Hybrid car drivers of Urban - advice please

[Zapp Brannigan]

My wife's car (Kia Ceed, small diesel) has bitten the dust before Christmas. My car (Vauxhall Zafira, big diesel) has got 135k miles on the clock, is starting to show its age and the bills to keep it running are only going to go up.

The number of occasions where we both need to be on the road has become vanishingly rare; as has the need for seven seats since the eldest has got his own wheels and opts out of most family trips anyway.

So, we're doing the sensible thing and combining resources to replace the Zafira. Spec:

Estate
Automatic
Not older than 2020
Fewer than 40k miles
Budget around 20k.

So far so simple. Here's where it goes above my knowledge base - we'd like a hybrid.

Our driving is a mixed bag of town driving (train station, gym, shops, kids to sports stuff etc) coupled with longer runs (my occasional commute 50 miles on A and B roads, plus 60 motorway miles when 2 kids go between mine and their mum's).

As I understand it:

Mild hybrid - pros, the longer runs will recharge the batteries quite comfortably; cons, won't do the town driving on all electric.

Plug in hybrid - pros, will do the town driving on all electric; cons, most appear to charge on regenerative braking only so those longer runs will effectively be as a petrol car only carrying extra weight, and still needing extra charging.

Some (e.g. Mercedes) claim that their plug ins are smart enough that when motorway driving at constant speed (i.e. with plenty of power to spare in the ICE), put it in regenerative mode and it will act as a self-charger.

This to me would be ideal, as would the style and the performance of a CLA or C Class. Less ideal would be the running costs (insurance, tyres, servicing etc) in comparison with (e.g.) a Focus mild hybrid or a Skoda Octavia plug in.

So please, hybrid owners of Urban - hit me with your tales of ownership pros and cons. How much to charge at Tesco or similar, and how much driving does that get you? Are the published "electric only" ranges realistic? Does your plug-in self charge in any meaningful sense? Occasional 3-pin charging vs paying up front for a home fast charge? 70+mpg from a mild hybrid?

Suggestions for a stylish, quick, economical and practical estate also welcome.

 

[Looby]

I’ve got a Honda CRV mild hybrid. It’s fairly economical (35-40mpg) but I can’t really say I notice a huge amount of fuel savings. It feels a bit like environmental lip service without making much difference day to day and I don’t spend much time at all driving on electric.

I absolutely love the car though, I think it’s been my favourite of all my cars and it’s lovely to drive.

You can have mine in April.

I loved regen braking when I test drove electric cars but I know not everyone does. I tapped the brake twice in a test drive of a Tesla and I didn’t need to then.

I’m changing my car (lease on salary sacrifice) and considered a plug in but figured if I was going to get a charger I might as well go fully electric so I have.
I’m still waiting despite ordering in May because my chosen car is taking a fucking age to be built.

 

[mx wcfc]

Mrs mx drives a Mitsubishi plug in hybrid.

Battery range is piss poor in winter, and not brilliant even when it's warm. It's fine for local driving though.

Not very economical for longer distance driving using the petrol engine.

It is comfortable and nice to drive. The boot is big enough too.
However, it does like to beep at you, given the slightest excuse.

On balance, it's fine, but I can't recommend it. I expect there are better hybrids out there now.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

I’ve got a Honda CRV mild hybrid. It’s fairly economical (35-40mpg) but I can’t really say I notice a huge amount of fuel savings. It feels a bit like environmental lip service without making much difference day to day and I don’t spend much time at all driving on electric.

Forgive my ignorance - I've only ever owned petrol or diesel cars before.

Most info I can find says that mild hybrids don't really do electric only; just a pull away from standstill to avoid using the engine at its least efficient, then both power sources working together above a set speed. On your CRV, is electric only an option (e.g. for a short hop to the shops), or is that something that the car decides for itself?

