BREAKING: Plug-in hybrids pollute almost as much as petrol and diesel cars
This is why subsidies for hybrids should not exist, at least at least in the countries where people don’t even use them for what they’re intended or manufactured for, which is surprisingly a shocking number. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the channel. I’m Sam Evans. You’re watching the Electric Viking. YouTube’s new algorithm means that you’re often not getting all of our videos in your feed. There’s 7,500. I’m pretty sure you’re probably not seeing a lot of them. In the description, there is a link to our newsletter. Click on that and you can get an update every day of all the latest news in the electric car industry. People have been reporting this information now for years. And it’s not changing. You would think it would. You’d think, oh, 2025, people are educated now. They’re going to change. But um analysis of 800,000 European cars found real world pollution from plug-in hybrids is five times higher than laboratory tests. Five times higher. So are these manufacturers lying about the real world emissions of their cars? Absolutely they are. Are they doing this in order to avoid having to purchase carbon credits from other companies like Tesla or other EV brands? Absolutely. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles pump out nearly five times more planet heating pollution than official figures show or than the companies the brands themselves say. A report has found the cars which can run on electric power alone which is the reason they have that battery a large battery in the first place as well as a combustion engine. But the whole idea guys is that um for most people the average person drives about 40 km a day and if a plug-in hybrid has say 50 to 100 km of EV only range most of the time 90% or more you should be driving it using the battery alone. Unfortunately that’s not really happening. Unlike fully electric cars, these vehicles are often driven on petrol power alone, and therefore their emissions are much higher than what people think. Data shows plug-in hybrids emit just 19% less CO2 and cancer-causing pollution than petrol and diesel cars. An analysis by the nonprofit advocacy group transport and environment found last week on Thursday. Under laboratory tests, they were assumed to be 75% less polluting than what they actually are. The researchers analyzed data from the onboard fuel consumption meters of 800,000 cars registered in Europe between 2021 and 2024. They found real world carbon dioxide emissions from FEVs in 2023 were five times higher than those from standardized laboratory tests having risen from being 3.5 times worse in 2021. You’d think, yeah, that emissions from plug-in hybrids would improve, would have improved in those few years, right? 2021 it was far less, right? 3.5 times worse in 2021. 2023, it’s 4.9 times worse. I mean, something doesn’t add up here. It’s very strange. Real world emissions are going up while official emissions are going down, said Sophia Nas Golki, a researcher at Transport and Environment and the co-author of this report. Basically, she’s calling this out and saying this is complete that these companies can basically lie about the emissions of their cars. They are lying about them. I mean, they’re lying about the fuel efficiency of them. Guys, I’ve been on all these forums, on social media, tracking what people say in these groups where they own the cars uh and the actual fuel use they’re using uh with the cars is nowhere near what manufacturers claim. This is the gap that is getting worse, she said, and it is a real problem. As a result, FEVs pollute almost as much as a petrol powered car. There’s almost no difference. The researchers attributed most of the gap to overestimates of the utility factor, the ratio of miles traveled in electric mode to the total miles traveled, finding that 27% of driving was done in electric mode, even though official estimates assumed 84%. So only 27% of the time, 800,000 plug-in hybrid owners actually use the car on the battery alone. 27%. To be fair, this is kind of makes sense because a lot of the plug-in hybrids from companies like say Mercedes-Benz and others, BMW, their range on battery power alone is only about 20 km. It’s kind of ridiculous. Anyhow, the European Commission has announced two corrections to the utility factor ratio that will narrow the gap but not close it entirely. According to the analysis, even when the cars were driven in electric mode, the analysis found that levels of pollution were well above official estimates. I’m just going to repeat that because it it’s insane. Even when the cars were driven in electric mode, the analysis found that levels of pollution were well above official estimates. How can this be? Well, the researchers said that this was because electric motors were not strong enough to operate alone in most of these plug-in hybrids with their engines burning fossil fuels for almost onethird of the distance traveled in electric mode. So, a lot of these plug-in hybrids can’t get up hills using just the electric motors. They don’t have enough power. So, what happens is then the petrol or the diesel engines start to kick in. Patrick Plots, head of energy economics at the Frawn Hoofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, who was not involved in the