[Closed] Half decent hybrid SUV?

overstressed

Not the way she'll drive it.

Diesels still make sense, they are very economical and undertaxed given their pollution, latter really only a significant issue in major citites

This car is 50% school run 50% mum's social meets & 10% motorway. Diesel doesn't make sense as we'd wrath to keep the care for 10 years or so. Having said that our 2.0d Kuga has been fine since 2008.

I like the Tiguan and especially the latest facelift. I struggle with the price especially for the 4wd. Personally I would sacrifce space and buy a Q3 Quattro inc a used one if necessary to price match the VW. Whatever would have to have a 2L-ish motor

Half decent hybrid SUV?

oh, and SUVs are poor handling devil's work, but that's just IMHO. 😉

Agree with Del. They are currently worse than greenwash and very probably worse than diesels in some respects. The Mitsubishi PHEV is an absolute joke unless you are doing journeys that minimise the use of the engine.

In fact I can't think of many scenarios that could justify a plugin hybrid SUV - to be ecological and using primarily electricity you are looking at very short journeys (i.e. to the shops or around town) and therefore why would you want/need a massive SUV? If you are doing longer journeys lugging family or for work, then a hybrid is just you dragging an empty battery around with a massively underpowered (and hence over stressed) petrol/diesel engine.

Total garbage. Full electric though is becoming more and more attractive as time goes by.

correct, they're only half decent. electric runs out early as it has to haul around a fuel engine, under powered fuel engine ( as it has the electric to help ) is inefficient as it has to haul around electric motors and a big battery.
full electric FTW.

I think you miss the point. The battery mostly just makes the engine more efficeint, as it recovers energy that would otherwise be lost, or covers the least efficient types of driving. But some can be plugged in and drive say 20-30 miles or so.

It's a pretty decent compromise, becaues you can drive it indefinitely on petrol only whilst still being as efficent as a diesel, much cleaner and much better in town. And having an electric option for short trips. You could do all your town driving on electricity easily, but still be able to drive long trips without having to have a different car. You seem to forget that people use the same car for different trips.

So they win over full electric at the moment for some usages.

Hybrids aren't greenwash, it's putting a hybrid powertrain in an SUV that is.

If you are doing longer journeys lugging family or for work, then a hybrid is just you dragging an empty battery around with a massively underpowered (and hence over stressed) petrol/diesel engine.

Don't think you understand how petrol engines work. They are more efficient at wide throttle and low revs, not 'overstressed'. And most parallel hybrids have 80-100bhp petrol engines when they only need 30bhp or so to power them along, so aren't overstressed in the least. Even my now venerable Prius cruises at nice low revs on the motorway, but that's cos of the wide range of effective gear ratios available from the HSD transmission you don't appear to know much about.

And the batteries need not be empty - the ones with a big enough battery, you can drive on petrol until you get to a town in the middle of your journey, then switch to electric as you sit in a traffic jam, then back to petrol. So pretty useful.

The new VW Tiguan with the 150ps 1.4 TSi will get you high 40's MPG if driven sensibly.

Our Gert's 140 TSi Ibiza long term (trip computer) average is 37.6mpg to give you an idea of what's more likely. Always tickles me when you ask people what they get to the gallon and they say "it can do... on a run... if you're careful". In other words, they tell you the absolute maximum they once saw.

This car is 50% school run 50% mum's social meets & 10% motorway

why is it madness ? I have one of those 17 plate diesels - a large family estate, on a 4 yr pcp. I do 20k miles a year, often journeys which wouldn't fit with electric or hybrid charging. VED may cost me a couple of hundred extra when I tax it at end of years 1 and 2, and the manufacturer will no doubt want it back for a swop during year 3. So I get a 40 mpg comfy torquey car, on an affordable pcp, with low deposit, and after 3.5 yrs, change to something else. No madness there IMO

Not madness from your perspective - or mine, as I do more like 25k per year, but given the emissions, its hard to see how they aren't being legislated against to make petrols more attractive.
The end of my 50 mile commute is across Edinburgh - I wouldn't be surprised to see them outlawed or heavily taxed for city entry in the near future. (Although Edinburgh folk did vote against a congestion charge 🙄 )

Our Gert's 140 TSi Ibiza long term (trip computer) average is 37.6mpg to give you an idea of what's more likely.