 

[MickiQ]

We have a pair of full hybrids a Toyota and a Lexus they both charge the battery off the engine and regenerative brakes and don't need to be plugged in. They can both be driven in pure electric mode though not for very far. We normally let both decide which mode to run in, they switch back and forth seamlessly. The only time I press the EV only button is swapping them round in the drive when I'm washing them. The Toyota usually averages around 60-65 mpg doing mostly town driving. The Lexus does mid to upper 40's around town and mid-50's on a long run.
One trick it has that the Toyota lacks is when it's been driven steadily on the motorway it keeps the engine running at a constant speed and uses the battery for any surges in acceleration.
I'd recommend them there's the best of both worlds over a petrol only or an electric only car.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

We have a pair of full hybrids a Toyota and a Lexus they both charge the battery off the engine and regenerative brakes and don't need to be plugged in. They can both be driven in pure electric mode though not for very far. We normally let both decide which mode to run in, they switch back and forth seamlessly. The only time I press the EV only button is swapping them round in the drive when I'm washing them. The Toyota usually averages around 60-65 mpg doing mostly town driving. The Lexus does mid to upper 40's around town and mid-50's on a long run.

When you say "don't need to be plugged in", do you mean there's no plug in facility or their self-charging is sufficient?

<eta> can I also ask what model Toyota to get those figures - Yaris, Prius, Corolla?

 

[MickiQ]

When you say "don't need to be plugged in", do you mean there's no plug in facility or their self-charging is sufficient?

<eta> can I also ask what model Toyota to get those figures - Yaris, Prius, Corolla?

There is no plugin, the battery is entirely charged from the engine and the regenerative brakes (which actually produce a fair bit) As for the Toyota it's a Yaris 2020 model with a 1500cc engine. The salesman told us that Toyota's quoted figure for consumption was 80+ mpg but there was no way we would ever get that but 60+ is regularly doable.

 

[danny la rouge]

I drive a Honda Jazz. It’s a “true hybrid”, meaning you don’t plug it in.

It decides for itself when it’s going to be EC or petrol driven. In my experience it likes to be an EC at town driving speeds. On motorways I haven’t worked out what its criteria are.

The fuel consumption is far better than our old Jazz, which was of the non hybrid type. I’m filling up half as often as before.

Sorry, what was the question again? “Stylish”? No idea. Those considerations don’t trouble me when buying a car.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

I drive a Honda Jazz. It’s a “true hybrid”, meaning you don’t plug it in.

It decides for itself when it’s going to be EC or petrol driven. In my experience it likes to be an EC at town driving speeds. On motorways I haven’t worked out what its criteria are.

The fuel consumption is far better than our old Jazz, which was of the non hybrid type. I’m filling up half as often as before.

Sorry, what was the question again? “Stylish”? No idea. Those considerations don’t trouble me when buying a car.

Style has never troubled me before either, cars have always been a functional thing. For the first time in my life we're in a position to get something "nice" - practical is the main consideration, but I would like it if it (a) looks a bit good, and (b) has a bit of oomph.

I like the Ford Focus, the estate does look really good. The Mercedes CLA on the other hand is a beautiful piece of design and is a rocketship - but is plug in only, and would be a grand or so more expensive (for a year or so older and 10k miles more). I'm in a bit of a head vs heart dilemma.

 

[dessiato]

I bought a Cupra Formenta recently, PHEV. I use it on intelligent hybrid setting which means it uses electricity around town and a combination out of town. I currently get about 150mpg. I can get double this around town, I can get it down to 41mpg on long distance motorway driving. My Golf GTD would give me 56mpg. On just electricity I get about 45 miles.

At the moment, lights on, heating, wipers, screen heater, I still get about 35 miles.

It's quick, roomy and comfortable.

But the infotainment software is a nightmare. This week it'll go in for the third or fourth time. It's getting a complete new unit to try to solve the problems. They don't interfere with driving the car, but when it shuts down the sat nav, and the dash it is, at best, inconvenient. It very quickly reboots, but reboots with all the settings changed. Its not difficult to change them back, unless you're driving at the time.

The first time I tried to connect it to the Internet to use the remote pre-heat etc it told me I'd entered the pin wrong too many times and locked me out. I can drive as a guest, but have to set things again.

The brand new unit going in should solve these problems.

