General Tax

[Most Easterly Pandas]

No citation needed.

Laughable ::

I call complete BS on your assumption then, and claim it to be the other way around and only 1% are never plugged in - I'm clearly right and won't bother to citate this.

My friend has a Mitsubishi PHEV truck which has never been plugged in.

Well my sister always plugs her Outlander PHEV in, so on this very limited pool of data we're already at 50% from 99%!

They only have it for the tax benefits but do use it on battery mode in traffic like any other hybrid.

Well at least they're saving fuel and not giving people increased chances of lung cancer in traffic at least then

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

I certainly remember reading about this on the BBC in recent years:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54170207
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46152853
I don't particularly trust the beeb for accuracy in specialist fields like this (any more than any other mainstream media agency), but they did commission an independent test on corporate fleets by The Miles Consultancy in the UK, and this claim was supported by the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association.

So they've pooled all their data from one data set. Like any data, you can make it say what ever you want it to if you're select about where you gather it from.

I can't say I'm surprised. Why would you plug in at home when you pay for your electric when your company give you a fuel card

At least fleet and lease vehicles only spend about 20% of their life in a fleet before becoming privately owned, where they'll likely be plugged in.

 

[Jockcl500]

The company I work for has recently installed a load of chargers in their carpark, for the plugin fleet of cars they are now using, I expect there is a tax advantage for moving from the previous diesel fleet to plugin, but it can't be a bad thing for the environment and I'm sure they are getting plugged in.
I wonder where the data came from about people not plugging them in.

 

[DaveMcT]

Mitsubishi refute the claim but their claim of 140mpg for the Outlander is hugely inflated. Auto Express says - Quote:

The research was carried out by The Miles Consultancy, a specialist firm that helps companies interrogate their workers’ driving habits and fuel consumption figures. By analysing economy figures for around 1,500 cars, the consultants calculated average fuel economy for PHEVs at 39.27mpg.

Official figures indicate some of the more common PHEVs on the market should return around 140mpg. And while drivers who regularly charge up their PHEVs’ batteries are actually likely to see a figure of around half that in the real world, The Miles Consultancy claims many drivers did not even bother unwrapping their cars’ charging cables from their cellophane packaging.​

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-n...d-plug-in-hybrids-may-never-have-been-charged

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

Mitsubishi refute the claim but their claim of 140mpg for the Outlander is hugely inflated. Auto Express says - Quote:

The research was carried out by The Miles Consultancy, a specialist firm that helps companies interrogate their workers’ driving habits and fuel consumption figures. By analysing economy figures for around 1,500 cars, the consultants calculated average fuel economy for PHEVs at 39.27mpg.

Official figures indicate some of the more common PHEVs on the market should return around 140mpg. And while drivers who regularly charge up their PHEVs’ batteries are actually likely to see a figure of around half that in the real world, The Miles Consultancy claims many drivers did not even bother unwrapping their cars’ charging cables from their cellophane packaging.​

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-n...d-plug-in-hybrids-may-never-have-been-charged

Again, only on about fleets where drivers have no incentive to pay to charge their works vehicle when they’ve a free fuel card.

My previous PHEV had a claimed 134.5mpg. I was averaging 140-160.

PHEVs will always be dependant on operator behaviour. I suspect many domestic PHEV operators are obtaining the MPG claimed with ease if using the vehicle properly.

I might also add that 39.3 mpg from a massive Chelsea tractor of a 4x4 like the outlander, which being a company car is likely to be being flogged to death everywhere, is significantly better than any other similar sized petrol vehicle that can’t be plugged in, and likely better than a diesel version also.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

replying to silly comments about hybrids

This is what’s known as a Strawman argument, often used by people who are trying to avoid an argument they can’t win or don’t want to draw attention to.

The initial and random comment was about how car tax was all political and that he should be able to convert his car to LPG for cheaper car tax. This point is now being avoided to concentrate on an argument that can’t really be argued either way, just to avoid the initial point.

He tried to draw a comparison between a hybrid and a car with LPG, stating (when commenting that an LPG car would not have lower emissions if it was only ever run on petrol) that it was no different to a hybrid that is never plugged in, this is of course nonsense because as you know a hybrid is still more efficient than a purely petrol car even if you never plug it in.

Now he’s going to keep arguing that people don’t plug in hybrid cars as his ‘strawman’ because he can’t actually back up or prove the point he originally made.

The best bit of all this is that there are still plenty of hybrids that definitely have never been plugged in... like all the mild hybrids about such as Fiat’s hybrid offering that does not come with any option for plugging in.