You must surely not know how to drive economically 🙂

So what electric options are there for a 150 mile + range (other than a Tesla 😛 ) ?

You must surely not know how to drive economically

Fair comment - probably not, but she's not racing either. At a steady 70 on the motorway it does less than 40mpg.

Still seems off. It ought not to be using any boost when crusing at a constant speed on a flat road, so it should be no worse than any other 1.4. But that requires pretty good throttle control, preferably cruise control - some people are constantly mashing the throttle and lifting off, which is terrible for fuel economy.

It's not just speed that knackers your economy, it's smoothness and light touch.

if you have a light foot then i'll concede that hybrids have their uses, but their under-powered engines are not best suited to motorway work by themselves, so yeah, you can keep going, but you better not be in a hurry.

So what electric options are there for a 150 mile + range (other than a Tesla ) ?

their under-powered engines are not best suited to motorway work by themselves

Disagree with this.

Ever driven a hybrid?

mitsu phev. bobbins. and staggeringly expensive to boot.

staggeringly expensive to boot

Don't disagree with that. Unless you get one as a company car, then they are quite decent.

Agree with Del. They are currently worse than greenwash and very probably worse than diesels in some respects. The Mitsubishi PHEV is an absolute joke unless you are doing journeys that minimise the use of the engine.

In fact I can't think of many scenarios that could justify a plugin hybrid SUV - to be ecological and using primarily electricity you are looking at very short journeys (i.e. to the shops or around town) and therefore why would you want/need a massive SUV? If you are doing longer journeys lugging family or for work, then a hybrid is just you dragging an empty battery around with a massively underpowered (and hence over stressed) petrol/diesel engine.

It is very usage dependent but I've been considering an Outlander PHEV for us - single car household, 2 kids and related paraphernalia. Vast majority of trips are sub 30 miles, many sub 5 miles, but with frequent enough trips further afield that pure electric would be a pain unless I could afford a Tesla (I can't). Makes a lot of sense to me to cover the short journeys (and the first few miles of longer ones) in traffic on electric, then use petrol when up to cruising speed, saving some electric for the slower stuff at the other end.

What's the alternative? A Leaf or similar and an account at the local hire firm to get something else when the journey is too long or we need to carry too much stuff? Or a regular petrol or diesel that will get terrible MPG most of the time on that usage profile?

Not that sold on an SUV, but it's the only thing with that kind of powertrain and some proper space at sensible money (2014 PHEVs are hovering around £15k now) - a Passat GTE estate would be perfect but too new and too pricey. Else just get the boring Toyota Auris tourer in hybrid form and at least it'll be better for most journeys.

A PHEV would be idea for you, Simon.

Considered a Peugot 3008?

Nope. The PSA diesel hybrid system is meant to be a shambles.

If your long trips are infrequent, how about a Leaf and a £3k Mondeo?

[quote="Del"]electric runs out earlyYou've completely and utterly failed to understand how a "hybrid" is meant to work. Well done.

But then you seem to be basing your views on the

mitsu phev. bobbins. and staggeringly expensive to boot.

[quote="Simon_G"]Else just get the boring Toyota Auris tourer in hybrid form and at least it'll be better for most journeys. It'll be a better car all round, in every way. Probably got more space in it than the Mitsubishi as well.

Considered a Peugot 3008?

I'm going to take another look at the Petrol PureTec. The thing is with the 3008 is the PCP payments are very high in comparison for the equivalent Tiguan, although the ballon payment is of course lower.

If your long trips are infrequent, how about a Leaf and a £3k Mondeo?

Really don't need two cars - in the last 10 years I've rented a car twice when wife and I needed to drive to different places at the same time. We can usually work around it by cycling or getting the train.

Would be £500+ for another set of insurance, then tax, servicing, MOTs, etc. Could easily offset any cost saving of running a Leaf.

If we needed two cars (e.g. both driving to work), a used Leaf would make perfect sense alongside something bigger and conventional fuelled.

