Hybrid vehicles – The self charging myth

By Tom Spencer. Editor of IrishEVs, a site dedicated raising awareness about electric cars, lifting the myths and misinformation that surround them, and highlight the role that they can play in reducing Ireland’s emissions.

For more information on IrishEVs visit www.irishevs.com or @IrishEVs on Twitter.

There is much confusion today amongst consumers about the sustainability and emissions produced by hybrid vehicles.

These are often marketed as a safe stepping stone for drivers making the switch from petrol or diesel to fully electric.

Sadly, much of the information out there about hybrids is highly misleading.

This can cause confusion for consumers about the realities of how “green” they are compared to battery electric vehicles, which run solely on electricity.

Today, IrishEVs turns its attention to hybrids to help you separate the myths from the facts.

Hybrid vehicles: Why are they bad?

While many hybrids are marketed as being “electric”, this is incredibly misleading as they predominantly run on petrol or diesel for the majority of their use.

Therefore they can create harmful emissions that contribute to climate change.

Hybrid manufacturers are trying to tap into the incredibly high demand for fully electric vehicles by marketing them as something they are not.

The impending ban on fossil fuel vehicles is due to come into effect in Ireland in 2030.

The development of hybrid vehicles allows manufacturers to effectively sell you two vehicles rather than one.

This would be the hybrid now (which will be banned in the near future) and then an EV when the ban on hybrids comes into effect.

In the meantime, the hybrid will be kicking out at least 40-70% of the emissions of a petrol or diesel car.

It will also have created 15% more emissions in its manufacture than a battery-electric vehicle would have.

This is according to a study by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership in collaboration with Ricardo.

Furthermore, while battery electric vehicles can be charged at home and by renewable energy, hybrid vehicles still require fossil fuels.

This means that they require oil to be extracted, refined, and transported from around the world.

This will create untold emission levels in the refinement process and during transport to you, known as fuel miles.

If that doesn’t convince you, hybrids still require you to spend your hard-earned money on petrol or diesel – which is significantly more expensive than electricity.

Simply put, battery electric vehicles create no emissions themselves, while hybrids continue the same cycle that petrol and diesel vehicles do.

 Hybrid vehicles: How much time do they spend in electric mode?

There are very few academic studies on this subject that aren’t funded by a car manufacturer, so it is difficult to give real-world figures.

However, in the advert for one of their hybrid models, Toyota offers some interesting insights into the realities of how little time hybrids spend in electric, low-emission models.

In the small print of their advert for the C-HR, Toyota explains that their model “spent an average of 56% of its time in electric mode in test drives covering 416,000 miles at an average speed of 22mph”.

These figures do not represent the real-world use of most cars and demonstrate that manufacturers can conduct tests that show hybrids in a more favourable light.

What this advert is telling us is that, if you care about the environment and drive a hybrid, you need to be driving at no more than 35khp at all times.

Even then you’ll be producing emissions for at least 44% of the time.

Most hybrids are marketed for their range advantage over battery-electric vehicles.

However, this is another untrue myth that we have unveiled, that shows the hypocrisy of how hybrids are promoted.

If you are covering any distance in a hybrid outside a grid-locked town, you might as well be driving a petrol or diesel car due to the emissions you’re creating.

Does “self-charging” mean I don’t need fuel?

Toyota and Lexus have led the way in using the highly misleading term “self-charging” for some of their hybrid models.

In fact, the term has been banned in some countries.

Take  Norway, where their national consumer authority declared that those brands were deliberately misleading consumers by making them believe that cars can produce their own electricity.

In reality, these models use their petrol or diesel motors to produce electricity in their electric motor, in much the same way that a generator does.

This creates emissions and costs money to do.

Why are battery electric vehicles better?

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) run purely on electric power which is stored in the vehicle’s batteries.

These vehicles do not create any emissions as they are being used, and are therefore considerably cleaner than any other vehicle on the market. They have a number of clear benefits:

• Reduced running costs

EVs are significantly cheaper to run than petrol or diesel equivalents .saving around 74% annually – with a 100% charge (the same as a full tank of fuel) often costing as little as a tenth of the price

• Smaller carbon footprint

Electric cars have a considerably smaller carbon footprint than petrol of diesel cars.

From the moment they hit the road, they are not creating any emissions themselves resulting in cleaner air.

• Fewer fuel miles

Petrol and diesel vehicles are reliant on oil being sailed around the world to be refined, then delivered by road to the petrol pump.

This has the net effect of adding fuel miles (the carbon footprint of getting that product to you, in the same way, that eating local food as a smaller carbon impact than having something flown in from around the world).

However, electric vehicles are usually charged at home, and can even be charged directly from local renewable sources – such as the solar panels on your roof.

• Power regeneration

Electric vehicles are able to regenerate their own power through braking, meaning that through careful driving you can add range to your journey particularly if you live near some steep hills.

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