When it's working its the best car I've ever had. But...

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Zapp Brannigan, why not full electric? For the runs you list the charge would be fine and you won't be lugging an ICE engine around with you and there won't be all the things on an ICE engine that go wrong.

Main consideration for full electric or plug in hybrid though; can you charge at home? If not it adds a layer of hassle and is not as cheap as you can't take advantage of cheaper leccy during the night.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

Zapp Brannigan, why not full electric? For the runs you list the charge would be fine and you won't be lugging an ICE engine around with you and there won't be all the things on an ICE engine that go wrong.

Main consideration for full electric or plug in hybrid though; can you charge at home? If not it adds a layer of hassle and is not as cheap as you can't take advantage of cheaper leccy during the night.

Have thought about it. But, one of the youths is off to university in September (with 2 to follow probably in the next 4 years) - as our only main car, I can see a small but significant number of lengthy fully laden trips in our future.

Maybe it's just me - a step change from ICE too far in one go!

We don't have a fast charge setup at home (yet). On the other hand, our posh gym has got fast chargers (cheaper than supermarket or charging station versions too, thank you exhorbitant membership fees) and we go there 2 or 3 times a week; a charge or 2 would comfortably cover all the town driving with much to spare, and there's always the option of (very occasional) 3 pin trickle charging overnight at home.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

I bought a Cupra Formenta recently, PHEV. I use it on intelligent hybrid setting which means it uses electricity around town and a combination out of town. I currently get about 150mpg. I can get double this around town, I can get it down to 41mpg on long distance motorway driving. My Golf GTD would give me 56mpg. On just electricity I get about 45 miles.

At the moment, lights on, heating, wipers, screen heater, I still get about 35 miles.

It's quick, roomy and comfortable.

Those numbers are outstanding. Mind if I ask how you charge - is it using a home fast charger, and how much does it roughly cost from near empty to near full?

Also a follow up question - how is the self-charging element, does it do anything meaningful or just add the odd % here and there?

 

[Chz]

"Mild' hybrid is marketing bollx. The difference in the Real World between the same car with and without mild hybrid is basically undetectable. It's not actively bad, it just doesn't add any real value beyond gaming EU tests so it's best ignored.

Regular hybrids have value if you're primarily an urban driver. In mileage, not time! The higher your mileage at 50+, the lower the value of the full hybrid system is to you. Many newer systems disable the electric drivetrain at motorway speeds. (it still charges, of course)

Plug in hybrids are pretty much ideal, but still extract a hefty price for it. The electric system is still useful for shortish jaunts on the motorway, and if you're rarely a long range driver it may very well function as an EV 90% of the time. You do need somewhere to charge it, of course. Off property charging isn't really much cheaper than petrol, so if you live somewhere you can't charge at home the value is limited.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Those numbers are outstanding. Mind if I ask how you charge - is it using a home fast charger, and how much does it roughly cost from near empty to near full?

Also a follow up question - how is the self-charging element, does it do anything meaningful or just add the odd % here and there?

We have a full electric car, some things we learned through the baptism of fire of just getting one:

Fast chargers; you don't get them at home. The unit of power, like a ltr of petrol, is a kWh. A three pin plug gets you ~0.2kWh. A home charger boosts this to ~5 kWh. The posts you see in supermarket car parks and on the side of the road, where the car has to attach its own cable, they are the same as the home charger ~5kWh. They exist for people without home charger. A three pin plug will take our car about 3-4 days to charge, our home charger will go from 20 to 80% in the five hours we get cheap leccy during the night.

Fast chargers exist in car parks; service stations, pubs, public car parks, garden centres and so on. They are the large boxes with thick cables coming out of them that you plug in to your car. They vary between 50 and 300 kWh, most cars can't accept more than 150 kWh right now, but for our car 150 kWh will get a full charge in around 15 mins, so when they can take 300 that will halve the time to charge. These exist for people on the go who need a charge.

Cost.

Trickle three pin (you won't ever do this)

Home charger; ~35p per kWh during the day, ~6p per kWh at night, car/charger turns on when it is cheapest.

