My plug-in-hybrid experience

User: kazuokev@hotmail.com

Vendor: Drive Green - Green Energy Consumers Alliance

Action: 3544 - Buy or Lease an Electric Vehicle/Hybrid

Plug-in-hybrids (PHEV) can be a useful first step in electric vehicle ownership.  I hope my example will help convince someone who is not quite sold on a fully-electric vehicle right now but is open to the idea and willing to give a PHEV a try.  

I bought my PHEV new in August 2020. It has a 10 kilowatt hour battery and EPA rating of 28 miles of all-electric range; in gas-only mode it is EPA rated at 39 mpg combined city/highway.  I typically drive all electric around town and use gasoline only when I need to maintain speed on certain uphill roads, when I am driving on highways, and on road trips. 

I typically set the car's timer to charge between 2am and 4am.  Overnight charging accomplishes two goals that are important to me: 1) electric grid demand is typically at its overnight low at that time which means the grid is likely emitting a below-average amount of pollution (the grid is typically dirtiest at the evening peak, usually between 5pm and 7pm); and 2) charging overnight in the garage is more convenient than going to the gas station every few weeks.  

In 2023, I drove my PHEV about 13,000 miles and consumed about 75 gallons of gasoline.  Applying the EPA rating of 39 mpg across 75 gallons of gas, I estimate about 3000 miles driven on gas and so estimate 10,000 miles driven on electricity, much of which was the result of overnight charging.  I estimate that by driving 10,000 miles on electricity, I displaced 250 gallons of gasoline consumption with electricity obtained from the grid at its (relative) cleanest and cheapest point (if you want to nitpick, the grid is having increasingly frequent days when rooftop solar causes the midday low in demand to be cleaner and cheaper than the overnight low, so charging from about 10am to 2pm on a sunny day may be even more advantageous-‘Duck curve’ days becoming more frequent as solar power spreads - ISO Newswire)

I think of my situation like this: I've got an electric vehicle about 75% of the time, and a hybrid 25% of the time.  Because I can charge in my garage and because I might have only one or two long road trips per year, I don't have any of the "range anxiety" that seems to be the most-commonly mentioned reason why people won't consider owning an electric vehicle.  By having a car that can plug in and trying to charge whenver I can, I am now very familiar with the charging stations located convenient to my day-to-day travel, and with using phone apps (I recommend plugshare) to find chargers.  Because of this familarity, my eventual switchover to fully-electric driving will be very easy (and increasingly easier as more chargers get built).