Vic,

Keep your petrol car, you know it makes sense.

My current 9 year old Dacia Sandero Diesel has more than recovered it’s initial cost against the petrol version. Much more so since it qualifies for £0 pa road tax.

i would like my next vehicle to be a diesel PHEV, but the only ones available are double the price I’m interested in. A ‘mild’ hybrid wouldn’t get better economy and emissions that my current wheels so I’ll wait a bit more. For our normal weekly milage, I could charge a PHEV from my solar panels at an equivalent of £0.14/kWh, equivalent to about £0.05 per mile.

Vic

Thanks. It is decades since I have read any car magazines. It used to be Motor, Motor Sport and Autocar.

JA

One of the current problems of imbalance of price and performance is the lack of small hybrids and electrics as things are still aimed at the affluent BMW driver. Where is the equivalent of the original Mini, Beetle, Fiesta? (admit I haven’t looked for them) Also all are aimed at urban driving of 5-10 miles to friends relatives and shops before needing to use the IC engine. The country dweller needs a 50 mile round trip to get to the main market town and hospital.

On 18 August 2024 at 13:48 Bazyle Said:

One of the current problems of imbalance of price and performance is the lack of small hybrids and electrics as things are still aimed at the affluent BMW driver. Where is the equivalent of the original Mini, Beetle, Fiesta? (admit I haven’t looked for them) Also all are aimed at urban driving of 5-10 miles to friends relatives and shops before needing to use the IC engine. The country dweller needs a 50 mile round trip to get to the main market town and hospital.

Electric mini will do about 200miles per charge. Similar for Fiat 500

On 17 August 2024 at 17:37 Bo’sun Said:

Vic,

Keep your petrol car, you know it makes sense.

Or, engage brain and have a think about advantages and disadvantages!   Like any other form of transport, Hybrids are a mix of pros and cons.

Having to commute across a city taking a hard line on emissions control is a good reason for considering Hybrid! It’s because petrol and diesel cease to be the cheaper options once an administration applies ‘polluter pays’ principles.

Someone who does a lot of short-range journeys plus a few regular long trips will find running a hybrid cheaper than petrol.  As will anyone who does mixed cycle motoring – stop/start through towns followed by bursts of long-range cruising at sensible speeds.

Most UK domestic motoring needs could be met by pure electric cars.  Hybrids fill a useful gap.   Only a minority of UK motorists require long-range capability, and most of them are salesmen.

I am of course against caravans.  Badly driven rolling road-blocks who presumably travel in convoys just in case the locals decide to scrag them!

🙂

Dave

On 18 August 2024 at 15:56 JA Said:

Because they are heavier, do electric cars do more damage to the roads? I am thinking about pot-holes.

JA

Just for fun, I looked up the road-weights of a Vauxhall Corsa e and a Corsa 1.2 petrol.    The petrol car is 6kg heavier than the electric…

Dave

An interesting posting, from the driven-io ev news site, indicates Norway will be all EV sooner than most.  Here is an excerpt from it:

This July, full battery electric vehicles (BEVs) made up 91.9% of all newly registered vehicles, up from 81.7% in July 2023.

Hybrids and plug-in hybrids together made up another 4.8%, albeit down from 14% last year. PHEVs have lost considerable market share in Norway because, as reported by Cleantechnica, a registration tax exemption given for the additional weight of the electric drivetrain was removed in January 2024. PHEV sales have been declining ever since.

July was the lowest month I can recall for non-hybridised petrol car sales. Only 45 new vehicles were registered.

Those numbers are quite staggering, compared to the UK.  Maybe they have fewer EV haters making false claims (such as road wear, tyre wear, etc) than here in the UK.

The future is some form of hire, where all the costs are paid on a monthly basis.  There are too few people able to afford the higher costs of buying and future ownership costs.  Alright costs may reduce with future technology advancements but it makes little sense to keep building more roads to carry one person per car a few miles to work or shopping.  We already have people working from home and shopping online so why have an expensive mode of transport for one person.  The future will have to be different.

On 19 August 2024 at 10:51 Vic Said:

On 19 August 2024 at 06:06 not done it yet Said:

An interesting posting, from the driven-io ev news site, indicates Norway will be all EV sooner than most.  Here is an excerpt from it:

This July, full battery electric vehicles (BEVs) made up 91.9% of all newly registered vehicles, up from 81.7% in July 2023.

Hybrids and plug-in hybrids together made up another 4.8%, albeit down from 14% last year. PHEVs have lost considerable market share in Norway because, as reported by Cleantechnica, a registration tax exemption given for the additional weight of the electric drivetrain was removed in January 2024. PHEV sales have been declining ever since.

July was the lowest month I can recall for non-hybridised petrol car sales. Only 45 new vehicles were registered.

Those numbers are quite staggering, compared to the UK.  Maybe they have fewer EV haters making false claims (such as road wear, tyre wear, etc) than here in the UK.

Some countries seem more forward thinking than others. If the Norwegians want cleaner air and can afford to be early adopters of relatively expensive technology then it’s an obvious choice to buy a BEV? I believe much of their electricity is produced by Hydro but I don’t know if this results in cheaper bills. If it does then that’s another good reason.
What I find somewhat surprising is the number of people that say BEV’s don’t work very well in cold conditions, and here we are with the Norwegians and apparently the Swedes and Danes buying them in large quantities? They seem to be dealing quite well with any deficiencies.

Back to Hybrids. I saw this on the Kia website. One probably small disadvantage not mentioned is that they are also the most likely type of car to catch fire according to statistics from insurance companies.

Have you got a link to that Vic?
Is it current? I could not find it and Kia sell hybrids.
The term “hybrid” is not well defined. It varies from “mild” like the early Fiat 500 hybrids where basically the alternator and starter are replaced by a single starter generator that provides little more than improved stop-start to cars that can drive several miles on electric only. The “less power” claim is clearly wrong for anything other than the most mild hybrid. As the electric motor and ICE can run together you clearly get more power than the ICE alone. Some large hybrids e.g. some of the Lexus models use the electric system to improve perfomance, particuarly acceleration from low speeds.

Robert.