Electric vehicle sales are a rollercoaster these days, but hybrid sales are cruising to new heights.
Many buyers aren’t ready to go fully electric. For them, hybrids offer a familiar, less drastic transition from gas cars. While hybrids still burn fossil fuels, they eliminate range anxiety, improve efficiency and free drivers from charging concerns. That means plug-in hybrids and regular hybrids are playing a big role as the world prepares to go fully electric.
However, to maximize the benefits of a PHEV, you need to plug it in. That means PHEVs face similar challenges as BEVs regarding charging and infrastructure.
Take my situation, for example. I live in a New York City apartment. While driving or even owning a car here is… less than advisable, tons of people do it. But even with a long extension cord, I can’t make EV charging work without being a nuisance to my neighbors. I can’t suspend a cable that would dangle over other people’s windows or obstruct pedestrian paths. Plus, street parking in NYC is like a game of musical chairs. So I end up parking a block or two away from my home, in a different spot each time.
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So if you’re in the market for a hybrid, but can’t make home charging work, what type of hybrid should you consider: a PHEV or a HEV? What are their benefits and drawbacks when your city’s charging infrastructure is still growing? To find out, I spent back-to-back weeks with two Lexus hybrids: a PHEV and a regular hybrid version of the same car.
Full Disclosure: Lexus loaned me an RX 450h+ PHEV and the standard hybrid RX 500h F Sport Performance for a week each. They arrived at my home spanking clean, gassed up and their batteries charged. I returned them a little less clean, batteries drained, but refueled.
The Basics
I know what you’re thinking: most Americans can’t afford expensive Lexus hybrids. That’s true. The Lexus RX 450h+ PHEV and the RX 500h are the priciest models in the ultra-popular RX luxury crossover family. The RX PHEV costs $70,580 before taxes and fees, whereas the hybrid RX 500h costs $64,100. For those prices, you could buy two and a half Corolla Hybrids.
The RX has plenty in common with its more affordable Toyota cousins, which sell several times more. The RX PHEV shares a powertrain with the smaller Toyota RAV4 Prime. It’s powered by a naturally aspirated 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine and a pair of electric motors.
The dual electric motors—one on each axle—draw energy from an 18.1-kWh battery pack. The setup produces 304 horsepower and is good for 37 miles of electric-only range. With a claimed 0-60 mph time of 6.2 seconds, it’s quick enough. I never felt the need for more power. Not in New York, anyway.
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On the other hand, the RX 500h is the RX you buy if you want to have fun. Its hybrid powertrain exists to make you feel less guilty about burning fossil fuel. It’s powered by a 2.4-liter four-cylinder turbo engine, supplemented by a considerably smaller 1.6 kWh battery, delivering a combined 366 hp.
The RX 500h’s EPA combined efficiency figure is 27 mpg, giving it a range of about 266 miles. The RX PHEV, however, can drive up to 540 miles on a full tank and full charge, with a whopping 83 mpge of EPA-rated efficiency. The indicated range, however, was roughly 450 miles.
Living With A PHEV
As I drove out of NYC, I felt a tidal restlessness among drivers, as if everyone was desperate to escape the concrete jungle. Blatant lane indiscipline, a cacophony of honking and drivers jumping yellow lights—all exacerbated by a scorching heat wave. But inside the Lexus RX 450h+, I felt calm. Lexus hybrids are isolation chambers.
Initially, it drove like a fully electric car: near-silent, free of tailpipe emissions and instant acceleration at the tap of the throttle. Like a BEV, when you press the start/stop button, it switches on silently in EV mode, with nothing but a “Ready” symbol on the gauge cluster to signal that you’re ready to shift to drive.
The indicated electric range was 35 miles, slightly less than the EPA estimate of 37 miles. I left it in Auto Mode for the onboard computers to manage power distribution. It ran solely on electricity for the first 42.2 miles, averaging 2.3 miles per kilowatt hour. That’s about the same as the average daily driving distance in the U.S. and identical to what Edmunds got on the RAV4 Prime, which has an EPA rated electric-only range of 42 miles.
The range, however, gets influenced by driving conditions, driving behavior, accessory usage and weather. I did not drive like a saint, but still squeezed more range than the RX PHEV’s EPA estimate because my drive had some downhill roads where the regen worked overtime. Once the battery ran low, the PHEV drove like a regular hybrid, driving on electricity at slow speeds, with the gas engine almost imperceptibly switching on while picking up speed. I love how hybrids do that, changing power sources so seamlessly like it’s nobody’s business.
The good thing is, even if you’re out of EV-only range, the battery never fully depletes. Regenerative braking and the engine recharge the battery every time you’re off the throttle. I was aware of this thanks to Toyota’s “energy monitor,” a graph on the gauge cluster that tells you what’s powering the wheels.
Over 143 miles, with the climate running on auto mode and four occupants, the RX 450h+ consumed only two gallons of gas, costing me about $7. That’s a whopping 71.5 miles per gallon, lower than the EPA estimate of 81 MPGe, but still phenomenal efficiency. In 2022 at least, the RX 450h+ was rated to put out 305 grams of CO2 per mile when it runs on gasoline, about 100 less than the average passenger vehicle, assuming you charge it frequently.
