Don’t Fall For The Self-Charging Hybrid Con

The car business has become increasingly political as the market share of EVs grows and incumbents feel threatened. Manufacturers have taken a range of strategies to address the rapid change. Volkswagen is making a very credible attempt to join the party with the ID.3. But one leading vendor (recently joined by another) seems to think that resistance is the best option. I’m talking about the marketing drive towards “self-charging hybrids”, where the big selling point is that you don’t have to plug the car in for electric power, the implication being that this is a very bad thing. The subtext is that these vehicles somehow magically create electricity from thin air.

At first, you’d think it was unlikely that anyone could believe that a car would charge itself without using energy from somewhere else. That would break the laws of physics. However, a few days ago a conversation with a London taxi driver made me realise that for some people, this campaign is working. I’d just finished charging the Peugeot e-2008 loan car I was driving at the time outside my local leisure center, and the taxi driver was connecting his LEVC TX plug-in hybrid (PHEV) taxi. He said how much he liked it, but was looking forward to a self-charging one that wouldn’t need plugging in.

If you’re not familiar with the LEVC product, it’s a fantastic vehicle that couples the look of the classic black London taxi with a PHEV drive train. The taxi driver admitted that his LEVC TX’s interior was like a limousine, above the level of traditional London taxis, but otherwise offering the familiarly huge London taxi interior. This accommodates three passengers sitting facing forwards, but with room for another three facing backwards, for a total of six paying occupants.

The cleverest bit about the LEVC TX, however, is that it goes beyond most PHEVs by including a sizeable 31kWh battery and 148hp electric motor alongside its fossil fuel engine. Both are more powerful than what most PHEVs include. The conventional internal combustion engine is a three-cylinder 1.5-litre one with 81hp. LEVC claims 80.6 miles of EV range (my taxi driver friend said it was more like 60 miles in practice), but the petrol engine will increase this to over 300 miles. This seems like the perfect combination for car service use, providing plenty of emission-free electric driving in a city, but reliable range and emergency refueling for longer highway airport runs. LEVC claims a combined fuel economy of 217.3mpg (that’s the British measurement, for American readers, and the US figure would be less).

How any “self-charging” hybrid could match the economy available from this setup is really beyond belief. Even the latest Toyota Prius hybrid only promises 83mpg. The taxi driver seemed to think that regenerative braking alone would be enough to replace the plug-in charging. Only after some discussion was he convinced that the majority of the energy used to get to the speeds where braking would charge the batteries would be coming from fossil fuels burning within an internal combustion engine. With a hybrid-only system, a taxi’s fuel economy would be far below the LEVC TX he had, and emissions far higher. Yes, he wouldn’t have the inconvenience of having to plug in to charge regularly; but his running costs and emissions would suffer enormously.

This is the problem with the current negative strategy against plugging in to charge. The whole campaign about “self-charging” hybrids is disingenuous at best, and potentially deliberately misleading at worst. It’s particularly sad that one of the best EVs currently on the market, the Kia e-Niro, now also has a “self-charging” Niro hybrid sibling, jumping on the bandwagon. In reality, there is nothing new about “self-charging” hybrids. They’re just hybrids, the same technology that has been available since the launch of the Toyota Prius over 20 years ago.

The worst thing of all about calling hybrids “self-charging” and implying that this makes them better than plug-in hybrids and BEVs is that it obscures the fact that hybrids do have their place. If you live in a city, don’t have access to charging, and mostly do urban miles, they still make sense for many car buyers, including taxi drivers. But if you have any chance to charge a plug-in, the PHEV is much cheaper to run, and a good battery-electric vehicle much cheaper still. So don’t be fooled that “self-charging” will somehow give you free electric miles. It won’t, and the adverts that imply this are an attempt to sell you a car that could well be much less appropriate than a plug-in for your lifestyle – and wallet.