Thread: Hybrid cars what to look for.

Originally Posted by Happy Jack

In the end eschewed a hybrid due to the extra cost of them and most driving is open road living out of town. Picked up a nice cheap Civic hatch for the wife her pick of everything we looked at and tried and best of all no cambelt.

You’ve been misinformed regarding hybrids and open road driving, but no matter. A cheap civic hatch is hard to beat.


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Hard to beat a honda as far as gas consumption goes if its running right

If the capital outlay is just a few k,whos cares.

Originally Posted by MSL

You’ve been misinformed regarding hybrids and open road driving, but no matter. A cheap civic hatch is hard to beat.


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Well, to be fair I thought they were the go to as well and was seriously looking into one when we replaced the wife's car a year and a half or so ago (almost two years...). The neighbour had the same as we were looking at, but what the proven fuel consumption worked out at was actually really unimpressive on the PHEV. We live semi-rural up a fairly big climb from town and straight into 80 and 100Km/H roads. In practice, this meant that the hybrid system only worked in the driveway, and the combined power systems were required on the open road even though the trip to town was downhill. The only practical saving was a short amount of driving off the highway into town, and around a parking area before shutting the vehicle down...

On the way home the reverse was in practice, a short amount (5km or so) on battery followed by highway driving where it was back to combined power. In effect there was no requirement to plug the thing in, as it was arriving home at 80-90% charge or better due to being run on self-charge and dual power mode virtually all the time... Real world consumption figures off that PHEV were 6-6.5L/100Km - the non-hybrid is returning an average of 7-7.5L/100Km in exactly the same (or maybe slightly worse traffic) driving conditions.

The economics of it were that the PHEV version was basically $19,000 more expensive to purchase, and due to the extra weight consumes tyres, suspension and joints at a higher rate. Servicing costs are similar. The extra $19,000 procures a LOT of fuel, even at $3 a litre (circa 85,000Km's of travel equivalent to 6 years for us).

Originally Posted by No.3

Well, to be fair I thought they were the go to as well and was seriously looking into one when we replaced the wife's car a year and a half or so ago (almost two years...). The neighbour had the same as we were looking at, but what the proven fuel consumption worked out at was actually really unimpressive on the PHEV. We live semi-rural up a fairly big climb from town and straight into 80 and 100Km/H roads. In practice, this meant that the hybrid system only worked in the driveway, and the combined power systems were required on the open road even though the trip to town was downhill. The only practical saving was a short amount of driving off the highway into town, and around a parking area before shutting the vehicle down...

On the way home the reverse was in practice, a short amount (5km or so) on battery followed by highway driving where it was back to combined power. In effect there was no requirement to plug the thing in, as it was arriving home at 80-90% charge or better due to being run on self-charge and dual power mode virtually all the time... Real world consumption figures off that PHEV were 6-6.5L/100Km - the non-hybrid is returning an average of 7-7.5L/100Km in exactly the same (or maybe slightly worse traffic) driving conditions.

The economics of it were that the PHEV version was basically $19,000 more expensive to purchase, and due to the extra weight consumes tyres, suspension and joints at a higher rate. Servicing costs are similar. The extra $19,000 procures a LOT of fuel, even at $3 a litre (circa 85,000Km's of travel equivalent to 6 years for us).

...by which time your ICE has devalued but still does close to the fuel consumption it did when new, but the PHEV now has a rooted battery, the devaluation on the vehicle is enormous, and the P...EV part of the equation is adding no utility to the car running, and you have the equivalent of two fat mates sitting in the back of your car, having to haul them everywhere you drive.

Originally Posted by No.3

Well, to be fair I thought they were the go to as well and was seriously looking into one when we replaced the wife's car a year and a half or so ago (almost two years...). The neighbour had the same as we were looking at, but what the proven fuel consumption worked out at was actually really unimpressive on the PHEV. We live semi-rural up a fairly big climb from town and straight into 80 and 100Km/H roads. In practice, this meant that the hybrid system only worked in the driveway, and the combined power systems were required on the open road even though the trip to town was downhill. The only practical saving was a short amount of driving off the highway into town, and around a parking area before shutting the vehicle down...

