@Will That’s surely costing you a lot more than running a petrol car would, just on running costs alone, even before allowing for the higher AP that PHEVs command?
I agree, given he could charge it for approx 85p by switching to ovo’s ev tariff!
I also struggle with the logic of getting a very heavy car with a combined BHP of around 300 and then running that very heavy car on a weedy 100 bhp (or whatever) electric motor. Surely PHEVs are designed to run with both the petrol engines and electric motors working together? If you want to run a car on 100% electric, isn’t it far more sensible to get a full BEV, then at least you have access to the full BHP?
You really don’t know what you’re talking about, i’m not sure why basically every single thread about PHEV efficiency and running costs etc gets derailed by absolute nonsense claims like yours.
For starters, very heavy car? You do realise that his PHEV 308 SW weighs less than the average petrol X1? And that those “weedy 100bhp” have around 400nm torque? We have 110hp-ish in EV mode, 400nm. That’s twice the torque from standstill than the average petrol X1 has in its torqueband. So yes, EV only in a PHEV gets asthmatic above 50ish miles an hour, but at those speeds you’re likely to run the petrol engine anyway. On the light, up to 30-35mph, you need at least 200hp to keep up with my “weedy” 110hp in EV only.
PHEVs are designed to run either. Very much obvious if you’d have driven one, or at the least read into how things work. For starters, the only point in time where both motors work together is under (heavy) acceleration. On part throttle, it’s one or the other depending on the mode you’re in. At 60mph on a carriage way, i drive petrol only until i put my foot past three quarters throttle, where the electric motor boosts then.
It’s also not really “sensible to get a full EV for full BHP”, you don’t need 300bhp all the time. That’s just an absolute asinine argument. If he’s poodling around in London traffic, sitting there with a 1200hp Rimac is no different to his 308 SW, like, what’s your point?
On the topic itself, after now around 4300 miles, we have a pretty good grasp on what our GTE can and cannot do.
For reference, we paid £3250 AP (we paid some more than that, but that’s for options that we’d have spec’d in any car like wheels etc). Since we received it in february, as mentioned, we drove it 4300 miles, in those 4300 miles we paid exactly £210 in petrol for four refuels (Super only). We used 1066kw of electricity through our charger, how much we paid there is hard to say since our tariff changed in summer this year (price went up slightly) – but if we assume that all charging was done on the slightly more expensive tariff (from february to june we paid 5p, now 7.5p per kwh – the math is for 7.5p over the entire timeline), we’re at exactly £79.95. That makes less than £300 for 4300 miles.
This was our screen for “Since refuel” before refill last time.
On that tank of Super, we drove 1423 miles (with 25% petrol left), with 14.7kwh/100km (which translates to 4.2 miles per kwh), for an average of 214mpg. And i don’t drive slow – always speed limit. In national speed limits 60/70 depending on the kind of road.
I don’t think i need to do the math for anything comparable (around 250hp) petrol to know that we’re better off even if you take bigger AP into account.
In fact, if we take a currently available Golf as example, the R-Line eTSI is £2549 (a de-tuned GTE drivetrain). The R-Line 2.0 TDI is £2499, makes no difference. The much weaker R-Line 1.5 TSI is £1799.
These outlandish numbers aren’t for all PHEVs, a PHEV Golf is the same price as a Diesel Golf, and there’s nothing the Diesel Golf beats the PHEV in. On petrol only, a drive to Bristol (around 200 miles roundtrip) we got home with an average of 82mpg (half the trip with 2 persons, the other half with 4 + luggage). A 2.0 TDI doesn’t return much more, so even for long(er) distance it doesn’t make sense.
In general.. If someone opens a thread about experiences with their PHEVs, could we just stick to the topic and not turn it into some kind of pssing contest by yet another person who doesn’t like PHEV/EV?
Prior: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19, VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY23
Current: Hyundai Ioniq 6 Ultimate
Next: we'll see what's available in 2028.