Fast charger; 75-90p per kWh, works out almost the same as petrol.

hth.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

hth.

Damn straight it does. Much obliged to you, ta.

 

[dessiato]

Those numbers are outstanding. Mind if I ask how you charge - is it using a home fast charger, and how much does it roughly cost from near empty to near full?

Also a follow up question - how is the self-charging element, does it do anything meaningful or just add the odd % here and there?

I plug it into a normal 13 amp socket. It takes about 4½ hours from 1% to 100% I get a special rate for overnight charging. I should buy a timer really but I just plug it in as I need.

The self charge seems quite good. It'll go dromedary 1% to 10% in 5 miles easily. With mine, if I drive it on M mode, whatever that is, and do my own shifting it's quicker than letting it do it entirely by itself.

I've no idea how much it costs, I pay £96 a month for all gas and electricity.

Hopefully the software problems will be solved this week. It's a great car but for this.

 

[Silas Loom]

If the children know that your electric car is range-limited they will choose a university that is easy to reach by public transport, demand less kitchenware, and only bring home the clothes for washing that will fit in a backpack. Splashing out on an ICE people carrier would be making a rod for your own back.

 

[Throbbing Angel]

I drive a Honda Jazz. It’s a “true hybrid”, meaning you don’t plug it in.

It decides for itself when it’s going to be EC or petrol driven. In my experience it likes to be an EC at town driving speeds. On motorways I haven’t worked out what its criteria are.

The fuel consumption is far better than our old Jazz, which was of the non hybrid type. I’m filling up half as often as before.

Sorry, what was the question again? “Stylish”? No idea. Those considerations don’t trouble me when buying a car.

Our Kia is the same (Sportage)

On motorways the criteria seem to be:
-downhill or on the flat if 25% battery or more = use battery (as long as you're not caning all the extras like fans/heaters/radio/heated seated/heated steering wheel/constantly adjusting this or that electric thing)
-even slightly uphill and/or battery below 25% = use petrol

this is based on my own observations only and by switching the screens on the dash so I can see what's going on
we seem to spend about 20-25% less on petrol depending on time of year (warm vs cold)

Round town - dunno really - leccy kicks in, leccy goes off. It always starts in electric mode and then petrol comes in depending on how hard you're pushing it/accelerating.

I really like it as does MrsA. It feels very safe. Lots of helper gadgets.

 

[Throbbing Angel]

Some (e.g. Mercedes) claim that their plug ins are smart enough that when motorway driving at constant speed (i.e. with plenty of power to spare in the ICE), put it in regenerative mode and it will act as a self-charger.

I'm 99% sure that's what our Sportage does.
I generally drive the motorway on auto, so a fixed speed using cruise control and let the distance sensor thing slow me down and speed me up as I approach a car in my lane that's slower than me. If I remember, I overtake .

If the lane detection was better I'd hardly need to touch the steering wheel. It's mental.

 

[kebabking]

Mrs has got a VW ID3 - I was a huge sceptic, based on the range (which is about 160 miles with 80% charge), but we have a slow charger at home (£1000 with Octopus, took about 4 weeks to get it installed because we had some fun with the National Grid) and we use the Zap app to plan our fast charging when we're out and about.

She's done Glasgow for the weekend (600 mile round trip) - it takes a bit of planning, and you flap a bit when you're doing your first long drag, but it soon becomes routine to stop for 45 minutes every hundred miles or so. A bit of shopping, a brew and a piss and it's done.

It's nippy as fuck, very comfortable - masses of room in the cabin, the boot could be bigger, so it might be worth looking at the ID4 - but we've done, two adults and two kids, a trip to York (170 miles) for an Airbnb weekend and there was no being bunched up.

Once they get to 350 miles, I'll get one.

 

[colacubes]

We have a full electric car, some things we learned through the baptism of fire of just getting one:

Fast chargers; you don't get them at home. The unit of power, like a ltr of petrol, is a kWh. A three pin plug gets you ~0.2kWh. A home charger boosts this to ~5 kWh. The posts you see in supermarket car parks and on the side of the road, where the car has to attach its own cable, they are the same as the home charger ~5kWh. They exist for people without home charger. A three pin plug will take our car about 3-4 days to charge, our home charger will go from 20 to 80% in the five hours we get cheap leccy during the night.

