Is owning a hybrid a bad idea?

A member of my family had a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Living a rural area it was totally unpractical. She was driving around with a fur coat on trying to stay warm in cold weather. Radio and heating never turned on. She tried her best to make it work. The electricity never lasted more than 20km. The petrol consumption kicked in then and was eye watering with the gauge visibly depleting before her eyes. Being used to Diesel cars the change to petrol was a shock. When you look under the bonnet you see a small petrol engine and small electric setup. It seems you are getting half a petrol engine and half an electric engine to run a big SUV just seems underpowered. Can see how it would work in an urban area with trips under 20 km but in a rural area with hills and bends in the road and wind and rain just was not practical on any level. And a car should be comfortable heat wise during the winter your paying enough for it. And everyone has different levels of heat that their comfortable with some people turn it right up high. It may sound whiny but technology should not go backwards like that to make driving less comfortable for people.

The car consistently ran out of electric at the same spot every day which was just under 20kms on the daily commute. It was a 191 reg so it wasn’t exactly on its last legs or anything. She actually cried with relief when she sold it. Had huge interest when she put it on Done deal from people in Dublin. No interest from anywhere else.

To the OP.

I think the key point for you is lack of charging ability. That rules out a BEV and a PHEV.

So your options are then petrol, diesel or HEV.

Diesel- no. Being phased out.

So Petrol or HEV. Work out your mileage the expected mpg of what you are looking at. Do the sums. Whichever is cheaper over 3 years is the one for you then.

‘Self charging’ Toyotas have regen braking as well as engine charging….

All self charging means is that you don’t plug it in ….

in reality, the hybrid is first generation tech aimed at reducing emissions …. rather than dramatically improving mpg

In most Toyota and Lexus hybrid, the car decides when to run on battery only, when on petrol and when on petrol and battery …

IMHO, if you want to be able to drive in full electric, you need to buy full electric car….

I'm not sure of the reason of a hybrid except economy ?

worst of both worlds IMO .. maintenance and a whole heap of plugging in for what 20% extra MPG ?

Also a small battery with all those recharge cycles has a reduced lifespan I'd imagine

I went from a 1.8 Honda civic to a 1.8 toyota hybrid and my fuel bill halved. But if your doing mainly motorway driving go diesel. My civic got better mpg than the toyota going from Dublin to Cork.

The only variable I can think of is driving style. I did get a longer range out of it but I was literally free wheeling around. It’s hard to see how you could teach people to drive like that unless there was considerable buy in and very disciplined driving that really takes the joy out of driving. If you can’t put the foot down it’s a pretty dull experience. I’m not talking about speeding btw. Maybe if they just went the whole hog and retarded the acceleration so it can only be driven sluggishly it might solve the issue of driving style. The commute in this car was a 35km trip each way with no traffic numerous bends in the road and numerous rolling hills and three junctions. As I said each day without fail the petrol engine kicked in fully at the 20k mark. When she engaged the self charge button at this point the petrol would consume even quicker.

The Toyota hybrids are usually more reliable then most ICE cars tbh.

...and a healthy bit of tailgating to boot. Those air molecules aren't going to move themselves!

Tailgating and coasting would fail your driving test

Don't tailgate at all & fkn hate when it's done to me

So the price of the hybrid Kona is 5k more than the equivalent exec 2 tone non hybrid version.

You get an automatic gearbox and a slight improvement in fuel efficiency. If that is worth the money to you then go for it. You might recoup your fuel costs but depends on your annual mileage. What I last looked at this the time scale was very long given the small gains soft hybrid offers