The charging experience, however, was abysmal. The 18.1 kWh battery takes 2.5 hours to fully charge. That’s only convenient if you have a home or office charger. Or if the Walmart, Costco or a restaurant you frequent has plugs. There is no “fast-charging” for PHEVs. Moreover, the RX PHEV doesn’t show the battery percentage. All you see is a “time to full charge” bar. That’s frustrating because it’s painfully slow to charge at the top end, just like BEVs where the charging rate drops dramatically after 80%. If I knew the charging percentage, I would have saved time by ending the charging session at 80% and leaving the station open to others, instead of hogging it.
You can also charge at free-standing public charging stations in your vicinity. At an IKEA parking lot in Brooklyn with Level 2 ChargePoint dispensers, an Audi Q4 e-tron owner told me he regularly left his EV there to charge overnight. Because he lived just a block away, that was convenient for him. At another Flo charger under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, a Toyota bZ4x owner said it made sense to leave his EV there to charge since he lived right across the street.
I had none of this at my disposal. My nearest charger is only a 10 minute drive away, but a 30 minute subway ride back home or a 40 minute walk. If I’m leaving an EV for 2.5 hours, I want to easily get home while it juices up.
It would be even better if PHEVs could fast-charge. But smaller batteries are designed to be charged more slowly to prevent overheating and other pack-related issues. PHEVs are already expensive, so upgrading their electrical systems for fast charging would only drive up costs. Unless there’s a technological breakthrough that allows PHEV batteries to safely fast-charge, charging times will likely continue to be long.
As with an EV, you get the most when you can charge at home and in a garage; more work needs to be done to add charging everywhere so that EV and PHEV drivers can thrive no matter where they live.
Living With An HEV
By contrast, living with the RX 500h, a conventional hybrid, was hassle-free. I didn’t worry about charging at all. Its small 1.6 kWh battery recharges using engine power and regenerative braking.
The drive was as smooth as a hot knife piercing through butter. Like most modern HEVs, the dual electric motors and the battery help fill torque during acceleration; it can run on gas power, battery power or a mix of both, so there’s effectively no turbo lag. It also drove on electricity at slow speeds, albeit only for a few seconds before the engine switched back on. It coasts on EV-mode on the highway, further improving the efficiency.
But compared to the PHEV, the worry-free experience came at a cost. After covering 141.1 miles in mixed city and highway driving, the RX 500h’s calculated efficiency was 25.8 mpg, close to the EPA estimate of 27 mpg for combined highway and city driving. The PHEV was nearly three times more efficient on a much more diverse set of roads: city, highway, winding mountain roads and countryside. And the regular hybrid RX pollutes slightly more too, at 326 grams of CO2 per mile, although that’s still less than most vehicles.
With the PHEV’s battery nearly depleted, it was still more efficient than the hybrid. Despite lugging around a heavy battery, it delivered 40 mpg. I never saw more than 26 mpg on the hybrid. The main discrepancy here was the RX 500h’s 2.4-liter turbo engine, which has a drinking problem. It’s not as efficient as the 2.5-liter naturally aspirated engine on the PHEV. Plus, the RX 500h is almost as heavy as the PHEV at nearly 3,750 pounds, whereas the normally aspirated RX 350h is roughly 350 lbs lighter. The lighter, less powerful hybrid has an EPA rating of 36 mpg combined, so it’s a lot less thirsty.
You could drive these hybrids like a saint and squeeze out more miles. But the EV driving ratio of the hybrid—the distance covered on electricity—was lower and more inconsistent than the PHEV, as per the on board energy monitor. In the city, the hybrid drove 70% of the distance on EV-mode only. On the highway, the EV driving ratio dropped to 20%.
The PHEV, however, with a charged battery, had a consistent 48-50% EV driving ratio in mixed driving conditions.
Verdict
The plug-in Prius Prime was the greenest car of 2023, according to the American Council for Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), with life cycle emissions factored in. But if you’re not plugging them in, they can sometimes be worse than gas cars, research firm BloombergNEF says. By not plugging a PHEV, you’re carrying the dead weight of the battery, making the engine consume more fuel. If you plug it in, your daily driving can be emissions-free and the gas engine will have your back on long trips. But we have seen little data to indicate that people will plug these cars in if automakers really push wider PHEV adoption.
I found that even if you live without a home or an office charger, you can make PHEVs work, provided there’s ample supporting infrastructure in your vicinity. We’re already seeing the U.S. head in that direction. OEMs and charging companies are increasingly partnering with grocery chains, retailers, gas stations and mall giants to install more plugs, where EV owners can juice-up without having to waste time.
Granted, they’re more expensive. But you can offset the initial high cost with federal and state tax credits and offers from the OEMs on leasing and financing. Some PHEVs currently qualify for up to $7,500 or $3,750 in tax credits, depending on the vehicle and your personal tax liabilities.
I made the PHEV work because the trade-off was mind blowing. I wouldn’t mind driving it to a charging station at a Walmart once a week (something that’s already part of my routine), charging the PHEV while I shop and then enjoying 71 mpg for the rest of the week before plugging it back in the following weekend. But that’s because I don’t drive all that much. If I did, I’d definitely want a home or an office charger, or a public charging station nearby.
If you have zero charging access, an HEV would probably suit you better. They’re slightly more efficient than gas cars. But it’s 2024 and we don’t need cars to go slightly electric. A bigger battery clearly delivers better results. If you have better access to charging and can stomach the higher initial cost, a PHEV is a no-brainer for the planet, for your gas bill and for the future of driving.
Contact the author: suvrat.kothari@insideevs.com
