Most Plug-in hybrid owners don't plug in....

R

Robert_Alabama

Well-Known Member
General Motors CEO Mary Barra, speaking this week at the Automotive Press Association conference in Detroit, touched on this reality when she discussed GM’s plans for electric and hybrid vehicles.

“What we also know today with plug-in hybrids is that most people don’t plug them in,” Barra said. “So that’s why we’re trying to be very thoughtful about what we do from a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid perspective.”

Where do they get this information and how do they represent it as such a fact? I've never known any PHEV owners that don't plug-in. Guess I don't get around enough. But I find this statement hard to believe at least in the United States. Of course, I've been limited to Volt and Clarity owners which had reasonably sized batteries, but those owners are pretty serious to plug in whenever it is an option. I guess maybe it is also true that gasoline and electricity breakeven prices are different than they are here. It is generally half as expensive to use electricity (off-peak residential price) as gasoline here with gasoline running $2.75 or so per gallon. We also still have a reasonable number of free level 2 chargers at workplaces and at retail shopping centers, hotels, and other commercial locations. Generally paid Level 2 public chargers are about the same or a little more expensive than gasoline, but I'll still use them if they are convenient. I guess I can see if those economics shift because gasoline is always less costly than electricity that I would change my behavior.
 
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Rental customers and apartment residents probably don't plug-in. That being said, companies will spin whatever they do for financial and political reasons.
 
lanb said:
That being said, companies will spin whatever they do for financial and political reasons.
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This. Everyone that I know personally who owns a PHEV (12+ individuals/cars) charges it as often as possible, and all have more EV than gas miles on their vehicles. Anecdotal data, I know, but I suspect that this better reflects the typical PHEV owner.
 
I wouldn't have thought that a lot of phevs ended up at apartment complexes or as rental vehicles. I guess rental companies may buy whatever looks like the most profitable vehicle for them. Here in Alabama, I know that two of the three apartment complexes my sons have lived in had chargers available, one had them as complimentary, one was pay at about 0.35/kWh.
 
Before California's Clean Air Vehicle Vehicle decal program ended on 10/1/25, many Californians drove plug-in vehicles so they could use the High Occupancy Vehicle (carpool) lanes even when the driver was the vehicle's only occupant. Driving PHEVs (rather than BEVs) in the HOV lanes enabled these drivers to avoid traffic jams, bothersome passengers, and the need to ever to plug in their vehicles.

I'd guess more PHEVs were sold in California than in any other state and that usage scenario is what gave Mary Barra the idea that PHEVs don't get plugged in.
 
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Leave it to our regulators and regulations to incent the particular use of a vehicle, then those analyzing the data assume that use was due to the natural behavior of owners of that type of vehicle instead of behavior being incented by the regulations (causing those who would never have bought a phev to buy one and then drive it like a normal hybrid just to get benefits/privileges). I guess the same thing would happen if phevs were priced at half of the price of comparable hybrids or gasoline vehicles. A lot of people would buy phevs just because they were cheap, but wouldn't plug them in.
It is true that these weren't the reasons anyone I know that own phevs bought them. Maybe that's why all phev owners I know try to squeeze out pretty much every electric mile within reason from their cars....
 
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Below are screenshots from a couple articles on the subject. The short story is that the EPA isn’t getting the results they expected, so the oversimplified conclusion reached by an industry executive is that owners aren’t plugging them in.

One would suspect that she knows better. I’d kindly categorize her statement as stretching the truth unless evidence is provided that more than 50% of PHEV owners never plug them in, because that is what she is stating as fact.

The reasons why the EPA isn’t seeing the results they expected are many.
First, they established unreasonable expectations. In their defense, those expectations were what everyone wanted to hear, so that’s what they predicted would happen. The second hinges off the first and that is actual driving habits are different than anticipated. That’s one reason why they see more fuel consumption and less EV mileage than the vehicle is capable of providing. The third and fourth are nuances that have been discussed on this forum. Those being how the vehicle operates with a depleted battery and limiting battery charging to less than a full charge. Many owners aren’t using the full capacity of the battery for one reason or another. A fifth factor is operating the vehicle in cold temperatures where EV range can be reduced by 30-40%.

It’s really no mystery why manufacturers are revising their vehicle lineups. What’s unfortunate is that they can even come close to being honest about it.
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No one has yet brought up fleet vehicles. My understanding is that many business fleet cars were PHEV's. Businesses compensated drivers only for their gasoline purchases, but not their electricity expenses, and there were no mandates or bonuses for electric miles.
 
Roger Lambert said:
No one has yet brought up fleet vehicles.
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Rental cars have been mentioned. I’d speculate that the Prius would be the most common PHEV fleet vehicle. Parking enforcement, utility companies and taxis come to mind.

The question that needs to be asked is: Are those vehicles included in the data and, if so, are the numbers sufficient to make Ms Barra’s statement true? Probably not. She’s simply attempting to control the narrative so that her company isn’t perceived as evil for halting production of electrified vehicles and increasing production of conventional ICE vehicles. It isn’t her fault that owners aren’t using the vehicles as intended.
 
Roger Lambert said:
Not rental cars - business fleets. Company cars.
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Ok. Now they’ve been mentioned.

Do you have any intel on the percentage of all PHEV’s sold in the US that are fleet vehicles? Once we have that data we can then attempt to determine if those fleet vehicles were included in any of the studies that led to Ms Barra’s statement.
 
Roger Lambert said:
16.5% of US cars are fleet vehicles.

30% of fleet vehicles are PHEVs.
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What’s your source for the 30% figure? If correct it would suggest that 5% of all US cars are PHEV’s that are being used as fleet vehicles. Given that BEV’s and PHEV’s combined, comprise about 8% of US vehicles, it is highly improbable that that 30% of fleet vehicles are PHEV’s.

I did find that 29% of fleet operators have PHEV’s in their fleet. Nothing suggested that 29% of fleet vehicles were PHEV’s.
 
For The first five years of my 2018 Clarity, I plugged it in daily in my garage or at work. Then we moved to a row home in Philadelphia and it almost never gets plugged in any more. There are very few public chargers in this city and the ones that are around charge rates that ruin the economic advantage of running on EV. A couple nearby supermarkets that offered 1-2 hours of free charging recently tore out their chargers.
 
So I think the people who live in a place where they cannot plug-in for any reason likely won't buy a PHEV. There's no reason to justify the additional upfront cost vs. standard hybrid. Clarity is still a reasonable hybrid (not the best one), but reasonable.

One can use HV charge to get say 10 miles of HV range or whatever non-zero amount. Someone on this forum suggested a small sticky note on the "D" button "HV?" to help remind to hit HV each time getting the car (of course, wish this was a sticky setting). When I go on long trips I do use the sticky note reminder, and it works surprisingly well vs. no reminder in my case.

I plug in my Clarity every chance I get (at home). I find even running errands, between errands if I have 30 minutes it's worth plugging-in to gain back some range (level2). Anyway, likely something like 80% of all my driving (or more) is electric. Where I live electricity is about 12cents/kwh.
 
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