[Closed] Recommend me a plug in hybrid please

Is this still a thing??

Whats your budget ?

Don't bother with the mini countryman PHEV. I've got one as a company car for tax reasons. Woeful electric range, no where near the 25 miles it's supposed to do especially if it is cold. Tiny fuel tank for the rest of the time so have to fill up fairly regularly. Plus points are it's 4 wheel drive and fairly quick. Reasonably comfortable for 4 but batteries take up some boot space.

Whats your budget ?

£8K, i did mean to put that in, thanks for the reminder.

We are in the US and just got the Mini as a second car and it seems great so far.
It’s a bit of fun but probably compromised for most people though.
Still will do more miles on a tiny tank than my Wrangler.

Also out of budget. I guess the Toyota’s and Mitsubishi are the ones most available?

Golf GTE is ace, and works well as a short range EV - won’t fire up the engine unless you press the accelerator hard enough for the kickdown switch. Boot is small but can have roofbars and/or towbar for bikes and stuff.

Or Outlander PHEV but get gx4 spec or higher so you get the electric heater - means you can preheat and keep warm without needing to run the engine. Very 90s Japanese interior though and floaty SUV handling.

Very impressed with our new Kuga PHEV (now we've been assured it won't catch fire). Over budget though.

Looking on Autotrader, almost all PHEVs are overbudget though.

£8K, i did mean to put that in, thanks for the reminder

A quick national search on auto trader suggests your options are vauxhall ampera or Toyota Prius.

I'd go Prius.

HOWEVER, at those sort of ages I'd be dubious about battery condition and whether it was actually a wise purchase or not. I'd be tempted more towards a small petrol engine car.

£8k sounds an iffy price point for a hybrid. The latest crop of small petrol engines are excellent.

We’ve owned a 1.0 litre, three cylinder Focus since it was a few months old. I have to say, it’s been brilliant. I love driving it. It’s just gets on with it, no fuss, not drama. The turbo gives it just enough kick off the line for pulling in to traffic. It’s on 40k now but it still drives like it did when we first had it. £20 a year tax. 40+ mpg everywhere.

We were shopping for a new family car recently & were ready to press the button on a PHEV but anything decent is hit by the >£40k tax, ramping the road fund license up to £500 a year for the first 5 years. I thought there might be a concession for PHEV’s but no.
We ordered a “normal” model. 🙁

In my opinion plug in hybrids are the worst of both worlds, lots of extra hardware (with associated cost and environmental considerations) with marginal gains. As others have said your budget is only going to get a fairly old PHEV with dubious battery capacity and old tech. Unfortunately electric in all its forms are still very expensive. We bought a brand new mid range Fist 500 yesterday for £13k, the electric version is closer to £26k and it's still a tiny car.

I disagree with this. If your usage is a short commute most days then you could easily run in electricity all the time just like with a full EV and you have no range issues in long trips. This would be the best of both worlds, not the worst. My neighbours have an Outlander and rarely put petrol in it.

Of course if you have a 50 mile trip each day it's not so great.

I recently handed back my BMW 225xe after 3 years. Imagine that some must be available as used by now. MPV styling. Roof rails. Boot same size as normal engine variants. If local driving is short distance and you don’t mind plugging in every time car is on the drive then it’s a very nice car. Also is 4wd and accelerates like a bat out of hell.
PHEVs work well for me. New lease car is a Volvo XC40 t5 recharge phev. Lovely car but expensive if not leased.
My commute is 50miles round trip. Save the battery for stop start sections of journey and use petrol on the motorway. On the new car I can program the whole journey into the satnav which then works out how to spread the use of battery power over whole of journey. Very clever system.
My main worry with getting an older used phev would be the health of the battery. I was sure that the BMW’s battery capacity and range was less after 3 years.

May be worth looking at lease options. Due to the high residuals on posh brands, the monthly lease costs can be really good value.

