Hybrid vs Plug-In Hybrid vs Max Hybrid vs Electric vs Gas | What’s the Difference?
Hey guys, Steve Welch here. So, with more and more of the vehicles that uh that really everybody’s producing, especially Toyota, coming out as hybrid or in some kind of electrified version, and I’ll kind of define that here in a little bit. Um, there’s a lot of people that have questions about what this means. What What am I buying? I I don’t want this. I don’t want that. I do want this. I do want that. How do I tell what the difference is in in an in an easy way? All right. Um there’s there’s a pretty easy answer there. So, there are some vehicles and and we’re we’re I I’m going to kind of gear it towards Toyota because uh I got some some literature about that that could help us. But there are some vehicles that are only produced in hybrid like this Camry behind me. All right. The Camry is only produced in hybrid as of 2025. the Seoia. Well, the Seoia is a hybrid max system that is shared with the Tundra, but the Seoia doesn’t have a non-hybrid system, but that hybrid system is not built for economy. It’s built for power. So, you’ve got a hybrid system that’s not really a hybrid system, right? And then you’ll get something like this Grand Highlander behind me, right? Well, you could have a hybrid, a non-hybrid, or you can have a hybrid max. And you’re going, “All right, I I don’t know what what’s what I I don’t know the difference. What what am you know h how do I know what I want?” Right? And what you want is really based off of your your needs, of course, but you kind of have to know what you’re looking at. So, I’m going to try to help you with this. So, at least in the Toyota realm, right? some there. There’s just a regular combustion engine, no electricity to it, you know, just just a regular regular vehicle, right? So, you’re going, “Okay, I want a a regular gas RAV 4, right? We’re in 2025 here, so they’re still offering the RAV 4 in gas, but they’ll be hybrid or plug-in hybrid only going forward, right? But for now, right, at least for right now, that’s kind of gonna give you my my little help here. This one right here is a non-hybrid, right? One behind me is a hybrid. And you’re going, well, they they look identical, right? This white one, it’s a non-hybrid. Well, that that that’s identical, too. So, what how tell tell me what’s going on. Right. Hybrids. Now, what Toyota started to do is they’ve started to add this little thing that says HEV on the bottom here, right? So, if you see HEV, well, what’s what’s HEV? Is that So, it stands for hybrid electric vehicle, right? Well, the problem that you have with calling it a hybrid electric vehicle is that now that becomes even more confusing to a lot of people because hybrid electric makes people think, well, you know, there’s a lot of people out there that don’t want electric cars. They don’t want to have to plug in their car, anything like that. So, people go, “Oh, it’s a hybrid. It’s an electric vehicle. I don’t I don’t want that one. I I want I want one of the ones I don’t have to plug in. I don’t have to wire my house up. I want one. I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t want this hybrid electric vehicle because you have to plug it in.” You don’t. This is a regular hybrid. So, a hybrid uses a combination of the gas engine and a battery with a there’s a motor generator one, motor generator 2. There there’s a whole bunch of stuff that you can get into technical tech technical, but you you’re using a gas engine to help an electric engine in slow speeds and an electric engine to help the gas engine at high speeds. You never have to plug it in. When you slow down, it uses something called kinetic braking. It grabs back energy while you’re slowing down. So, it it grabs some of that energy back if if it can get you about 40 miles a gallon, right? Whereas, depending if you have an all-wheel drive or not, like this one right here gets you about 33. So, this one’s all-wheel drive, right? Southwest. This one’s all-wheel drive. It’ll get you a little bit better fuel economy by about 7 miles a gallon over the all-wheel drive version over here. So, this one’s also got more power. Sometimes people think it’s got less power. This one’s actually got more power. It’s got 219 horsepower as opposed to 203. So the point is is a lot of the nomenclature that’s coming out is meant to grab some of those people in my opinion. Grab some of those people that were looking for an electric car and go hybrid electric. It’s electric car and get you electric car. It’s it’s it uses electricity to assist the gas. That’s really the best way to put it. Hybrid uses electricity, assist gas, get you a little bit better fuel economy in this version. Right now, you’ve got a plug-in version, which I don’t have one on the ground right now, but you got a plug-in version of this, you got a plug-in version of a Prius, and it instead of HEV here, it’ll say P HEV, which stands for plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Well, there’s a lot of people go, “Yeah, well, I don’t want an only electric vehicle. I want one that takes gas.” Well, the plug-in electric vehicle takes gas, too. The thing is though is that you can plug