It surely depends how you use it the rest of the time. If you use it in the same way at the weekends (8 miles to the shops or entertainment) then why carry the weight and packaging compromise of the ICE which will also deteriorate through lack of use? If however most weeks you do longer journeys beyond the capability of an EV then the ICE is justified.
A good PHEV is ideal if you have a regular combination of short journeys with charging capability at each end and long journeys beyond the capability of an EV.
For me I need the greater range around 5 times a year and its more convenient to hire for those and use an EV for the rest.

 

Don't worry, just drive it in EV. The car should take care of the engine, meaning once in a couple of months it will start the ICE for maintenance. At least that's what my former VW Golf GTE did.

Read your manual, there should be a best practice statement.

 

You're using it as intended. I'd assume that the engine will start if the manufacturer thinks it needs to do.

 

Ok, forgetting the "you must go EV EVangelism", especially since you've already bought the car, the above post is right - drive it in the cheapest way you can. As said, the engine should have a regular start up just in case you haven't done that yourself, either by accident or design, and revel in the knowledge that you've bought a much better car than most EV owners (of normal income rather than above) own, you don't suffer from any range anxiety, and will more than likely not have any issues with the car because of it's "worst of both worlds" design (!) - this anti-PHEV retoric is becoming realy really annoying.

 

I’m not so worried about the long term effects on the ICE, petrol engines are fairly robust and as you mention, periodic running helps keep things in order. Im more interested in the effects the increased duty cycle on the battery/motor/inverter due to increased reliance on the EV only components. In a fully electric vehicle this would be the norm but in a hybrid presumably the design brief would have been to split the duty between the EV and ICE appropriately.
I suppose the basis for the question is by running in EV mode all the time do I increase the wear on these components and reduce their ‘life’ to a point where they will need replacing and I’ll have to sell a kidney to fund it.

 

I suppose the basis for the question is by running in EV mode all the time do I increase the wear on these components and reduce their ‘life’ to a point where they will need replacing and I’ll have to sell a kidney to fund it.

PHEVs are complicated cars, so I personally have no intention of running my GTE without a warranty (I factored in the VW extended warranty when budgeting the car running costs). Might be worth considering if you want to keep your kidneys.

 

I'm not sure there's any evidence that the EV components in a PHEV are designed any differently than in a pure EV, even if they're slightly smaller probably, so follow the "rules" (AKA guidance) on looking after an EV battery, and that will probably fare the same as an EV will - regards the motor, then I think that may be in the hands of the gods - the evidence is that they do last generally very well, but I would suspect that if you've got a baddun, that won't help - the longer it lives without breaking, probably means it will last longer than you possibly !!

 

My parents have a Volvo V90 T8. 90%, or maybe more, of their trips around are in pure EV mode like you. What has been said to them is to charge the car every time they could and drive "normally". The car manages the rest.

In part i understand this anti PHEV retoric over europe. In Portugal government has completely cut the monetary help to buy them. I don't know what's the percentage in Britain, but here i bet 80% of the users simply don't charge their PHEVs regularly. The only reason here to buy one is the fact that with a little charge they can have much more powerful cars to drive off stop signs. That's our sad reality.

 

I wish someone would do a study of PHEV charging patterns - it would seem to me time to find out just how true the anti-phev claim that they're never charged actually is !!

 

My average over the last 2200 miles in my GTE is currently about 150mpg, so assuming that the ICE averages about 45-50mpg (which doesn't seem unrealistic based on what I've seen so far), about 67-70% of my driving is "zero tailpipe emissions". Not sure if that means I'm doing it right or not, but I don't feel too bad about that. Would definitely be interesting to see where I sit compared to everyone else though, especially if the study splits out company car drivers and private owners. My guess is that the latter group is much more likely to "do it right".

Having said that, I'd expect my 150mpg average to drop significantly when (if?) lockdown gets lifted, as I'd be doing a lot more long distance driving on top of my current driving. Which is why I got a PHEV instead of a BEV.

 

On the EV forums you can find out that while PHEV owners never charge, they still like to hog charges that "should be reserved for BEVs".

 

How do you emphasise irony on here - "THATS WHY WE NEED AN INDEPENDANT SURVEY TO SEE IF THEY REALLY DO THAT"

 

so yet another PHEV owner who charges it - answer that one PHEV-haters !!

 

Well, I'm supposed to be getting 207mpg, so the car is still sitting on a shaky foundation of marketing nonsense, unrealistic tests and lies

 

Yup, my Ampy has done 94 mpg over the 5 years 60k miles I've had it. It only managed 54 mpg in the 3yrs 17k miles before that, when was used in London as Ulez-avoidance or tax-minimising device/whatever.

 

I’m not sure I found the an answer to my question but I have found out there seems to be quite a strong opinion about PHEVs which I was somewhat unaware of. I plug mine in, drive too and from work in full EV and it’s cut my fuel bill in half. It certainly works for me. I probably could have gone full EV but the hybrid was a nicer car and a comparison full EV would have cost way more and I like having the duel fuel option for peace of mind. For now it’s perfect. I will go full EV but I wanted to see how it worked for me first without fully committing.

