Should you buy a hybrid? This obviously depends on you - what you want and how you drive - and this report is inspired by common questions from people like you. Full details next.

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Toyota and to a lesser degree Hyundai have really inspired many mainstream new car buyers right now to consider a hybrid for the first time. Toyota with the hype surrounding the new RAV4 Hybrid (pity about the production botch there) but also with the company’s affordable Corolla Hybrid and the Prius, which has become the Coca-Cola of hybrids, owing to smart positioning and long-term market presence.

Hyundai also lobbing relatively recently with the Ioniq - which was just upgraded. As well as a straight EV version, Ioniq is available in two flavours of hybrid - the self-charging one that recharges the battery with regenerative braking, and the PHEV Ioniq, which also recharges by plugging into the grid (optionally). 

So, more people than ever are considering hybrids for the first time. Tim Bosher is one of them:

We live in regional Vic. My wife drives about 100k per week locally and has a weekly 250k return trip to the city at freeway speeds - so her annual k's are a bit over the average. I have asked a couple of dealers about the pros & cons of hybrid cars for the above type of driving mix and their responses seem to be largely bullshit. What is your take - and when does the price premium for hybrids make them a realistic proposition. - Tim Bosher

Here’s the answer that lines up with reality: hybrids do their energy management voodoo by regeneratively braking. When you brake or even just coast to slow down, they convert some kinetic energy to electricity and store it in a battery to help you get going again, presumably when the lights go green.

It is proper energy management voodoo - if you use Arthur C Clarke’s epic definition for magic. And if you don’t: look it up. It’s awesome.

Hybrids are therefore far more effective at saving fuel driving around town. Because that’s where you do all the voodoo-invoking coasting and braking. On the freeway, all the hybrid equipment - the battery and the motor, and the control and management architecture - it all tends just to become excess baggage. It’s just not very effective ‘out there’.

In Tim’s case, 70 per cent of his wife’s driving is on the freeway, so she’d probably get a better result on fuel economy and emissions in a small diesel car, like an i30 diesel. Because diesels really stretch their fuel economy legs on the freeway - and that kind of driving is just ‘Goldilocks’ for keeping the DPF (the diesel particle filter) happy and healthy.

PHEV is a hybrid with a bigger than usual battery that you can plug in overnight and recharge. So it’s kinda BEV + ICE as a range extender, as the good doc says, but I’d categorise it more as a Hybrid with a big battery that gives it additional, but still extremely short-distance, low demand battery-only operating capability. That’s generally how they roll.

You might get 30 or 40 kays of battery-only operation at low loads - but if you pull out to overtake, the internal combustion engine will kick in. Because the electric side of the plug-in hybrid is only good for low to moderate performance.

On the battery - in a PHEV it’s a big battery in the context of hybrids but still small for an EV. Batteries are so expensive, which is why, for example the PHEV Hyundai Ioniq is so much cheaper than the full-on Ioniq EV.