Op, I’m in a similar position with a 13yo Kuga diesel. A PHEV SUV would be perfect as we do school runs in the week, but biking trips at weekends - but prices are high. We are playing the bangernomics game until full electric range/price/2nd hand market gets reasonable. If the Kuga dies suddenly we’ll go for a short lease.

Golf GTE is good but has its issues (I have one).
Oil changes are really frequent, dag needs regular oil changes and the hybrid gearbox puts the dsg filter against a bulk head so it can't be removed without taking gearbox out.
Plus golfs are not as well built as you would expect.
Full charge says 30 expect low 20's if using heater.
GTE mode is halariously fun 30-60 is addictive but expect low 30s mpg when playing.

Having said all that I love mine, got a 13 mile commute 2/3 of way there in hybrid mode for morning heating, home on pure ev average is +100mpg.

Our mileage scheme in work has changed which means you have to have a car under 50g/km in order to claim any mileage for business use. There’s a grace period for the next 2 yrs but if you change your car after 31st may you can’t register a car over 120g/km and claim mileage at all from the 1st June!

The alternative is booking a hire car whenever I need to travel which can be short distances at short notice and sporadically.

We have a 4wd Skoda kodiaq with tow bar and bike rack, use it for its 7 seat ability for the kids and cavernous space and ability to tow my trailer on the road and in the woods. It replaced a golf estate and Ford ranger.

I’d be quite happy to go electric at some point but I don’t see the markets developed enough yet. I’m going to get the same again and end up using my old camper van for work trips despite it being slower and less economical (polluting).

Luckily I can walk to work, borrow a pool car for some work journeys post COVID if there is one, walk to get kids from school etc. Car is mainly used for hobbies and transporting kids about and for visits to in-laws and parents at different ends of the country to us.

I feel we’re on the cusp of some sort of revolution in electric motoring but all the tools aren’t there or mainstream enough yet.

Thanks for all your replies, plenty of food for thought among them.

I had the Golf GTE before I went full EV, tremendous little car. Real electric range for me was around 26 miles. The long term average on its return was mid 70mpg

Boot became a pain, a small shop filled it, it took some cunning packing to get the wife and daughters cricket gear in.

Tremendous fun in GTE mode.

You’ll not find one for £8k though you’ll be after early PHEVs for that.

My neighbours have an Outlander and rarely put petrol in it.

So they're using a lot of power dragging around a sizeable car and its ICE that's not needed? My last company car was an Outlander. It didn't take long for the battery to drop on a 50 mile each way commute.

So they’re using a lot of power dragging around a sizeable car and its ICE that’s not needed?

Yes, I'm not saying it's a good car - just that PHEV as a concept can make sense.

So they’re using a lot of power dragging around a sizeable car and its ICE that’s not needed?

Yeah, but it is stopping them from having two cars.

Another Golf GTE here - we got it used a few years ago now. I like it as others have said, for our use pattern it makes sense. Lots of local stuff all on electric, occasional longer stuff which uses the ICE.

I don't know what our effective MPG is on it - most of the time we barely touch the ICE, when we do the mpg is not great which I suppose is the trade off as you have a heavy battery as ballast.

it doesn't smell too good but that's because I spilled a tub of double cream in the boot and never cleaned it properly....

I'll forget the budget to start with.
We have a Passat GTE (it's mine really as the MrsG hast drive it since we got it in Dec). I really like it and manage 90% local miles on EV. Longer journeys on fuel and managing high 60s mpg overall. Massive boot being the estate version. You lose some boot height due to the fuel tank being pushed back with the battery under the rear seats. But the area of the boot is arguably more practical anyway.

Your budget - 8k
You will really struggle to get anything PHEV for that within a sensible condition. A regular hybrid maybe but something with a more modern petrol engine would be far more suitable. Even a 2lt engine can be driven economically if you need the power for occasional load lugging. I looked but may have missed what sort of car you are looking for?

I'm similar to OP and like the look of a second hand GTE vmuch

But then you look a the other thread there "EV home charging point advice" and you realize you have to pay 600 quid for a charger plus all the different tariffs plus different apps etc etc .... and my mind gets blown.