it in and depending on the vehicle usually gets somewhere around 80 miles an hour, somewhere around 40 miles on just electricity. The the electric motor in that one has enough capability to run the vehicle and and that’s that’s great. A little bit more horsepower. Usually get around 300 horsepower, stuff like that, too. So, actually 302, I believe, is what it is. Um, don’t quote me on that. That might be 306, but it’s it’s 30 something. So, you get a little bit more horsepower out of that, too. Why? Because you got a bigger battery. That engine’s a little bit more capable. Pair it with your gas engine. You can get what you want out of it. And then, obviously, you can plug it in. If you don’t go further than 40 miles to wherever your destination is, round trip, plug it in when you get home. You’ll almost never use gas. That’s the one that I always tell people. Take your gas tank, put some stabilizer in there. You’re not going to use a whole lot of a whole lot of fuel. But that’s only if you plug it in. But the thing is is you don’t have to plug it in. You can plug it in if you want to. So the PH EVs, they’ll run just like a regular hybrid, right? But if you plug them in, you get a little bit of energy out of them. And a lot of times the ones that you plug in too, you can actually prep the um air conditioning system to where it’ll use the plug out of the wall to actually heat or preheat or precool the interior of the vehicle on a schedule that you give it in a lot of cases or from a button on your key fob to make it to where the interior is already ready to go. You don’t waste energy from the car getting your climate in the vehicle where you want it. All right. So, now we’re just talking about regular hybrids, right? And that’s kind of where your RAV fours are. Everything’s changing on the RAV 4 and 26, but the the generalities will be the same still, right? But let’s do something else here. Let’s go back to this Grand Highlander. Why? Because you got something else on the Grand Highlander that it it’s, you know, and the Grand Highlander is a beautiful car, right? It’s beautiful vehicle, right? So, the Grand Highlander comes in a all gas version, a hybrid version, which would be the HEV that I talked about before, and then it has a version that on the back will say hybrid max. You’re going, “All right, crap. I give on.” What’s what’s a hybrid max? All right. So, the hybrid max is this is I’m going to keep this very, very simple to kind of to help you out here. The hybrid max version, just like I was talking about on the Sequoia, is tuned for power. It’s not tuned to save you gas. And in all reality, it’s really not going to save you much gas at all. Um, if any, even though you got the the power, right? You got the the electricity. But you got a hybrid version of it and you’re going, “All right, well, the the Max version gets me 24 miles per gallon. How’s the hybrid version get me 34 miles per gallon and I’m I’m in the same car and they’re both hybrids, but one says max and one doesn’t.” Well, you kind of get where a lot of the confusion starts to come in and why I’m kind of making this video here. So, the hybrid max gives you power. The the 0 to 60 times better. The the off the line is better. I mean, it will literally drive like a sports car. That’s how it’s tuned. That’s that’s pretty much what the the hybrid max system is going to give you. Um, we could go into the in intricacies of it, but that’s not the point of this video. I’m just trying to give you a generality, right? The regular hybrid system, well, now it’s doing things that hybrids do. It’s uh trying to gain back electricity. is trying to do all the the normal stuff to save you as much fuel as possible and not necessarily give you the amount of power that you would get out of a hybrid max, right? So that you got that on those vehicles. You can get that on the Crown, right? The Crown sedan, you can, you know, you have a platinum, you got a max, you got a regular one, you got different horsepowers, you got things like that, but you’re still the same thing. If you see the word max on it, hybrid max, then it uses the electricity to maximize the power, not the fuel economy, the power, right? If you see hybrid electric vehicle, plug-in hybrid, then it’s using it to maximize the fuel economy, right? So, you see I Force Max on this Tacoma right here, right? So, you’re seeing it’s a Tacoma, right? This is a Tacoma hybrid, right? But is it a true hybrid? I mean, not in the sense of the word that a lot of people think, right? It It’s not meant to. It It’s It’s not that kind of hybrid. It’s built for additional power on this frame. Why? They went to a four-cylinder turbo. So, in your Tacoma, you have a 2.4 L turbo. All right. Well, your your RAV 4, you’ve got the 2.5 liter non-turbo, right? So, non non-turbo turbo. So, so this one, realistically, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to get six-cylinder power out of this four-cylinder engine and and it works. It’s got the same horsepower, right? But now, when you put it with the hybrid max, which is this is a parallel hybrid system. So, in your trucks, the Seoia, um, all those, it’s a parallel hybrid system. It’s built within the