study, said it was a very useful contribution after years in which parts of the automotive industry argued there was too little data to accurately assess real world emissions. Manufacturers though, they know this stuff, right? They collect data from people’s cars, so they they know this. The results demonstrate, he said, beyond any doubt that the gap between official and real world plug-in hybrid fuel consumption and CO2 emissions is much much larger than for gasoline or diesel cars, said plots, who has published research on this exact topic. The Guardian says that any policy changes with respect to FEVs should be made with utmost care and in light of this data. Hybrid cars, says The Guardian, have been drawn back into the political debate as car makers have pressed the European Union to weaken CO2 targets, and they’re actually trying to force the European Union not to ban internal combustion cars in 2035. A ban on new combustion engine cars in 2035 has been the subject to heavy lobbying from the automotive industry, particularly companies like Toyota and Volkswagen and opposition from member states with large car industries. In other words, the German automotive industry, the French automotive industry, they are lobbying the European Union. They’re trying everything they can to get the 2035 ban on internal combustion cars repealed. There must not be a drastic cut in 2035, the German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz said after a summit last week. With the country’s struggling automo automotive industry promising to do everything in his power to achieve that, to have the 2035 ban repealed. Other senior German politicians have floated plug-in hybrids as one example of possible flexibilities they could introduce to the legislation. Sounds like a genius idea considering how much they’re actually found to be polluting. The researchers calculated that the underestimate of FEV emissions had let four major car maker groups avoid more than5 billion, right? That’s nearly 6 billion US in fines between 2021 and 2023 by making it artificially easier to comply with the EU’s fleet average CO2 targets. So they’ve avoided nearly€10 billion Australian dollars in fines. They added they added that drivers of FEBS would also be paying about €500 a year in running costs that would be assumed under laboratory tests. The bold claims that manufacturers like to make about their plug-in hybrid vehicles are clearly way off the mark, said Colin Walker, a transport analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. Consumers are being duped into believing that in buying a FEV, they are helping the environment and saving money. He said in reality, FEVs are a little better than regular petrol and diesel cars when it comes to the fuel they consume, the CO2 they produce, and the money they cost to run. He’s right about all the FES in Europe anyway. Um, except for some of the newer Chinese ones. For example, some of the newer Chinese FEVs and E-Revs have up to 400, even 500 km of battery only range. and massive massive amounts of power from their electric motors. So, they don’t need to use their internal combustion motors um to actually help them get up a hill like a lot of these plug-in hybrids that exist currently in Europe. And it’s also worth also pointing out that there is a new rule in China, which is this. There is no subsidies for plug-in hybrids or e-revs that have less than 100 km of range. That’s CLTC range. So that probably means less than 60 km of real world range. But apparently in Europe, people are saying most people just don’t bother to plug in their plug-in hybrids to the power at night time. So when they drive them, they’re actually just driving them with a dead battery. What’s the purpose of buying one? I don’t understand it. But anyway, such is life. These num these numbers are pretty staggering to me and I feel kind of emotionally disappointed and shocked at this. I I just think um it’s like a scam that’s been perpetrated on us because we’ve got to breathe this stuff in. We got to breathe this air in. Uh you know, if you live in Europe, you live in other countries, Australia, America, you got to breathe this air in. and companies are basically tricking you into thinking that because you bought a plug-in hybrid that um you’re helping provide a solution when actually you probably weren’t or you probably aren’t. Thanks for watching. [Music]
BREAKING: Plug-in hybrids pollute almost as much as petrol and diesel cars
A new European study has revealed that plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) emit nearly as much CO₂ as petrol and diesel cars in real-world driving conditions. Despite being marketed as a cleaner bridge to electrification, the data shows PHEVs deliver only minor emissions reductions while costing drivers more in fuel and purchase price.
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👇Reference to the news/charts & videos used in this video:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-hybrids-pollute-almost-as-much-as-petrol-cars-report-finds?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social_img&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwZnRzaANee41leHRuA2FlbQExAAEeNKK3xYVFVdqr_bdhD8TcNb33wthN_sYV13IwcfG085MHl1qJs5K87zBDuds_aem_SEdfZMEGyKDIrJrz2gffdQ#Echobox=1760594503
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