What are the advantages & disadvantages of hybrid cars?

A hybrid car has both an internal combustion engine (ICE) and an electric motor powered by an onboard battery. Depending on the relative sizes of the engine and motor, and how the battery is charged, there are several types of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).

• Conventional ICE vehicles are not hybrids as they do not have an electric motor. Their 12V battery is only used to start the engine and run systems like lights, windscreen wipers and the car radio.
• Mild hybrids (MHEVs) use a relatively small motor to provide an energy-efficient boost to the ICE, saving fuel during acceleration.
• Full hybrids (FHEVs) have a larger motor and can operate in full-ICE or full-electric mode, but the battery is charged from the ICE and energy recovered during braking.
• Plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) have both an ICE and an electric motor, but their batteries can be charged directly from the mains electricity supply.
• Range extender vehicles (REV or ‘REEV’ for range extender electric vehicle) operate primarily by electric motor, with a small ICE in case the battery charge runs out.
• Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) complete the spectrum, with no ICE at all, and as such are not ‘hybrid’ but fully electric.
• The different engine types mean there are many different advantages and disadvantages of hybrid cars, but in this guide, we will look at some of the more universal benefits and drawbacks.

How Common Are Hybrid Cars?

Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show that in 2021, there was a significant shift toward electric vehicles of all types. New car registrations were still down due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, but EVs showed strong growth year-on-year:

• Petrol: 762,000 new vehicles, down 15.7%
• Diesel: 136,000 new vehicles, down 48.1%
• MHEV: 297,000 new vehicles, up 64.7%
• BEV, PHEV and HEV: 453,000 new vehicles, up 58.7%

Of the new EVs registered in 2021, there were about 191,000 purely electric BEVs, along with 147,000 HEVs and 115,000 PHEVs. Nearly a fifth (18.5%) of new vehicles sold in 2021 had the option of plugged-in charging, including PHEVs and BEVs combined.

Why Choose A Hybrid Car?

So, why choose a hybrid car over a conventional ICE vehicle or a fully electric BEV? There are several advantages that make HEVs the go-to option for many motorists.

Access To Infrastructure

Electric car charging infrastructure has made huge advances in a concise space of time, but for motorists who don’t have easy access to ultrafast charging points, the option of driving under petrol or diesel power is still an important safety net.

Fast Refuelling

When your vehicle needs a pit stop, it’s still much faster to refuel than recharge. Again, this favours vehicles with some form of ICE, even if it’s the much smaller engine you’ll find on a REEV.

Regenerative Braking

On the other hand, HEVs can recharge their battery by recovering kinetic energy from the brakes when slowing down.

This system effectively gives you ‘free’ miles back onto your maximum range, which is why an onboard electric motor with high-capacity lithium-ion batteries will reduce the vehicle’s running costs over the long term.

Concerns About Hybrid Cars

As we’ve seen above, HEVs are a ‘best of both worlds’ option – but can they be the ‘worst of both worlds’ too?

Breakdown Risks?

With a powertrain that uses both an ICE and an electric motor, you might expect that there’s double the risk of something going wrong with a hybrid car. In fact, this is not the case with the best new models and top hybrids on the present-day market.

Research by Which? found that in their first four years of registration, just 17.3% of FHEVs experience one or more faults, compared with 18.6% of petrol cars, 29.1% of diesel, 27.5% of PHEVs and 31.4% of all-electric BEVs.

This might be because, rather than increasing the potential points of failure, the two power systems onboard help each other out, delivering higher horsepower together while reducing the strain on any one system under hard acceleration.

More Expensive?

Because they contain an ICE and an electric motor, there’s more to pay for upfront when you buy a hybrid car. However, that doesn’t mean they’re more expensive overall.

Once you hit the road, you start to recoup some of that extra cost in fuel savings and more efficient driving – plus with the best hybrids on the market, the better build quality should save on maintenance costs too.

Your mileage may vary (literally and figuratively) but overall, it’s not as clear-cut as basing the cost comparison solely on the retail price of the vehicle, and leasing arrangements can allow you to drive a brand-new HEV or BEV without facing the full upfront cost too.

Still Not Green?

One disadvantage of hybrids compared with BEVs is that the ICE will still put out some exhaust fumes. Because of this, hybrids are still responsible for a certain amount of air pollution, and don’t qualify for the same financial incentives as BEVs.

With that being said, you can still reduce some of your costs by choosing a hybrid with very low emissions – ideally under 50g/km of CO2, but also to a lesser extent on vehicles that put out up to 100g/km or even more. For salary sacrifice vehicles, cars which emit up to a maximum of 75g/km of CO2 are most cost effective.

The exact rules on this change over time, so it’s always worth checking the latest government guidelines to see whether a hybrid car could save you on your road tax.

What’s The Verdict?

Hybrids sit along the spectrum from conventional ICE vehicles to fully electric BEVs, so it’s not surprising that they combine some of the advantages and disadvantages of both types of powertrain, creating a unique proposition somewhere in between.

The different types of HEVs mean you have plenty of choice, with top-quality new models from respected manufacturers hitting the market all the time. As hybrid engine technology continues to evolve, this pushes the balance in favour of the benefits of HEVs.

For one of the easiest ways to ensure you always receive those full benefits, leasing HEVs means you can update to a newer model periodically, without facing the full purchase price each time.

Leasing arrangements can also include maintenance costs, so if you’re concerned about the reliability of HEVs (despite the findings from Which?) that’s a further way to get some peace of mind, allowing you to access all the advantages of hybrid cars with confidence.