drivetrain. So, anytime you see that max system, it’s it’s kind of an extra it’s an extra motor built within the drivetrain to give you a push. Like I said, I’m trying to to stay out of the total technicalities to just give you a general, right? And and hopefully I’m I’m I’m doing that. I’m I’m trying my best to to I mean, I’m a technical person. I’m very very much trying my best not to get overly technical in any of these, right? But you’re So I’m walk I’m going to walk over to this one. Right. So you got two different Tacomaomas here. There’s no badging on the back there other than just your regular badging. But you’ll see down here once again it says I Force Max, right? It’s maximized for power. You’ll get extra power out of this one as opposed to the other one. Right? You’re over 300 horsepower. I think it’s 326. Uh I’ll put it on the bottom of the screen if it’s other than that. Um, but you get extra horsepower on the regular Tacoma as opposed to 280 289 somewhere around in there. I’m I’m close. All right. So, just just know that. Um, so you add extra horsepower in the max. Why? People want it, right? It’s a different version of the same car that’s electrified to give you a boost. Is it a true hybrid? No, it’s not. It’s not meant to save you any kind of fuel like that. Right. So, so now Toyota gives you two additional powertrains that you can get in their vehicles, right? And one of them is is not normal um to this area, so can’t talk a ton about it, but I do know about it. Um but but the other one is the battery electric. So, it’s called the BEV, battery electric vehicle, right? So, you saw that you had HEV, hybrid electric, still uses gas. The plug-in hybrid, PHEV, still uses gas. Obviously, the normal one still uses gas, right? The we’re talking about the RAV 4. Um, still uses gas. And then you get into the Maxis. And then you have your battery electric vehicle. The battery electric vehicle is only charge, no gas, right? Um, it’s built for efficiency and to have nothing that comes out of the tailpipe emissions wise. Um, they notice they don’t call them emissions free. There’s, you know, producing electricity somewhere makes the emissions, right? But out of the tailpipe, it’s zero. There’s there’s no emissions out of the tailpipe. Um, but you have to plug it in. You can use charging station, stuff like that, but it has to be plugged in. You can’t just use the the car and and go to a gas station and plug it in, right? you have a charging station, maybe at your house, whatever, you have to do that. That’s a full-on battery electric. So, that’s what a BEV is. Um, the currently the only one that Toyota has that’s a BEV is the BZ4X um which is going to be called just the BZ uh going forward, which stands for beyond zero. Um, which talks about the um getting to beyond zero uh carbon emissions. That’s what that is. Um, now the new CHR has been announced for 2026. Haven’t seen one yet. Um, but those are supposed to be re-released and come out as of 2026 for um as a 2026. The new So, the CHR has been redesigned and is supposed to come back out for 2026 as a all electric BEV battery electric vehicle uh for 2026. I’ve not seen one yet, but I’m sure at some point we probably will. The last version of the powertrain that you can get on Toyota is the fuel cell, the hydrogen fuel cell, which is in a vehicle called the Marai. The only spot you can get that is California cuz it’s the only spot with hydrogen stations. Apparently, from what everybody’s told me, that vehicle is an amazing vehicle. Um, it does, I mean, everything you want it to do, but it’s in reality, it’s expensive for for what you can do with it, and you’re pretty much tied to California. Uh, there’s just nowhere to really fuel it up anywhere else. I mean, I I personally have thought, what about like welding places that, you know, maybe some gas places or something like that, but I I don’t know how h how feasible that is that you can go to like a a welding spot and fill up with hydrogen. I I don’t I don’t know about that, but um hey, I I’ve never really looked into it, but you guys can tell me if you want to. But what do you think? That’s kind of giving you the ideas, right? So, Tundra behind me here. This one’s not not hybrid, not max, not anything. It’s regular. Uh it’s a 3.4 L V6 twin turbo, right? But it’s not not hybrid. So, yeah. I mean, just just look at some of the vehicles out there. You can kind of see which one’s which. Now, I will mention one other thing while I’m thinking about it. Hello, Southwest. Um, that Toyota used to on their hybrids, they would take the emblem right here and they would make a blue hue around it. I’ve done some videos on what the blue hue meant in the emblem. Well, Toyota did away with that when they started doing this. So once they started doing the uh the little HEV stuff and changed the uh the way that everything is placarded and stuff like that, the blue it went away. And there’s a lot of people that kind of like the blue. There’s a lot of people that didn’t want to be differentiated that they were driving a hybrid. I I don’t know. There’s there’s I know there’s political reasons to drive a hybrid. There’s political reasons to not drive a