Should I buy a PHEV?

irishgrover

Fair enough, I do know how to respond. You got it arseways, you assumed I was anti phev, even though I bought one, and now your doubling down on being ignorant.... It's a free world

CoBo55

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118754134#Comment_118754134

Free electricity is better, chargepoint being installed in the job in the next few weeks, happy days for us paupers😀

Eircom_Sucks

babies on here i swear

NIMAN

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118744977#Comment_118744977

I bought a 7kw Qubev direct from the manufacturer in the UK for £240.

My local spark fitted it for €70. Admittedly I took out a previous charger, so all cabling was already there in place, so it wasn't a difficult job.

Some of the money being quoted for electrician time is scary.

kanuseeme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118755945#Comment_118755945

Even if the cabling was not there and his price was 600 euro, the OP could still get the grant and have only to pay £240, scary rates alright, but 600 euro should do a lot.

Grumpypants

I've a Phev, had it for almost 4 years. It's been great. Pre lock down when I was going to the office, work put in a charger so I was literally driving the 40km home for free. The trip in to the office was on my own bill. But still vastly cheaper than petrol or diesel.

I bought for the car for 16k. Ploughed all the savings I had offset from running the A4 in to paying off the loan faster and cleared it in 3.5 years. Essentially a free car.

At the time an EV was not an option. Not enough range in the battery and not enough money in my wallet.

Dealer is giving me 15k for my car now so I'll jump to EV for a new 21k loan.

The Battery in the Phev from all the charging is down to 60% and now only does 20-25 km. In a year that will be 50%.

It's the full charge/discharge cycles that kill it. Looking at the EV I'll charge it about once a week. Maybe an extra charge after weekend trip. But let's say 50-70 times a year. The Phev getting 2-3 cycles a day was doing 900+ charges a year.

The biggest problem with the Phev is you become obsessed with driving on battery. To the point of distraction. I'd free wheel down hills, I'd wear a hat and coat rather than put on the heating just to get an extra 7km.

It's so nice to drive on electricity that you will start looking at EVs after 6 months.

But phevs have a place. It's much easier to get small 10kw batteries in to loads of cars that will then do 95% of their driving on battery. Than it is to get big 50,60,70+ kw ones into brand new very expensive cars.

Eircom_Sucks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118755945#Comment_118755945

Eircom_Sucks

Anybody else have issues when charging at esb public chargers ?

pain in my nads

often im there 10 mins to get it to work , says swipe right to charge then connect cable to car then cable to charger and then it says plug is in use and nadda , goes off or even worse goes offline , today in tesco holywell in swords i was pissed on because it didnt work , a tesla pulls in beside me and 5 seconds max and no hassel

am i doing something wrong ?

kanuseeme

I plug in and then swipe once, give it some time, wait, patience, then you will see "charging 5Wh" etc. Honestly I would use the granny at home unless your doing some shopping.

Some times one side does not work.

PaulJoseph22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118725379#Comment_118725379

@Eircom_Sucks Happens all the time, either that or doesn't work at all. Thankfully I've the petrol as a back up.

Killer K

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118756660#Comment_118756660

Great post. A good rebuttal to the accusation that owners of PHEVs never plug them in! Agree that electric driving is addictive. In my previous PHEV I was like that trying to squeeze as much range as possible out of it (and freezing my ass off). With my current one which has better range and a smoother transition to the ICE, this is less of an issue for me.

My battery degradation will or at least should be much less severe than yours in the with my use I only charge 3, possible 4 times a week. So well less than 200 times per year - with previous car it was every day.

kanuseeme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118756660#Comment_118756660

The outlander also has a issue with state of health dropping like a stone, I bet you anything, that it could be brought back up to 80-90%, only for it to start dropping again, I used to reset mine every 6 months, my estimate on health was around 90% for a 6 year old car.

CoBo55

Would charging to 80 or 90% at a reduced rate help preserve battery life? I can do that through the app.

Grumpypants

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757279#Comment_118757279

I got it serviced by Mitsubishi and it brought it back up from 64 to around 72%. That was last summer. It's back down to 62% now. There is a lot of talk online about it having a built-in software degradation to try and give a more accurate estimation. There was also some DIY resets on the BMU and it would think the battery was new, but they seem to do more harm than good.

Anyway, it's time to move on to BEV anyway for me. Wallet can take it now :)

whatchagonnado

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118652374#Comment_118652374

I have a second car of a 2007 Honda Civic 1.8 Petrol doing 7L/100km. Genuine question, why would I swap something like that for a PHEV? (Apologies if this has been answered). I suppose if you are doing shorter trips, you are going purely on battery if charging every night? But add in battery degradation and electricity costs, would it really make that much difference?

Soarer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118756660#Comment_118756660

Agree with this.

PHEVs have their place. I bought mine over 2 years ago. Swapped from a 2011 Leaf. Would've loved to go to another full BEV, but the mileage I do for work meant it didn't suit.

I live 6 kms from the office and we have multiple chargepoints. Now I haven't made much use out of it in the last couple of years due to covid, but before the lockdown I'd charge in work, be able to drive home, do my local driving, then drive back into the office the following morning all on electricity. Then when I needed tp go to site, I had the diesel engine to plough along.

