Does a hybrid make sense for motorway miles?

craptakular

craptakular

craptakular

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Hello,

I've still got three years left on my current company car :D. However, I was bored last night so was googling the latest on hybrid cars to see how they are coming along.

I have the choice from most of the range from:

VW
Skoda
Audi
Vauxhall
Toyota Prius

The Toyota Prius is heavily incentivised, so much so that it would cost me around £60 a month on tax as I would get some of my car allowance back.

However, does the mpg stack up on daily 60 mile round trips on the motorway? Mixed in with 180 mile motorway round trips mixed in once or twice a week on average?

What I am hoping is that VW pull their finger out and bring a EV 300 mile range model out by 19/20. I would jump on it!
 
A few of my colleagues have gone for the merc c350e, out lander Phev and golf 1.4 hybrid, they are not seeing anywhere near the mpg they thought they would. So much so that they want to hand the cars back and get a diesel. The merc has a pretty gruff petrol engine ime.

With the changes to the grants in a few years, the EV cars won't be that attractive for CC drivers imo.

I would like to try the BMW 330e though.
 
I use an Auris Hybrid (same drivetrain as the gen3 prius), my commute is motorway if I'm going into the office which I do a couple of times a week usually. Although my economy figure has dropped since my commute has become more heavily motorway vs town, my long term average is still ~59mpg. Tyres last ~60k and brakes last pretty much indefinitely (my car is on 62k on the originals, most seem to suggest you have to change pads at around 80k).

I personally went for a hybrid because I cannot stand diesels, I wanted a reliable car with a decent spec and as I do ~25k a year I couldn't justify a larger 'conventional' petrol.

As wohoo mentioned, the 330e looks like a really interesting car, and generally plugins are becoming more common. That said they are still in a totally different price bracket to the standard hybrids.

Edit - Just another thought, hybrids do vary their mpg wildly based on the way you drive - if you are used to a diesel they are extremely different as (especially the ones with CVT) generally rev quite freely and if you want to accelerate quickly do require a bit of working. Personally for me as it is solely a daily car I'm happy to drive it fairly relaxed which returns a good economy. I know of a few people who have bought Hybrids, driven them hard and wondered why they haven't seen past 45mpg! If I could only own one car - it wouldn't be a hybrid, but thats why I have three totally different cars, for three totally different purposes!
 
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I'd say it's the other way round for "hybrid"/EVs. Town driving is where they are best.

Hybrids are so heavy that a modern diesel, or even some petrol engine cars can match them on a long cruise. Plus you have the huge cost of batteries on top, since they don't last forever.
 
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I have the lexus IS300h, which i find very good for the motorways. only thing i find is in winter the mpg is a bit less as it has to "warm" the batteries first.

70mph cruise control to manchester to teesside got me 60mpg last week which is not bad at all.. if i'm popping to the shops and round 45ish usually.

bare in mind that this isn't a plugin hybrid!
 
Nasher said:
I'd say it's the other way round for "hybrid"/EVs. Town driving is where they are best.

Hybrids are so heavy that a modern diesel, or even some petrol engine cars can match them on a long cruise. Plus you have the huge cost of batteries on top, since they don't last forever.
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Fully agree regarding town driving, I have cracked 80mpg on certain town trips.

I totally disagree regarding economy figures for a 'long cruise' however - I cannot think of one mid-sized conventional petrol that can average 60mpg at a 70mph cruise! And only a handful of diesels.

On the batteries - for Toyota at least, they warranty them for 8 years or 100k (although can be extended to 11 year and unlimited mileage), most people who have high mileage cars have reported they last far longer than this. General specialist replacement is around £600, Toyota probably closer to £800 - which albeit expensive isn't exactly crazy money on a car that will probably have 150k+ miles on it. Most people will never need a replacement battery for the life of the car.
 
unrealrocks said:
General specialist replacement is around £600, Toyota probably closer to £800 - which albeit expensive isn't exactly crazy money on a car that will probably have 150k+ miles on it. Most people will never need a replacement battery for the life of the car.
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This cost doesn't sound unreasonable at all when you consider if a clutch, turbo, injectors, DMF, whatever needs replacing on a diesel vehicle then it can cost hundreds too. I don't know why so many people think that a replacment battery in a hybrid system is going to write off a car.
 
For a company car driver, the plug in EV makes more sense tax wise than a toyota type hybrid.

I was quite impressed with the technology for a daily driver, it will be interesting to see where they go over the next decade or so.
 
I think they will go in the Tesla direction. But hopefully cheaper :D

They are really the first EVs which are a true replacement for petrol or diesel. They just need to get the recharge time down to minutes rather than hours.
 
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Nasher said:
I think they will go in the Tesla direction. But hopefully cheaper :D

They are really the first EVs which are a true replacement for petrol or diesel. They just need to get the recharge time down to minutes rather than hours.
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And the range up to useful rather than "can't quite get there".
 