On the way home the reverse was in practice, a short amount (5km or so) on battery followed by highway driving where it was back to combined power. In effect there was no requirement to plug the thing in, as it was arriving home at 80-90% charge or better due to being run on self-charge and dual power mode virtually all the time... Real world consumption figures off that PHEV were 6-6.5L/100Km - the non-hybrid is returning an average of 7-7.5L/100Km in exactly the same (or maybe slightly worse traffic) driving conditions.

The economics of it were that the PHEV version was basically $19,000 more expensive to purchase, and due to the extra weight consumes tyres, suspension and joints at a higher rate. Servicing costs are similar. The extra $19,000 procures a LOT of fuel, even at $3 a litre (circa 85,000Km's of travel equivalent to 6 years for us).

I am referring to hybrids, not PHEV’s.


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Yep, I did get that but in practice there isn't much difference in usability for us. I test drove a Prius (I know, I know) and a Honda mumble (might have been an Insight? Memory is murky on it. Civic sized sedan anyway) and both of them did the same - as soon as you're over 70-odd k's on open road combined power in use. If you're doing that for 90%+ of the trip you literally aren't saving enough fuel to make the extra consumables and higher purchase cost stack up.

If you are urban and the engine is off for say more than 60% of your trip, that potentially is a saving worth having. But otherwise, as XR500 says the hybrid systems on open road use are generally not saving you anything as the IC engine is turning and burning and anytime that is happening you aren't saving fuel.

A hybrid in the price range we were looking at would be totally rooted already with very high KM's. For what we paid a higher priced hybrid would gain us nothing as thet extra cost is quite a few years driving as this is the second car not the main vehicle.

If comparing Hybrid with ICE, which is better mostly comes down to the type of driving and the amount of driving. At one extreme end of the spectrum a typical drive might be 10km at a constant 100km/h on a straight flat road.
In a hybrid or ICE the same amount of energy will be consumed (essentially resulting in the same petrol consumption) for a hybrid or an ICE. (The hybrid will store a small amount of regen braking at the end of the trip unless you coast to a stop).

Driving around town with lots of stop starts, the hybrid stores some of the braking energy and converts it back to momentum when needed.
While the ICE converts momentum mainly to heat energy to stop, and uses near peak fuel consumption to accelerate from stopped.

So at this stage of technology it depends on what kind of driving one does.
Lots of around town in traffic lights makes a hybrid more relevant. Hence their popularity with taxi drivers.
Mostly long trips on the open road and the savings from recovered energy from braking will likely never outweigh the additional capital outlay.

I think for better and worse that in the next 10-15 years we will see ICE go the same way film cameras started going 20 years ago. Anyone here picked up a roll of negatives lately?.
There will probably be some decent money to be made in producing bolt on converter kits as 2nd hand ICE vehicles get cheaper and cheaper to buy.

It's certifying and tying the hybrid kit onto the vehicle's existing computer setup that makes that an issue. Who covers liability for damage, warranty etc etc?

Originally Posted by No.3

the hybrid systems on open road use are generally not saving you anything as the IC engine is turning and burning and anytime that is happening you aren't saving fuel.

For hybrids, don’t know about PHEVs, I don’t think that’s accurate and hasn’t been my experience. In a hybrid, the electric engine supplements the ICE during open road driving.

Originally Posted by camenzie

For hybrids, don’t know about PHEVs, I don’t think that’s accurate and hasn’t been my experience. In a hybrid, the electric engine supplements the ICE during open road driving.

What are you driving out of curiosity ?

Originally Posted by dannyb

What are you driving out of curiosity ?

2016 Fielder.

Originally Posted by camenzie

2016 Fielder.

I'm looking pretty seriously at a lexus ct200h (same running gear 1800cc toyota hybrid as prius, Fielder etc) do a fair whack of 100kph open road travel for work but also do a lot of stop start stuff running the kids around on days off.
The prius is well proven to be reliable I just like the Lexus aesthetics and higher level of interior appointments etc. I know it won't save much if anything on the open road stuff but even just cutting cost of all the running around we do for the kids will be nice.
.......*takes a moment to zip up flame suit

U can however buy cells and rebuild/ build your own says a m8 who sells solar and batteries, reckons for about 1/ 20 th the cost
He told me where, pm for details
@No.3 there are ways to get batteries on cheap from au