Electric and Hybrid Cars

Electric and Hybrid Cars - The Wave of The Future

 We've been waiting forever for electric cars to come along, but after more false starts than you'll see at the London Olympics this year, it looks like the electric car is finally here to stay.

Now, we need to start with some boring terminology: An actual electric car (EV, for Electric Vehicle) has no petrol engine as backup, so you are reliant on the batteries having enough charge to get you to where you need to go. The Nissan Leaf is the best-known (and best) electric car currently on sale.

A regular hybrid uses an electric and a petrol motor, depending on the circumstances. You don't plug it into a wall socket as the batteries charge while driving. A typical journey, even short, will use electric and petrol power to drive the wheels. The Toyota Prius is the most popular and best-known hybrid on sale worldwide.

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A plug-in hybrid, "range-extending" electric car, is technically more of a fancy hybrid than a true EV, although it drives more like an EV than a regular hybrid. Depending on how you use the car, it might be a huge difference or none. A range-extender, or plug-in hybrid as it's more commonly known, has a petrol engine which they can use to power the electric motor once the batteries have drained, but the petrol engine does not directly drive the wheels*. The Vauxhall Ampera/Chevrolet Volt twins are the leading example of this type of car, and they claim urban fuel consumption of 300mpg (yep, that's three hundred. Not a typo!)

A car running on an electric motor is usually quiet (eerie silence or a distant hum instead of an audible petrol engine) and smooth (no vibrations from the engine or gearbox). The response from the car away from rest is both immediate and decisive, as electric motors instantly generate vast amounts of torque. They're quiet from the outside to such an extent that the EU is considering making audible warnings compulsory in the future as pedestrians won't hear an electric car coming.

In terms of exciting handling, electric cars are usually not brilliant, it must be said. They tend to be very heavy and usually run tires & wheels that are more beneficial for the economy than handling. But as commuter vehicles around town, they are zippy and efficient. Plus, they generate less noise, heat, and pollution into the street, so a traffic jam of Nissan Leafs in the city would be a lot more pleasant for passing pedestrians.

The batteries on a typical electric car only give it enough range for a few miles (although a true EV will have a bigger battery pack as it doesn't have to fit a petrol engine & fuel tank as well), so the cars use various means to charge the battery while driving. Usually, this involves converting kinetic energy from coasting and braking to electric energy stored in the batteries. The Fisker Karma even has solar cells to charge the batteries on its roof.

However, a longer journey will inevitably mean that the batteries are drained. In a fully electric car, you have to stop and charge the batteries, so hopefully, you parked near a power socket somewhere and have several hours to find something else to do. In a hybrid, the petrol engine will start to provide power. In a regular hybrid like a Prius, the car effectively becomes an ordinary petrol car, albeit with a relatively underpowered engine pushing a heavy car around, so it's not swift. In a 'range extender' like the Ampera/Volt, the petrol engine provides energy to the electric motor to drive the wheels, which is more efficient in performance and economy. Depending on your driving, they can use any excess energy from the petrol engine to charge up the batteries again, so the car may switch back to electric power once charging is complete.

So what does this mean in the real world?

Well, how much of the following driving do you do? We're assuming that the batteries are fully charged when you set off.

Short trips (<50 miles between charges).

These journeys are ideal for electric cars and plug-in hybrids, as the batteries will cope with the whole journey and also get some charge while you drive. A regular hybrid will still need to use the petrol engine, although how much depends on how you drive it and how much charging it can get along the way.

Medium trips (50-100 miles between charges).

These trips give EV drivers plenty of stress, as the traffic conditions may mean you run out of juice before you make it to your charging point. A plug-in or regular hybrid will be fine because they can call on the petrol engine. In a regular hybrid, the car will be petrol powered for most of the journey. A plug-in hybrid will be mainly electric, with the petrol engine kicking in to top up the batteries if needed late in the journey.

Longer trips (100+ miles between charges)

Not feasible in a fully-electric car, as you will almost certainly run out of electricity before you get there. The regular hybrid is a petrol car for almost the whole journey. The plug-in hybrid is primarily electric but supplemented by petrol far more efficiently than a regular hybrid.