Personally I don't think full electric is mainstream enough yet in terms of tech or indeed charging points (rapid vs normal etc). Hybrid makes much more sense as you have the petrol backup. Mrs B doesn't like the Yaris shape but I'd happily have one for Paris/London (save on C-charge) driving. Have suggested one to my parents too who are doing mostly 5-20 min trips in rural Hampshire

probably the worst PHEV on the market

But - there are loads on the roads, which presumably means lots of them on the second hand market. So it could be the cheapest way to get a plugin car.

Hybrid SUV? Jesus Christ, just buy a proper vehicle.
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http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/volvo/xc90/97392/volvo-xc90-t8-twin-engine-best-hybrid-cars

Drove a pretty old Ford SUV hybrid while in the 'states. Don't seem available here tho.

Have just ordered a golf GTE, company car and we've been pushed in the direction of PHEV's.

-Low (official) Co2, so low company car tax
-Whole life cost means you can have a better spec'd car over the diesel equivalent or have the same spec and lower tax.

I can charge the car at work and at home, so 6000miles a year commuting will be on pure electric, plus the local trips round town (will do 20 miles on EV).
The only issue is that on longer journeys (circa 9000miles/year), it will be on the petrol engine, which on a good run will manage 40mpg.
I've done some rough calculations and I won't be worse off and may save some money depending on how much I can drive the car in EV only.

Would I buy a PHEV with my own money, hell no, far too complicated (after warranty period issues, which there will be!) and there isn't the tax incentive. Would be going down the petrol route, or wait until the 48v micro hyrbrids arrive in the next year or so, which will have more of a real world benefit.

They aren't as complicated as you think. The really complex engineering bits of a car are in the engine, and that's basically the same. The gearbox (on the Golf) is also the same. There's just an electric motor stuck between the two. Electric motors are pretty reliable things and have been around for a long time. I'd bet the electric motor is the least likely thing to go wrong by some margin.

On the Toyota hybrids, there isn't even a clutch or gearbox which makes it simpler than a normal car. And no turbo, none of the highly engineered diesel stuff either.

wait until the 48v micro hyrbrids arrive in the next year or so, which will have more of a real world benefit.

?

I only found an article that said Audi were looking at a 48v battery to replace the 12v starter. Great idea, but it's not a hybrid. I think it says they want an electric supercharger, which is an idea I had about 10 years ago 🙂

They've been experimenting with electric chargers since the 80's. Too heavy, too expensive and too unreliable. And only (very) small improvements over mechanically driven chargers.
The new brushless ones are where it's at though. Massively better than the old school ones. That no one wanted. Electric charging is already in several products as well.

There are several concepts for 48V as well. All the way from heavy duty stop/start and starter motor (as per Audi). All the way through to light hybrid.

I'd thought that when you have a hybrid car you already have a way of generating or using lots of electricity, so that opens up lots of ways to harvest energy or put it back in.

I thought a generator attached to an exhaust turbine would be cool - but rather difficult to actually engineer.

I am of the same mind as Sir HC. Buy/lease new and you have a warranty, I would be very cautious about being liable for motor/battery replacement etc

The motor replacement is highly unlikley imo. The batteries last many many years, much longer than the warranty. And they are modular too so you don't need to bin the whole thing if a cell fails.

We had a problem with our Prius a couple of years ago. Guess which bit went wrong.

Any car will be a nightmare after the warranty runs out these days.

At least BEV's and Hybrids have the longest warranty period. My Toyota Auris estate has a 5 year standard warranty and 8 yr battery/HV warranty whilst my Leaf has a 5 yr HV parts warranty and unlimited yearly (up to 100,000m) battery cover.

As people have stated there is less to go wrong but unfortunately if something does fail it will be fantastically expensive to fix.

Why do you say that?

What do you think is in there?

Don't think you understand how petrol engines work. They are more efficient at wide throttle and low revs, not 'overstressed'. And most parallel hybrids have 80-100bhp petrol engines when they only need 30bhp or so to power them along, so aren't overstressed in the least. Even my now venerable Prius cruises at nice low revs on the motorway, but that's cos of the wide range of effective gear ratios available from the HSD transmission you don't appear to know much about.

And the batteries need not be empty - the ones with a big enough battery, you can drive on petrol until you get to a town in the middle of your journey, then switch to electric as you sit in a traffic jam, then back to petrol. So pretty useful.

