Hybrids . . . .again

Are they really just fossil burners?

I had my first passenger ride in a hybrid car in Los Angeles way back in 2001. I’d never heard of the idea before then. A combustion engine and electric motor combined into one package, with a teeny tiny battery under the rear passenger seats.

Very ingenious.

If the Toyota Prius had been introduced into the UK back then, I was not aware of them at the time.

I’m talking about the Toyota Prius V1.

I was baffled, fascinated and impressed.

Someone, somewhere, had been aware of the gargantuan tailpipe emissions spewed out every day in the greater Los Angeles area, and of course every other big city on the planet, and they had tried to do something about it.

Okay something modest, but nevertheless, very technologically impressive.

Just to put this development into some kind of historic context, the engineers at Toyota did not spontaneously decide to try and make a much more efficient machine, they were forced to do so by a democratically elected government in California. 

A state government that was painfully aware of the damaging impact of 2 to 3 million vehicles crawling slowly along 6 lane highways through residential districts.

You had to be in LA in the mid 1980’s to appreciate just how unbearable and choking all the fumes were.

So I was very attracted to the idea of driving a car where the engine stopped running when you were in stationary traffic, and an electric drive train that allowed you to get up to speed before the combustion engine kicked in. 

Brilliant. 

And the incredibly smooth transition between electric drive to combustion had to be experienced to be appreciated. 

It’s Japanese ingenuity at its finest.

Up to that point, starting a combustion engine was noisy rattling experience, you had to turn a key and the starter motor would kick in, the engine would turn over a few times before vruuooom, you started burning copious amounts of fossil fuel at very very low efficiency.

Ooops, sorry, getting ahead of myself. I was trying not to be critical of combustion technology for a bit. That just slipped out.

So, when I returned to the UK, I traded in my VW hot hatch gas guzzler for a Toyota Prius. It was immediately apparent that for all the noise, power and razzmatazz of the VW R32, I was spending huge amounts fuelling the damn thing. 

I went from a car that achieved about 20mpg at best, to one that could achieve 70 mpg.

I loved it, this experience changed the way I, and millions of other Prius drivers thought about cars.

In fact, what Toyota did, with the huge success of the Prius, was as important as what Tesla achieved in their early years.

They showed that we can drastically reduce out reliance on one, single source of fuel. 

But here’s the act one turnaround as they say in the screenwriting profession.

This was happening in 2002. Over 20 years ago!

Ground breaking, game changing technology at the time.

Now? Not so much.

And yet in the last 6 months there has been a massive resurgence of new articles, online pontification, opinion and general pro-fossil propaganda that hybrids are ‘the answer.’

Electric cars just ‘aren’t there yet’ and ‘hybrids are the way to go.’ 

Multiple legacy car makers have scaled back their ambition to be 100% electric by a certain date. They generally cite the reason behind their change of heart being that the public are not ready and willing to adopt electric cars.

I am wondering just how true that is.

But as an aside, I can’t help mentioning that this pro hybrid stance is a very welcome improvement on the ‘hydrogen is the answer’ that I have regularly heard for the past 15 years. That argument, I had started to believe, was finally dead.

But no, BMW and Toyota are touting hydrogen combustion again.

Burning hydrogen in old fashioned combustion engine.

And of course, no mention of where all this grey hydrogen is going to come from. Let’s face it, ‘green hydrogen, produced by wasting gigawatts of electricity to produce a pittance of hydrogen is never going to scale commercially)

It’s truly pathetic and embarrassing that well educated, highly paid management and engineers at these companies think they can make this tragic failed technology work. 

They are spaffing billions up the wall because they believe the sloppy lies the fossil fuel industry are telling them about hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

Anyway, back to sloppy lies about hybrids. 

But not the old fashioned hybrids like to original Prius. Oh no, these are plug in hybrids, and these, I hear again and again, are the best of both worlds. People are saying this like it’s a new idea.

I made an episode of the Fully Charged Show in 2011, 13 years ago where I drove the plug in Prius, which, at the time was ‘the next step.’

Back then it was really impressive, I was getting well over 80 miles to the gallon, or 3.5 litres per 100 km. 

At that time the tiny number of available electric cars had a range of around 100 miles, basically the Nissan Leaf or Renault Zoe. The Tesla Model S was yet to be launched so there was no realistic alternative.

There was no charging infrastructure anywhere, only a very stupid early adopter nutter like me would consider such a machine.

But that was 12 years ago, the change since then is astonishing. We now have close to 70,000 rapid chargers available in the UK, that will reach 100,000 by this time next year.

Most electric cars now have real world ranges of between 200 to 350 miles, not that anyone should ever drive 350 miles non stop. It’s really dangerous and very bad for you.

The cost of these new cars is falling, the cost of 2nd hand electric cars is now very low, the technology does work, they are there now, as is the chanrging infrastructure.

Anyway, cut to the chase Llewellyn, stop waffling and side tracking.

Okay, sorry. Let me state this in super simple terms.

Hybrids are combustion cars.

Hybrids are petrol cars

Hybrids are gas cars.

They have to burn fuel or they don’t work.

People want to be able to use a car and no burn any fuel, not one or two weirdos like me.

Millions of normal people want to stop burning expensive, imported, toxic fossil fuel.

And who, need I remind you, really don’t want any of us to stop burning expensive, imported, toxic fossil fuel? I know you know.

And would those same people, those same global corporations consider applying pressure to manufacturers to keep churning out incredibly complex and inefficient combustion engines that they put in hybrid cars?

If you tell people often enough and loud enough that ‘electric cars aren’t there yet’ and ‘the charging infrastructure isn’t there yet’ and like most normal people, they are not that interested in cars anyway, they are going to believe you and carry on burning expensive, imported, toxic fossil fuel.

So I’ll say it one more time, only with a bit of extra data for flavouring.

Hybrids are combustion cars, except they are more complex with higher maintenance costs and a higher likelihood of catching fire .

Hybrids are petrol cars except they are more complex with higher maintenance costs and a higher likelihood of catching fire.

Hybrids are gasoline cars except they are more complex with higher maintenance costs and a higher likelihood of catching fire.

(The most recent statistics from fire departments around the globe always cite hybrids as the most common cars to spontaneously combust, closely followed by petrol and diesel cars, with 100% electric way, way down as the absolute least likely to catch fire)