Why the hype for hybrid cars won’t last
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The car industry’s effort to decarbonise revolves around replacing petrol with batteries. A growing number of customers want both.
Buyers who cannot afford a fully electric car, or worry about the availability of charging points, are turning to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), sales of which are rocketing. But the hybrid ride may prove to be short. Last year global sales of cars running purely on batteries (BEVs) were more than double those of PHEVs.
But the gap has been closing. Sales of PHEVs were up by almost 50%, year on year, in the first seven months of 2024, compared with just 8% for BEVs, according to Bernstein, a broker. Carmakers have been cooling on BEVs and warming to hybrids.
This month Volvo backtracked on its commitment to go all-electric by 2030. It now says BEVs and PHEVs will together account for 90% of its sales by the end of the decade. Last month Ford announced that it was abandoning plans to make a large fully-electric SUV, opting instead for hybrid power.
Hyundai is doubling its range of hybrids from seven to 14 models. Volkswagen, too, has pledged to increase investments in hybrids as it rethinks its plans for bevs. Consumers are turning to hybrids partly because they are cheap.
The big batteries required to run fully-electric vehicles make them far more expensive than petrol cars. That is a problem when it comes to selling to the mass market; most buyers “will not pay a premium", says Jim Farley, the boss of Ford. Plug-in hybrids, by contrast, run on much smaller batteries: they typically have a 20-kilowatt-hour unit, around a third of the size of those in BEVs.
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