Plug-in hybrids are a mistake – carmakers should draw conclusions

The plug-in hybrid can definitely be seen as a symbol of the failure of the established automotive industry, which has denied reality for far too long. When the corporations were still making good money with gasoline and diesel vehicles, well-known German manufacturers such as Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler refused to admit that the age of the internal combustion engine was over.

Up until a few years ago, they were ridiculing electromobility and competitors such as Tesla and electric car start-ups from China. For too long they did not believe that the regulators in Brussels were serious about the CO2 limit values.

But the European Commission was extremely serious. And when penalties threatened if the CO2 fleet consumption exceeded a limit of 95 grams per kilometer, the proud car companies were helpless. They had almost no electric cars on offer. With the emission-free vehicles, they could have reduced their fleet consumption.

But car manufacturers and suppliers couldn’t just build electric cars straight away, they lacked the know-how, and the economic damage of letting the combustion engine business run out in such a short time and instead building electric cars would have been immense. Not to mention the social upheaval that no union would have accepted. The plug-in hybrid was needed – as a temporary solution.

Top jobs of the day

Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.

The basic idea of ​​the double drive train is not wrong per se. The combination of an electric and a combustion engine has advantages. Thanks to the fossil fuel drive, drivers can stay mobile even on long journeys without long charging times. Thanks to the electric drive, they can move around the city with zero emissions in environmental zones. Combined, consumption and CO2 emissions should be lower than with pure combustion engines.

The conceptual implementation of the idea, however, was miserable. The car manufacturers simply did not think of the plug-in hybrid from the customer’s point of view. Instead, the premise was to bring a large number of plug-in models onto the market as quickly as possible without great expense in order to avoid CO2 fines.

For this reason, plug-in hybrids have not been integrated into new production platforms for electric cars. Instead, the double drive train was forced into vehicles that are actually based on pure combustion platforms and in which no space was provided for the electric motor and battery.

Electric cars are replacing plug-in hybrids

Customers have to live with the consequences. With a Mercedes C-Class, for example, you have to accept a significantly smaller trunk if you opt for a plug-in hybrid. The electric range is usually so short that only the regulatory minimum range of 40 kilometers can be covered without the aid of the internal combustion engine. The owners of plug-in hybrids therefore have to charge their vehicles practically every day.

But that is exactly what does not happen because it is time-consuming and impractical. Instead, the combustion engine drags the inactive electric motor and the empty lithium-ion batteries around with it. The supposedly environmentally friendly plug-in hybrids are becoming polluters.

graphic

The most serious consequence from the customer’s point of view, however, is the increasing residual value risk. New charging stations are created every day – the worry of not finding a charging station is disappearing, the use of plug-in hybrids is decreasing.

At the same time, the car manufacturers are now openly admitting that plug-in hybrids are nothing more than a stopgap solution for them. How else can you explain that Daimler or Skoda are no longer planning any successor models for the existing plug-in models?

The plug-in hybrid will therefore be obsolete in many markets in a few years. So anyone who owns such a vehicle today can watch the value melt away in fast motion.

Given this background, it is hardly surprising that the demand for plug-in hybrids is falling behind purely electric cars in Germany. And experts expect that electric cars will displace plug-in hybrids in some Western European markets with well-developed charging infrastructure faster than expected.

The car manufacturers should therefore be honest and no longer offer plug-in hybrids in markets in which the charging network will be expanded across the board in the coming years. Anything else would be a waste of resources that carmakers should rather invest in the development and production of all-electric cars

More: Plug-in hybrid model is being phased out – electric cars are catching on faster than expected.

.
source site