Fast chargers exist in car parks; service stations, pubs, public car parks, garden centres and so on. They are the large boxes with thick cables coming out of them that you plug in to your car. They vary between 50 and 300 kWh, most cars can't accept more than 150 kWh right now, but for our car 150 kWh will get a full charge in around 15 mins, so when they can take 300 that will halve the time to charge. These exist for people on the go who need a charge.

Cost.

Trickle three pin (you won't ever do this)

Home charger; ~35p per kWh during the day, ~6p per kWh at night, car/charger turns on when it is cheapest.

Fast charger; 75-90p per kWh, works out almost the same as petrol.

hth.

V helpful. Just got a full electric before Christmas so still learning!

Zapp Brannigan - we just got a full electric 21 plate for well under 20k. Depending on your circs you can get a home charger put in for under 1k so it’s worth considering.

 

[Signal 11]

The unit of power, like a ltr of petrol, is a kWh.

kWh is a unit of energy, e.g. how much energy your battery can store or how much of it you used on a journey.

kW is a unit of power, e.g. how fast you can charge the battery or how fast the motor can use it.

So if your battery can store 50kWh and you charge it at a rate of 5kW it will take 10 hours to charge it from empty to full.

A three pin plug gets you ~0.2kWh

~2kW (or 0.2kWh every 6 minutes).

 

[Looby]

I’m glad other people have explained how a mild hybrid works because I can’t despite having mine since 2021.

Tbf I'm still finding things on it I didn’t know about.
Just in time to sell it.

 

[Chz]

One interesting takeaway from the US market was Mazda. Mazda had one, somewhat unique hybrid vehicle ("mild" on a few, but I think we've established that doesn't count) prior to the 2025 model year. And has sales increases that would make VW envious as they sell a simply better equipped car for the money. The people who are "into" hybrid and EV tech have mostly bought in now. The rest of the public doesn't hate it or anything, but they sure aren't willing to pay extra for it.

Obviously ahead of the 2030/35 cutoffs Mazda now partners with Toyota on hybrid tech, but when asked five years ago about it they said "too soon, we'll get to it later" and done very, very well out of it.

Since most of our mileage is motorway, we skipped hybrid entirely this time and everything will be electric by the next time we buy a car. Neatly skipping hybrids entirely.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

Test drives booked - Skoda Superb, VW Passat, and by far and away my favourite (please let it be as good to drive as it looks...) the Mercedes CLA. All plug-ins, with a view to getting a home charger fitted (all in good time!).

 

[hash tag]

Here you go; types of hybrid. Hope the test drives go well. FWIW, I doubt you will ever achieve the quoted MPG.

What is a hybrid car? | Auto Express

Hybrids are everywhere but with mild hybrids, full hybrids and plug-in hybrids all available, understanding the technology can be hard.

www.autoexpress.co.uk

 

[Chz]

Test drives booked - Skoda Superb, VW Passat, and by far and away my favourite (please let it be as good to drive as it looks...) the Mercedes CLA. All plug-ins, with a view to getting a home charger fitted (all in good time!).

I haven't had a ride in the new CLA. But the old one was unmitigated shit. MB haven't been having a good time with the ol' quality control of late, but there's always a chance they've picked it up with the new model.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

I haven't had a ride in the new CLA. But the old one was unmitigated shit. MB haven't been having a good time with the ol' quality control of late, but there's always a chance they've picked it up with the new model.

It's a 2021 we're looking at. Deliberately testing the Skoda and VW first, so we're comparing the Merc with those rather than comparing vs the 10yr old workhorse currently sat outside!

 

[dessiato]

Re chargers, I got an electrician in to put a weatherproof outdoor socket. My car can happily charge off a normal 13 amp socket. It cost me £100, was done same day, and took only about two hours.

Before spending a lot of money on a special charger check that the car needs one. They can be very expensive to put in.