’t even recover all of the energy needed to slow the car down, which certainly not enough to get the car back up to it’s previous speed.
All this to say:
Regenerative braking doesn’t add significant miles to your driving range.
So relying solely on regenerative braking isn’t going to have any meaningful impact on driving range.
I think you should re-read your source. as it says this…
These small boosts in battery range can accumulate and improve efficiency over time when used regularly.
And your quote is out of context.
Regenerative braking doesn’t add significant miles to your driving range. Still, those gains in recaptured energy can really add up when used liberally and regularly.
Consider that most fuel economy is lost when the car is accelerating, having a system that captures 90% of the heat every lost to braking, which can then be used to get the car moving again, would be a huge benefit. That’s why regenerative braking can’t extend range, it instead reduces the impact stopping and starting have on the range of the vehicle.
You aren’t getting the full benefits of a plugin hybrid electric motor if you’re relying on regenerative braking. My source clearly explains this.
You get small efficiency gains that add up over time, but you certainly aren’t seeing a meaningful extension in range over a single trip, and you certainly aren’t seeing the benefits of a plug in electric motor if you rely on regenerative braking. In fact, this was one of the main points made in the OP; phev drivers rely on the ICE and thus don’t achieve the emissions benefits that should come with a phev.
phev drivers rely on the ICE and thus don’t achieve the emissions benefits that should come with a phev.
This is true, but the assumption that this means that Hybrids are less efficient than their ICE-only counterparts and have detrimental effects on CO2 emissions is not. The article fails to put into plain numbers the expected CO2 emissions of each vehicle type, and their actual CO2 emissions. A lot of those PHEVs are advertised as having 0 emissions most of the time because you can use the electric only option. Even if people don’t take advantage of that by plugging in the vehicle, the hybrid system is still more efficient (except for some extreme long distance, non-stop scenarios) than a comparable ICE only car. The article does not tell us that hybrids are less efficient than ICE only cars, it tells us that our current methods for testing, advertising and accounting for C02 emissions for PHEVs are not matching real world data. This isn’t actually a new problem, discrepancies with lab data and real world driving data have existed ever since we started testing the fuel economy of cars.
8 billion people. Every product made creates emissions. So the question here isn’t whether fewer cars will lower emissions, but whether whatever replaces them will cover the needs of 8 billion people without increasing emissions as much as cars do or more.
We created that thing already. Its called actvive transport and transit. Walking and cycling are nearly emissions free. Transit is still far more effecient than private cars. We just need to build a society that prioritizes these as much or more than cars.
The change has helped the areas in which it was implemented. However, in part, it has also shifted the traffic into other areas instead. It does work, but not fully. To change society and pursue it wholeheartedly, profit must be removed as an incentive or at least make it inconsequential. Otherwise this consumption/production treadmill will never stop speeding up until it breaks.
I remember being so disappointed in “plug in hybrids” when I saw the range on electric they had. For me my work commute I’d almost get noth8ng from the electric side of.
Hydrogen car, when?
Stop this. There is no car that will fix it. We need to stop depending on cars entirely. They are inherently MASSIVELY inefficient by their very nature. You cannot magic away the inherent inefficiency of literal tons of metal being used to move 1 person.
neigh.
Fusion powered car then
You’re missing the point. The issue is that fundamentally, 2-7 ton metal boxes take up too much space to ever be able to efficiently transport people inside a city, and cost so much money that people almost always go into debt to even be able to get one. Car dependency is the issue. Not the particulars of how that car works.
2-7kg personal vehicles are optimal efficiency, 20-70kg personal vehicles allow for everyone to do anything (okay some of the larger electric wheelchairs blow past 70kg pretty easily, but allow me some artistic licence).
Even busses aren’t amazing on vehicle weight per person: 16,000kg for 50 people is 320kg per person. Good suburban trains bring that back down to 230kg per person.
So for cars to be viable your 5 seater needs to be 1600kg max. And one needs to actually use those seats.
Maybe, but even after that there is a human component, people make mistakes and need time to react and need traffic lights and such. That’s why buses are still more efficient, you only need 1 human driving and reacting which controls the whole bus rather than 10 (50 / 5) who all need to individually react.
I was intending it as an indication that individual cars are hard to justify.
Additionally cars have inefficiencies around parking (time/energy spent doing it, space required) that PT doesn’t.
They are only a good solution when ignoring/socialising so many of the costs and prioritising things that are really not important (or from a lack of imagination of what else is possible)
Pay better then?
Already exists. Extracting hydrogen is (currently) incredibly energy intensive.
Hydrogen makes no sense in personal transportation. It’s too dangerous and inefficient.
Removed by mod
Maybe the author of this comment would think twice about threatening someone if he/she was banned from this community for some time
wtf
We’re living in increasingly desperate times, friend. Enemies of mankind is a good description for people who astroturf against renewables and fuel efficiency.
While I agree with your position, I can’t agree with your violent rhetoric. A lot more needs to be done to combat climate change and misinformation. Taking literal pounds of flesh would change something but not the climate just us.
The article was written by the Directorate-General for Climate Action of the EU, idiot.
Reporting science is never wrong, go back to your extremist anti-science buddies and complain to them.