Nasher said:
I think they will go in the Tesla direction. But hopefully cheaper :D

They are really the first EVs which are a true replacement for petrol or diesel. They just need to get the recharge time down to minutes rather than hours.
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30 mins for upto 170 miles is not too bad i feel, depends one your usage profile i suppose but for most people the Teslas range shouldn't be too much of an issue too often.

Will be interesting to find out, a family member picks a new model S up later this month so will finally have first hand experience rather than rubbish spouted on the net.
 
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Lashout_UK said:
My Auris HSD would only ever average about 44mpg on a motorway run.
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I think that illustrates my point :rolleyes: I can absolutely get it to average 44, but I can quite easily crack 60mpg if you actually drive it properly :) Hybrids are far more sensitive to harsher driving than more conventional engines.
 
unrealrocks said:
I think that illustrates my point :rolleyes: I can absolutely get it to average 44, but I can quite easily crack 60mpg if you actually drive it properly :) Hybrids are far more sensitive to harsher driving than more conventional engines.
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Wasn't a case of 'driving it properly', just the conditions in which I used to drive – and the roads themselves. It didn't fare well.
 
As above a (non-plug-in) hybrid and a conventional cruiser are pretty much opposites.

The things that sets hybrids apart are the regenerative braking and the fully-electric mode, which makes them brilliant for stop-start driving and slow speeds (city driving). Around here almost 100% of the taxis are Priuses (Prii?) because they're that much cheaper to run.

Perfect motorway driving on the other hand would be a constant high speed. AFAIK, if you get a hybrid to do this it can't make any use of the electric system whatsoever, it behaves like an abnormally heavy petrol car.

As wohoo says, if you can get a plug-in to work for you (cost, range, and charge time wise) I'd be tempted, because they're so cheap to run.
 
joeyjojo said:
Perfect motorway driving on the other hand would be a constant high speed. AFAIK, if you get a hybrid to do this it can't make any use of the electric system whatsoever, it behaves like an abnormally heavy petrol car.
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Hybrids actually spend most of their time 'blending' both petrol and EV, so for example on a steady cruise the hybrid system will aid the petrol motor - kind of like electric power steering aiding your turning input (from what I understand!).

If you watch the feed of power the EV system is still very much active even at high speeds, meaning it is still far more economical to run a hybrid at motorway speeds vs the petrol motor on its own. This 'heavy car' thing is true of some older models, but the current gen Auris HSD is actually lighter than its diesel equivalent! (1435KG for the 1.6 diesel vs 1420KG for the hybrid - depending exactly on spec but illustrates the point!)
 
craptakular said:
However, does the mpg stack up on daily 60 mile round trips on the motorway? Mixed in with 180 mile motorway round trips mixed in once or twice a week on average?

What I am hoping is that VW pull their finger out and bring a EV 300 mile range model out by 19/20. I would jump on it!
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No.

You won't see the crazy high quoted MPGs for hybrids doing motorway journeys. There simply isn't the opportunity for the petrol engine to relax and the electric engine to take over.

As you already suspect, to get the best out of hybrids, you'd need to be driving in a stop / start urban city commute. That would likely show huge benefits. Not so much from long motorway journeys.
 
arfoll said:
That's what they say. Reality is more that when you slow down, petrol turns off, when you accelerate again electric engine gives the initial boost and then petrol starts. This means that stop start is proper seemless and very small acceleration doesn't cost any petrol. On hybrids that aren't PHEV the batterys are so small really on motorway they're not involved and can't really provide any acceleration at 50+.



If that was the case then in that case you'd run out of battery real quick and then after 10miles of motorway you'd have no battery. The batteries on those are so small what they really enable is to not stress the engine in town when starting/stopping.

Just look at the official MPG stats for the Auris model you mention:
83 MPG-UK highway; diesel Auris
71 MPG-UK highway; hybrid Auris

The hybrid will be better round town, and might be nicer to drive etc... but on motorway it's a pure diesel vs petrol fight and diesel wins (on mpg at least ;-)).
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You are far oversimplifying what the hybrid drivetrain is doing, on a regular hybrid it isn't a case of either 'electric' or 'petrol', a high proportion of the time it is using the electric motor to facilitate the petrol motor to increase economy. My Auris will only run in electric only to 50mph, and accelerate at any rate to 32mph - however still manages 60mpg on a motorway journey ... somehow I don't think that is just the 1.8 petrol ;)

PHEVs are far better in all situations - but then the huge difference in cost does time into it.

IMO motorway use only the hybrid is still entirely an option, yes diesel is in its sweet spot for this usage - but hybrids are still entirely competitive as my experience of my last ~40k miles in my hybrid has shown :)
 
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