Part 4 – Running Costs & PHEV experience
To start with charging, that’s very easy. I always plug the car in via the supplied 3 pin granny charger after every time that I’ve used the car. The charger is set at a default charge rate of 6amps, but I have adjusted it to 10amps (you can vary it via a control box on the lead), so a full charge from zero EV range to the maximum 38/39 miles takes around 6 hours. It’s quite safe to leave it charging overnight as it switches itself off when fully charged. The Bluelink app alerts you when the charge is complete, or you can monitor charging progress via the app or by opening the car door, which causes remaining charge time, and current charging speed, to be displayed in the instrument cluster.
I must stress that I am only 1,000 miles in to PHEV ownership, so am still learning, but having experimented with the different driving modes over identical journeys, I’m fairly confident that I now know the differences between the modes. What follows is based upon the Tucson PHEV only. Other PHEVs will no doubt behave differently.
It’s important to remember that the mpg as expressed on the cars fuel computers is utterly false, as it does not take any account whatsoever of the cost of charging, so you might as well ignore them as they are wildly overstated. They would only ever be accurate if you never charged the car at all. The best thing to do is to work out the total running costs (charging costs plus petrol costs) and divide that combined total by the miles driven to give a pence per mile cost. You can then divide that total pence per mile in to the cost of a gallon of petrol to give a true equivalent mpg (had all that expenditure been on petrol). This seems to be the only way to make a true cost comparison with running an ICE car, or self charging hybrid, so it’s what I’m doing.
The Tucson has 3 different drive modes (plus a ‘Sport’ mode) – Automatic, HEV (hybrid) and EV;
EV Mode – When fully charged, the battery has a claimed range of 38 or 39 miles. In reality, this is more like 35 / 36 miles, but still pretty good. I don’t know yet how much this will drop in winter. Some BEVs range can drop by as much as 30% in the winter, whereas the worst I’ve noticed in previous petrol or diesel cars is around a 10% drop in winter, so time will tell. I charge the car after each time I use it, so I always leave home with a full charge. The 38/39 miles has usually dropped to 35 miles after the first mile or so, but then becomes more steady. Our ‘local’ journeys are 25-30 mile round trips, and I can comfortably do those journeys 100% in EV mode. My electric costs are much more than those with smart meters and low overnight tariffs, so a full charge from the reserve 15% (that the car never goes below) to 100% costs me £2.60. Assuming that £2.60 buys me 35 miles, that’s 7.43p per mile, which equates to 79 mpg (when using the above method). Thats almost double the mpg that I was getting in the BMW, so I’m happy with that.
Automatic Mode – When I’m going on a round trip journey that is over the range of the battery this is the mode that I mostly use. In this mode, I find that the car runs mostly in EV mode when it can, but when about 10 miles of battery range has been depleted it will start to utilise the petrol engine at times. When it does, the car goes mostly into ‘charging mode’ which does two things. The engine both propels the car and recharges the battery. When in charging mode, instant mpg plummets to about 20mpg. Now whilst that sounds dreadful (and it is), it’s important to remember that it’s not the whole picture, as that 20mpg is also ‘buying’ you some more EV driving time. I haven’t been able to calculate whether it’s a 1 for 1 situation (where 1 mile in charging mode also buys you 1 mile in EV mode) but, even if it does, that’s still only 40mpg, which isn’t brilliant (our petrol BMW could happily deliver 50mpg at a sedate motorway cruise). The trick with this mode is to let it do what it wants to on the outward journey, but on the return journey keep an eye on the distance left to travel versus the battery range left, and ensure that you have depleted all of that (cheaper) battery range by the time you get home. The trick with a PHEV is never to arrive back home from longer journeys with unused EV range.
To give a real world example of this, I do a 58 mile round trip most weeks. On the outward journey the car is in Automatic mode. Once around 10 miles of EV range has been used the petrol engine might kick in, charge the battery to get the EV range back up a few miles and then it goes back into EV mode. For the last few miles of the outward journey (once I leave the motorway), if the car doesn’t do it automatically, I switch it into EV mode. The car may still have around 25 miles EV range remaining when I get to my destination. On the return journey, as I might have 25 miles EV range remaining and only 29 miles to get home, I will switch the car into EV mode so that I use up all those 25 miles. Once they are used up the car goes in to inefficient HEV mode, but the last few miles are on B roads where the 15-20% ‘reserve’ that the battery always retains allows the car to switch back to EV mode for much of it.
HEV Mode – This works the same as a self charging hybrid, but is the least fuel efficient mode to use in the Tucson PHEV. The car will spend a lot of time in the thirsty charging mode and if you are cruising on a motorway it wants to keep charging the battery back up to full, when you want to deplete it. Whilst the car will default to this mode when the battery is depleted, having tried this mode I now won’t actively select it. To do so would cost me more to run than our previous BMW, which makes no sense.
So, having explained how I use the car, what does that all add up to? Well, using my previously stated methodology, and across 1,000 miles comprised of local and longer journeys, I am currently averaging around 50mpg ICE equivalent (the fuel computer says around 80mpg but, as explained, that’s nonsense). Thats 8mpg better than our petrol BMW. Hopefully this will improve over time. Different people will get wildly different economy figures depending on how they use their cars. Someone who only ever does journeys that are within the EV only range, especially if they have a low charging tariff, may easily achieve an mpg equivalent of over 100mpg. Those who do a lot of longer journeys will need to carefully do the maths. Keep in mind that my average 50mpg includes quite a bit of driving at 79 mpg equivalent EV driving, so miles driven on the petrol engine are more costly than our previous petrol car. Two obvious reasons for this. A petrol (or diesel) car is lighter (no heavy battery to cart around) and the engine is only propelling the car and not charging a battery at the same time.
In conclusion, we are very happy with our choice of the Tucson Ultimate, but the jury is still out on whether the faff of having to charge it after every use is a fair trade off for what is, at present, a fairly modest improvement in running costs. As I have said, those who do mostly shorter journeys and have cheaper electricity than me could make some big savings, whereas anyone daft enough to get a PHEV but rarely, if ever, charge it will probably regret their decision, as it could easily cost more to run than an efficient ICE car. Everyone needs to do the maths based on their driving patterns and the AP cost versus alternatives.
I hope that anyone considering a Tucson finds all of the above useful, but I’m happy to answer any questions.