hybrid. there. I personally I drive a hybrid Tundra, an I Force Max Tundra. Why? I like the power, right? So, I mean, I get about the same gas mileage in my Tundra as I would get in one of these. Actually, probably in the hybrid version. It’s probably just a little less cuz I’ve heard people get in in the, you know, the low, you know, the 21s like it’s rated. Mine I usually get 181 19. So, I actually get a little bit less out of the hybrid, but it’s the max version. It’s maximizing power. Do I really need the extra power? Probably not. Do I like it? Yeah, it’s it’s good. Uh, but here’s the thing. Just realize that if you’re going to the extreme that a lot of people are going and saying, “Well, I don’t know which ones plug in, which ones don’t.” And the number one thing that I get from people in talking about this is that I don’t want a car that I have to plug in. All right. Okay. So, if you want a car that you the only car that you can buy that you have to plug in from Toyota is the BZ4X. That’s the only one you can buy in in the CHR when it comes out. The only one that you can currently buy that the only thing you can do is plug it in is the BZ4X and here in 26 is the uh uh CHR. Right now, it could be different going forward, but now if you have some and you’re going, I could plug it in. I mean, I don’t want to have to, but I could if I needed to. Well, now you’re going into your PHEVs, right? Your plug-in hybrid vehicles. Well, which ones have your plugins? A Prius and a RAV 4, right? And how do you tell if it’s a plugin? Well, first off, it’ll say that PHEV there. The other thing you’ll notice is that on the back side right here, you’ll have another fuel door. So, you have a fuel door over here, and you’ll have a fuel door over here. The one that’s on that side is about twice the size of this one. So, you can open it up and and whatever. But if it’s the plugin, you got one on both sides. So, if you’re worried and you’re going, I I’m scared I’m going to buy the wrong car. Hopefully, you got a salesperson that knows a little bit about it, work with me. Come to Bean, work with me. Um, I’ll I’ll slow things down and I can kind of, you know, tailor it a bit more to the vehicle that you’re exactly looking at and make sure you get what you need. Right. So that’s that’s that. Just just reach out to me at buy a Toyota [email protected]. By a Toyota [email protected]. I’ll help you with that. All right. But but realistically, if you’re on a lot and you the only thing you’re saying is I don’t want one that I have to plug in, those two cars are the only ones you’re worried about. Everything else you could buy. If this was the plug-in hybrid, you could buy it and never plug it in. drive it 300,000 miles, trade it in, having never opened the other door, and you’ll be fine. Doesn’t matter. It would use the battery to help you just like it would in a regular hybrid. You would have the extra horsepower, just like you would in an extra hybrid. The only thing that you wouldn’t have is that initial time where you could only drive in electricity if you chose to, right? Or if you know the vehicle notices there’s enough of a charge on the battery, take off. you wouldn’t be you wouldn’t have that charge on the battery to do that. It’s the only difference. So, if you had a plug-in hybrid, you don’t have to plug it in, right? Only two vehicles that Toyota’s current lineup as of 2026 that you will have to plug in are the BZ4X and CHR. Everything else, it’s either a hybrid or a regular gas engine. Right. Rav 4 is switching to only hybrid in 2026. Camry switched to only hybrid in 2025. And I got a sneaking suspicion you’ll probably see the freaking Corolla go to all hybrid in 2027. That’s a it’s a guess, but I would be willing to bet that’s probably it seems to be what they’re doing, right? They’re making all the cars go to hybrid so that you get these 50 MPG roughly numbers. I I think that’s what they’re going to do, but that’s a it’s a hunch. We’ll see what happens. But who we got? Delta. Got a joke about that. Anyway, um I know Delta. They lost my luggage. It’s just Okay. Anyway, um so hopefully I hopefully that helped you guys out and uh I I like I said, tried to keep it very very simple. Hopefully I helped you guys out. You guys can definitely let me know if you have any questions. I’ll try to give you information on the exact thing you’re looking for if you want to reach out to me. Other than that, hope you guys have a great day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.
Ever wondered what really separates a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid (PHEV), a hybrid max, an electric vehicle (EV), and a traditional gas car? In this video, I break it all down in plain English so you can understand the differences — and which one might be the best fit for you.
You’ll learn:
How hybrids and plug-in hybrids work differently
The pros and cons of EVs vs gas-powered vehicles
Convenience, and driving experience comparisons
Which type makes sense for you
If you’re thinking about buying your next car or just want to understand today’s vehicle options, this quick guide will help you make a smarter choice.
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