Based on their manufacturers’ claims about their fuel efficiency, the UK’s best-selling PHEVs should cost, on average, around £530 a year for petrol and electricity
Warning for plug-in hybrid drivers after being misled by car firms
Drivers of UK’s top-selling plug-in hybrid vehicles are likely to be spending almost twice as much money to fuel their cars than their manufacturers have led them to believe, it has been warned.
Based on their manufacturers’ claims about their fuel efficiency, the UK’s best-selling PHEVs should cost, on average, around £530 a year for petrol and electricity. But based on research by Transport & Environment which has found that PHEVs consume 490% as much fuel as their manufacturers claim.
Colin Walker, Transport Analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: “This increasingly looks like a scandal with echoes of ‘dieselgate’. The industry’s successful lobbying of government will encourage the sale of hybrids and keep the nation’s driving bills high.”
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Even when driven in electric mode, PHEVs emit 68gCO₂/km as their electric motors have insufficient power and the combustion engine needs to kick in. The engine supplies power for almost one-third of the distance travelled in electric mode. This would mean an extra €250 in petrol costs every year, as drivers don’t expect to pay for fuel when driving in electric mode.
Walker said: “Expanding the pool of hybrids on the road will leave the second hand market, where most of us buy our cars, awash with vehicles that are much more expensive to run and own than EVs.
“Some families will be left simply unable to make the switch to cheaper and cleaner electric driving.
“Drivers already pay a ‘petrol premium’ of hundreds, even thousands, of pounds year to run a petrol car rather than an EV, but it’s clear the premium to drive a plug-in hybrid is almost as high.“Even with the introduction of a 3p a mile tax on EVs, they will remain cheaper to own and drive.
“But with the prospect of more families and businesses left paying more to drive hybrids than EVs, that’s a real knock to the nation’s productivity.
“We’re spending more to drive than we need to and so less in other parts of the economy.”