The pros and cons:

Let's summarise the three types of electrically-powered cars:

Common hybrid (e.g., Toyota Prius)

PROS: cheaper, no charging required, no range anxiety, regular petrol engine makes it feel like a regular petrol car

CONS: only very short journeys (a few miles at best) will be fully electric, small battery pack and weak petrol engine means relatively poor performance compared to a regular petrol car or a fully electric car, poor economy when driven hard (like most Prius minicabs in London...), not very spacious for passengers and luggage due to carrying petrol and electric powertrains in one car

Fully electric car (EV) (e.g., Nissan Leaf)

PROS: powerful electric motor gives much better performance than a regular hybrid, larger battery pack means longer electric running, no petrol engine reduces weight and frees up a lot of space, £5000 government rebate, electricity is cheaper and usually less polluting than petrol, privileged parking spaces in certain public places

CONS: Still expensive despite rebate, minimal range capability due to lack of petrol engine backup, resulting range anxiety is a real issue for drivers, question marks over battery life, technology advances will make next-generation massively better and hurt resale value, some driving adaptation required, lengthy recharging required after even a moderate drive

Plug-in Hybrid / range-extender (e.g. - Vauxhall Ampera)

PROS: powerful electric motor and backup petrol engine give the best combination of performance and range, most journeys will be fully electric which is cheaper than petrol, no range anxiety, privileged parking spaces in certain public places

CONS: Costly despite rebate, question marks over battery life and resale value, wall socket charging is still slow, lack of space and very heavy due to having petrol engine and fuel tank as well as electric motor and batteries.

Electric Car Economics - is it all worth it?

For most people, an electric vehicle is difficult to justify on pure hard-headed economics. An electric car is expensive, even with a £5,000 rebate from the government. A Nissan Leaf starts at £31,000, so after the government gives you £5K, you have spent £26K on a car which would probably be worth about £15K if it had a standard petrol engine. That could conceivably buy you a decade's worth of fuel! And there are still question marks hovering over the long-term reliability of batteries and resale value, which may bite you hard somewhere down the line.

Electric Cars and the Environment

Buying a hybrid or electric car because you think you're helping the environment may not be helping that cause as much as you think. Producing car batteries is a dirty and complicated process. The net result is that building an electric or hybrid car has a significantly higher environmental impact than building a regular petrol or diesel car. So you're starting behind the environmental eight-ball before you've even driven your new green car.

Beware of "zero emissions" claims about electric vehicles because most electricity still comes from fossil fuel sources (like gas or coal) rather than renewable sources, so you are still polluting the atmosphere when you drive, albeit not as much, and the effects are not as noticeable to you. It is much more environmentally friendly if you have solar panels or wind farms to power your car.

Range anxiety

The biggest electric car turn-off for car buyers (other than the high purchase price) is the joint problem of minimal range and very slow recharging. In a petrol or diesel car, you can drive for a few hundred miles, pull into a petrol station, and five minutes later, you are ready to drive for another few hundred miles. In an electric car, you drive 50-100 miles, then have to stop and charge it for several hours to drive another 50-100 miles.

It may never be a problem if you only take short journeys and can keep the car plugged in whenever it stops (usually at home or work). But you can't expect to jump in the car and drive a couple of hundred miles or get away with forgetting to plug the car in overnight after a journey. You must be much more disciplined in planning your driving and allow for recharging. It is still a big problem away from home as there are relatively few power sockets available in public parking areas for you to use.

A plug-in hybrid like the Vauxhall Ampere/Chevrolet Volt gets around the range anxiety problem, as does a regular hybrid like a Toyota Prius. Still, you are carting a petrol engine (and fuel) around, which you may not need, adding hundreds of kilos of weight and taking up lots of space, so it's a compromise.

So as you can see from the above, it's not straightforward. You need to carefully consider what sort of driving you will be doing and what you need your car to be able to do.

*there is a complicated technical argument about whether the Ampere/Volt's petrol engine directly drives the wheels under certain circumstances. Still, it's boring and doesn't affect how the car drives.

Stuart Masson is the founder and owner of The Car Expert, a London-based independent and impartial car buying agency for anyone looking to buy a new or used car.

Originally from Australia, Stuart has had a passion for cars and the automotive industry for nearly thirty years and has spent the last seven years working in the automotive retail industry in Australia and London.

Stuart has combined his extensive knowledge of all things car-related with his experience in selling cars and delivering high levels of customer satisfaction to bring a unique and personal car buying agency to London. The Car Expert offers specific and tailored advice for anyone looking for a new or used car in London.

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