The longer ranges of BEVs nowadays have me looking at changing to full BEV again. But pricing and leadtimes are putting me off.

I'll definitely get back to BEV in the future. Maybe the EV6 GT?! 😉

Killer K

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758360#Comment_118758360

Question back to you. Why would you swap the Civic for any car if going well, not costing you very much and you are generally happy with it?

Depends on what you use the Civic for and what your other car is and used for.

If we had two cars, I would probably have one ICE and one BEV. Use the BEV as a daily run about and the ICE for longer trips around the country.

fits

Except when you have the BEV you’ll never want to take the ICE anywhere.

loopymum

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118765260#Comment_118765260

Aint that the truth!

I started with a leaf & loved driving it so much I got an ioniq. I detest driving the diesel now.

Ralphie20

Thanks for that! I am doing another king spin today that surpasses the range. I get a bit annoyed driving on petrol now. Think I should have gone Full EV!

Eircom_Sucks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118766288#Comment_118766288

i hear ye

next car will 100 % be full ev

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118766288#Comment_118766288

That's what a lot of PHEV owners who are honest, admit to. They bought the PHEV thinking it was the "best of both worlds" but it rarely isn't, unless you are an outlier case

People tend to get annoyed that their PHEV uses the petrol engine a lot unless you are driving miss Daisy. Also the countless plugging in all the time (a BEV owner plugs in typically only a few times a week) and then the price of petrol these days. And that's not even talking about the much higher maintenance and depreciation and less discount on tolls and motor tax.

Killer K

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118767015#Comment_118767015

PHEVs are a great transition vehicle to EV. If anything, this really highlights how much benefit PHEVs actually are in enabling/encouraging people to make the transition. PHEVs would be a failure, if the majority thought after purchasing "oh I should have just bought an ICE vehicle".

I would also argue there are sufficient 'outlier' cases out there. There are still plenty of one car households. Every house I pass with a BEV in my neighborhood has an ICE sitting next to it on the drive (and they tend to be out more often than the BEVs as much as most people would probably prefer to drive the BEV).

CoBo55

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118767015#Comment_118767015

I will go full EV next time as I just didn't have the confidence to take the plunge last year. My car never uses the engine unless I specifically set it to hybrid mode, EV is the default setting. I'm averaging between 2 and 3 charges a week which is no hassle really, I'm using so little petrol since the last fill it's insignificant. I haven't had it serviced yet so can't comment on that and tax @ €140 a year is peanuts, I think an EV is 120, not exactly sure. Being in the sticks I don't use toll roads.

kanuseeme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118767015#Comment_118767015

Honesty is great, I appreciate it when I read about people complaining of queuing at chargers and giving the real range of electric cars, it really helped me in buying my phev.

I find the seldom trips to the pumps a comfort that lessens the pain of wasting all 5 seconds of plugging in at home.

As a 1 car, 3 kid house, I would prefer to spend the 30 euro (same trip now is 36 euro) or so on petrol on a trip to Dublin in a convenient and effective use of my time.

As for driving miss daisy, I think its a mistake to drive that way, a more efficient use is actually to use petrol in situations that demand power or speed, most phevs have a button to start the engine or a lazy way would be to floor it, to start the engine, it will turn off itself and leave the battery for the easier sections of the drive.

Tax is not worth talking about, the tolls are worth half that for a BEV and both up to 500 euro total, the maintenance cost I have no idea, its so long since I actually serviced one, I tend to allow extra on the service interval because of the reduced engine use, but my cars are out of warranty.

Miscreant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118767954#Comment_118767954

Same for me. I will, most likely, go full EV for the next car. At the moment, I charge my PHEV maybe 3 times a week but would use petrol going to Galway and back every few weeks anyway due to family commitments. I get a little stressed when the petrol engine comes on TBH but it was a simple fact of economics for me when buying this car; I could not afford a full BEV with the range I wanted (new or second hand) and I got a fantastic trade in and deal on this PHEV so that practically made the choice for me. I'm only saving €10 a year on motor tax but that was never a factor, it was more the full electric driving and the chance to reduce the amount of fuel I use that led me to PHEV. My previous car had been a Toyota Hybrid, which I loved.

CoBo55

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118768151#Comment_118768151

What are you driving? I don't worry about using petrol as it's a very economical engine anyway, I do like the extra bit of power it gives🙂

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118768151#Comment_118768151

Yes don't get me wrong, PHEVs are very much a transition car for a lot of people. They did not dare make the jump to BEV within their comfort zone and if there weren't any PHEV, they would have just bought another diesel / petrol. With hindsight a lot of those people could have made the jump to BEV no problem, but the jump looked too big to make at the start. Which is quite understandable.

Miscreant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118768375#Comment_118768375

I have an Ioniq PHEV. Happily returns over 60mpg on long runs so I am not paranoid about using the petrol engine 🙂. I do enjoy the extra shove of power for sure.

Kagawa

I’m thinking of going for this car. I have a 100km round trip, would you say it’s a good option based on your experience?