Yes I used the wrong word in overstressed. My point was that the hypothetical Mitsubishi PHEV driver thinks he's going to get 180mpg and save the planet. If he drives well within the capacity of the battery then happy days (like maybe Simon above). If he schleps it up and down the motorways for work - which I assume is common for many getting this car cheap on a company car scheme, then he's probably driving a two tonne vehicle with a petrol engine, and getting 18mpg (I haven't checked what car true mpg so may be wrong). A vehicle that would probably have been half a tonne lighter without the battery and hence burned less fuel.

The Prius I have much more time for, maybe as it's lighter? Seems to get truly good mpg.

Molgrips,please don't be so patronising.

if you drive a BEV you tend to keep up with the forums that relate to them. I therefore am fully aware of how expensive various parts of these cars are to fix if they break, especially Renault Zoe which have a fantastically high failiure rate. Tesla are crazy prices as well. Even Leaf's which are generally very reliable can break and typical HV repair cost is 2-3k.

Molgrips,please don't be so patronising.

I don't mean to be. I just want to talk about cars. Don't project a patronising tone of voice on me 🙂 I spent a lot of time on the Prius forums when I got mine - didn't see many horror stories there, so it's not universal. I was mainly talking about Jam who seemed to be talking about hybrids in general.

Let's not forget that a browse of diesel forums will also produce lots of £2k horror stories. Interested in the links though. Curious to see what fails.

If he schleps it up and down the motorways for work - which I assume is common for many getting this car cheap on a company car scheme, then he's probably driving a two tonne vehicle with a petrol engine, and getting 18mpg (I haven't checked what car true mpg so may be wrong).

They do about 30mpg on petrol only, with a mix of petrol and electricity they do 60 ish. According to my mate who has one.

A vehicle that would probably have been half a tonne lighter

Bout 230kg ish from what I can tell.

Ha sorry mol. But I do know exactly what is under the hood!

Yes Toyota hybrids are VERY reliable, especially the 2nd gen Prius that was overengineered as it needed public acceptance and multiple failiures would have been catastrophic for the new HSD development.
Same with the Ampera which is a genius car and almost never breaks despite being very complicated.

Its a tradgedy we haven't got the Chevvy Bolt over here as it would solve most people's issue of range v cost. It costs 35k USD and does a real world 200 miles on one charge. It doesn't look too bad either

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And it does 0-60 in 6 sec....

But I do know exactly what is under the hood!

Please excuse me, as most people don't have a clue 🙂

Its a tradgedy we haven't got the Chevvy Bolt over here as it would solve most people's issue of range v cost. It costs 35k USD and does a real world 200 miles on one charge.

That does look good. If it turns profitable, then we I'm sure we'll see it or similar. The American market can drive adoption elsewhere. I think the Prius was developed for that market because there were almost no diesels, and we only got it because why not.

Comparable to BMW i3 though? Which seem to be popular here.

Unfortunately the i3 BEV will only do 100 miles max and the REX is no real solution with a silly moped engine out back - not really the solution we are looking for. Plus its only a 4 seater and its looks are very devisive

A mitusbishi phev will do around 28-30 miles max on electric, as long as you stay below sixty and avoid the hills.

If you are doing any kind of distance run at speed, after the battery has expired you are looking at 30mpg ish or even less.

I'd contest there is no such thing as a decent SUV.

Barring it's appalling fuel consumption I really like the SUV I have (a petrol Mazda CX-7) to the extent that it's not the easiest to replace as all the alternatives are either too slow, too small or too expensive.

Why do people with hybrids want to use the battery first? Why not let the car use it for what it's best suited for?

The people i work with who drive hybrids are getting (real) 50-60mpg by just sticking it in hybrid mode and driving.

General public seem to get 10-15mpg less, by sticking it in electric mode until it runs out, then driving round with the fuel engine running until the battery recharges.

If you are commuting any distance, or at any speed, the plug in charge really doesn't give enough range/performance to offset the terrible fuel consumption you get once the battery is empty.

It depends how the car lets you do it. In the Mitsubishi it will prioritise electricity usage unless you hit the 'save' button. So you can keep your charge until you hit city traffic and use the engine on the motorway or A road.

But if you are doing 100 miles, whatever happens 70-75 miles of that will be mostly petrol.