 

To try and answer your qn, you're doing exactly what I did, 5 years ago, for the exact same reasons. You're not damaging it by mixing petrol use with electric or not. What Internal Combustion engines don't like is being driven hard when they're very cold, whether they're inside a Phev, Rex or regular ICE. So it's a good idea to avoid hammering the petrol/diesel stuff when cold, so try to minimise hard acceleration and high speed until it's warmed through.

If you can do your entire trip on electricity and zero petrol, that's best of all. And if you have to use petrol, it's a good plan to try and do the cabin heating as a freebie from burning petrol, rather then heating using the battery. So on long trips in my Ampera I'll heat the cabin when ICE fires up for a few miles, and when that cuts out, having charged the battery a bit, I turn the fan off which cuts the heating completely so the battery drives the wheels, not a resistance heater as well as wheels. So I try to get max range out of the electricity-only stages. To what extent you can do this in other Phevs all depends on the amount of control you have.

 

Great info and good advice, thank you. I did try preheating the cabin using the scheduled departure thingy whilst the still plugged in when the weather was particularly cold but found this came with a cost penalty of an additional 25% which negated a chunk of the saving I was gaining on over fuel so I canned that fairly quick.

 

I find the scheduled 330e pre-heat is too long, try starting it from the key fob or app about 10 minutes before you leave to reduce the impact ( or set the scheduled departure time 20 mins after you leave! ).

And remember, if it was an ICE and you were using the heater to clear the ice off the car, you would be wasting a lot of petrol as well sitting there waiting for the screen to clear.

 

Hi @ANicholls86 . I agree with the comments above about running it on electric as much as you can and just let the engine manage the rest. I had a PHEV Outlander and did the same as you for several years, obsessively so actually, which was why I wanted the range of full electric (Leaf 62) eventually. I did like the PHEV though. One thing I did notice was some battery degradation after about 50,000 miles, from the constant recharging of a smaller battery. Perhaps be mindful of that. When I was an Outlander driver I never experienced PHEV hate from BEV drivers by the way; always enjoyed good conversations at charge points, picking their brains. Now I'm BEV I don't hate PHEV therefore. Enjoy the car.

 

The bit which concerns me is battery life, typically the data for lithium ion batteries shows that the deeper you discharge it the fewer cycles you get before it degrades to some set level of reduced capacity.

Most PHEVs until recently have or had small batteries and while cars incorporate some reserve capacity into their use of the battery to extend the battery life, a typical journey for me would use most or all of the useable capacity in the battery. So a journey would typically be one cycle.

It's very difficult to find data from car manufacturers on how many cycles their batteries last, but the data for general lithium ion cells points to it being upto a few thousand cycles at most. So in a PHEV that's a few thousand all-electric journeys. That's fine for a few years ownership, but over the long term it's quite possible you'll hit that and the point where the battery has lost 20 or 30% of its original capacity.

I'm not sure what happens at that point because a lot of the data seems to stop at that level of capacity loss, so I don't know whether it carries on gently declining, or if it's a cliff edge type drop requiring battery replacement.

So my assumption is that it would be fine using it as an EV while it was younger upto maybe a thousand or two all electric trips, but then I'd expect the battery would be losing capacity and the car would be heading toward operating like a hybrid, or needing a battery replacement.

I'd be a bit wary about buying a used PHEV where it looked like the previous owner had using it as an EV, ideally you'd want one where the previous owner never plugged it in!

 

Having said that, I'd expect my 150mpg average to drop significantly when (if?) lockdown gets lifted, as I'd be doing a lot more long distance driving on top of my current driving. Which is why I got a PHEV instead of a BEV.
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Similar reasons/experience here. Bought my Volvo V60 PHEV 4 years ago to cover regular short journeys of between 16 and 50miles a day maybe 2 or 3 times a week and occasional work trips once a month of 200 miles plus. It seemed the right choice for me at the time. Over the life of the car - 35,000 miles reads 105mpg but this will reduce after lockdown is lifted. During this period I do try and run the car using ICE at least once a week. Outside of lockdown I have charged it regularly but mainly at home. Battery range capacity seems broadly the same as when first purchased

 

Ok, Ok, all company PHEV owners are tax dodging sods, killing kids because they get paid to do it. However, as a second owner PHEV, I use mine like an EV, and have been able to buy what is for me the equivalent of an EQC but for Leaf 30 money. So forgive me if I'm rather gratefull for PHEVs existing.

 

3yrs, 67k miles, 132.4mpg... Yep, some PHEV drivers do plug in.

Good old Ampera...

 

Just enjoy the PHEV and let the car take care of things. Carry on using EV mode as much as you can. I get a shock when mine runs the engine in maintenance mode!
I don't too much mind company car drivers not using hybrids as EVs as these cars all end up in the second hand market later on.