As much as there is a strong appeal to not having to go to a petrol station, I do not want to be faffing with phone apps !! ... I understand there are lots who love all the stats and tech, but I just wanna have a quiet, clean, cheap (day to day) car.

One or two Ioniq PHEVs available for not too far over that price on Autotrader, but they are high mileage. Rumour has it that at least with EVs Hyundai are very conservative with their battery rating so they seem to go a long time without appearing to have degradation.

Ro5ey - you are only really likely to need a suitable outdoor three pin socket for a Hybrid as they do not generally fast charge.
You can save the EV charging until you get a full on EV in the future and the technology will have probably improved by then.

As above, there is no need for loads of apps and fancy tarrifs with a phev. Just plug in to a good quality well installed 3 pin socket and make good use of the in car timer for charging and preheating. It's actually very simple. I installed a pile of apps prior to getting my car nut have since uninstalled as they are a waste of time with such a small battery. I haven't charged away from home and dont intend to.

Yes the point about a PHEV is that you don't need to use chargers on the road - just drive as normal.

That's great to know, thanks gents

The Ampera is an awesome car. If you can get one in good condition with a full service history for 8k I'd be tempted. It's over engineered to the hilt and way ahead of its time. Its also one of the few phevs that is actually designed to do what people expect a phev to do - I.e it's actually a range extender.

I don’t know what our effective MPG is on it – most of the time we barely touch the ICE, when we do the mpg is not great which I suppose is the trade off as you have a heavy battery as ballast.

You should still get good mpg unless it’s in recharge mode that hammers it.

Yeah that was what I thought but only seems to do 40mpg or so even in normal hybrid mode. Could be the reading is off, never bothered checking it.

BMW 330e here.

No PHEV really truly does many miles to make journeys fully electric. Mine may do 15 miles, maybe 20 if you drive very very very carefully and live in a flat area etc.

I just love the bonkers overall performance of the car.

A lot of PHEV’s were designed to beat company car tax and nothing else.

Apparently now 5yrs old and 54k miles it’s worth £13k which is a lot of car for the money.

No PHEV really truly does many miles to make journeys fully electric. Mine may do 15 miles, maybe 20 if you drive very very very carefully and live in a flat area etc.

I have an A250e. I regularly get 30-40 miles on electric only. Great bit of kit.

So they’re using a lot of power dragging around a sizeable car and its ICE that’s not needed?

Apparently Toyota use this argument. You putting a huge battery in an EV car is a waste as most cars do short journeys. So why not split the battery between lots of plug in hybrids. That way the total number of miles being driven on a battery is massively increased

I realy dont get the negativity about plug in hybrids. It seems to be the logical solution from current experience with one. We all have them as company cars and tbh the feedback ranges from disaster to amazing.

I have done 4000mls since 1st march. 75% of them have been electric even though my car only has a 30mls electric range (Which i get). Some days i will use the 30mls, plug it in when i get home and later that day quite easily get another 20 mls out of it. Most days the 30mls is ample for my use.

When i am going on a long journey the hybrid mode assists the diesel engine which by itself gets about 60mpg but with the electric assistance gets it up to about 80mpg on long journeies.

I really dont see a downside. I dont have the issue of the electric running out. I get most of my running on Electric and when i want to go a long way i am pretty much guarenteed 80mpg. When i want some fun i am also in control of 300bhp 🙂

I realy dont get the negativity about plug in hybrids. It seems to be the logical solution from current experience with one. We all have them as company cars and tbh the feedback ranges from disaster to amazing.

I think from my experience (based on where I live) I would want a PHEV to have approx 80 real world electric range.

At that point you need a battery that is heavy and you are defeating the benefit of either system.

FunkyDunk - Are you doing 80 mile round trips regular. If so of course thats what you would want. I do 9mls each way to work. A colleague does 2 mls each way. I would say most of the staff range from 10-15mls each way which means these cars make sense. Wont make sense to everyone though, thats a given

Why couldn't you drive to work on electricity and home on petrol? You're still using half the petrol aren't you?