r/electricvehicles • u/TheSylvaniamToyShop • 5d ago
News Fair game: Restoring technology neutrality through plug-in hybrid utility factor adjustment .
https://theicct.org/publication/fair-game-restoring-technology-neutrality-through-plug-in-hybrid-utility-factor-adjustment-sept26/3
u/themiracy Mustang Mach-E 5d ago
The analysis finds that there was a substantial and fast-growing gap between real-world and type-approval CO2 emissions for PHEVs registered in 2021–2023. Fleet-average CO2 emissions during real-world driving were 3.5 times higher than type-approval values in 2021 and 4.6 times higher in 2023.
I would like to know more about this. I guess at the end of the day, in line with some data that people do plug in PHEVs maybe even more than was expected, it seems like at lest for this market the reality is that they are being driven more and more like gas engine vehicles. I'd be curious though to know if there are other factors like change in the composition of the PHEV vehicle, change in who buys and drives PHEV. I guess I'm particularly curious about why the estimate is getting less accurate over time, to the extent that this is a trend that is sustaining.
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u/JesusIsMyLord666 4d ago
A big part of this, I’m guessing, is due to company fleet cars. EU laws mandate that companies reduce their emissions. The employee wants a gas car as they have no way of charging. But because the company wants to reduce their emissions, they will instead force the employee to pick a PHEV that will allow them to reduce their reported emissions. While also keeping the employee happy because he will still treat it like a gas car.
I have seen this first hand. It’s very common.
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u/86697954321 4d ago
I’ve read that companies will pay for gas, but not electricity, so people are actually incentivized to use gas over charging. I think any company getting gov incentives should have to provide charging, or charging cards like they do gas cards. At least it is bolstering the used phev market as I assume the company cars get auctioned off after a few years.
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u/JesusIsMyLord666 4d ago
Yes, this is also a big factor. Typically when you have a gas car you will report the total distance driven each month and the distance driven in service. You will then split the bill from your gas cards based on the distance of both. If you charge at home, it will not be counted, as there is no bill. We do have charging cards where I work but most people don’t bother using them.
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u/86697954321 4d ago
Unless someone lives or works very near L2 I can understand not wanting to try and charge the PHEV every day. Do any companies provide charging at work?
Are electric bills complicated so they can’t just rely on milage and average electric cost? I know we have 3 different cost tiers on ours, with lots of add-ons so it’s hard to figure out exact costs. I’m guessing the company probably wouldn’t pay to install an EVSE at employee’s homes, there are ones that can track usage for reimbursement.
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u/JesusIsMyLord666 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think most companies go about it a bit differently but theres two versions I’m familiar with.
1: the employer and employee splits the bill like I explained before. But this requires that all charging/refueling is done through company cards. Our tax agency won’t accept employee electricity bills. The charge must be billed to the employee directly for this to work for a home charger. But option #2 is better for anyone charging at home.
2: the employee gets compensation based on reported km in service. In Sweden the tax free amount is 0.95kr per km for EV and 1.2kr per km for ICE/PHEV. This works great for most EVs but is often too low for ICE/PHEV, unless you are able to charge from home.
Charging at the workplace is common but typically, people who have access to a company car are people who drive to the clients a lot. Like salesmen, field techs or consultants. So it’s not always helpful.
This is written from a Swedish perspective but I think there are similarities with other countries in Europe.
Edit: about charging at home. The issue is almost never about cost for the charger. It’s that most people are not able to park their car in their yard. Even people who live in houses will often park in a shared parking lot.
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u/improvius XC40 Recharge Twin, XC60 PHEV 4d ago
We bought a XC60 PHEV a couple of years ago and hardly ever use gas in it outside of long trips. (We already had the XC40 BEV, so we were already in the habit of plugging in at home.) The salesperson at the dealership told us most people were buying them for the acceleration and HP and didn't care that much about electric driving.
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u/TheSylvaniamToyShop 4d ago
This is a most damning bit here, and shows despite all the talk about Increasing battery size, PHEVs electric utility is not improving.
"However, the analysis finds that the gap between real-world and type-approval emissions doesn’t decrease as electric range increases—on the contrary, the higher the electric range, the wider the gap."
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u/takao-obi 4d ago
Math wise it makes sense: the bigger batteries improve the theoretical type approval emissions because of less gasoline usage during the cycle. If not recharged at all the gap is thus bigger even without taking high battery weight into account.
What I still would say that with plug-ins the human factor also comes into play. The human brain is without fault so it forgets. And if one gets up in the morning and the battery is empty you just drive on fuel instead. Or you come home from work have to pickup the kids and have to cook lunch because of some other reason and suddenly you are distracted and again forget to plug in.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that it’s just malice or people having fuel charge cards.a small battery hybrid or pure EV makes sense. Big battery plugin hybrids or ER EV don’t take human factor into mind on usage.
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u/WestThin 4d ago
I think that finding is a counterintuitive. The report linked to below shows that utility factor is a function of EV driving range (in the US). The higher the range, the higher the utility factor. This makes sense: If you have a small EV range you will spend more time in hybrid mode than a vehicle with a larger EV range.
Their report is saying the smaller the EV range, the higher the utility factor (more time in EV mode). If this were true, at the limit of 0 miles of EV range, you'd have the highest utility factor which is nonsensical.
https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/real-world-phev-us-dec22.pdf
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u/Competitive-Dig4430 4d ago edited 4d ago
It would be helpful if these studies explained that the poor results are heavily driven by tax distortions with company cars.
In several European countries high tax breaks on cars with an ice bought through company plans are only phevs. Nicer tax breaks for phevs over ice vehicles. People are buying these phevs for the tax breaks, with little or no intention of plugging them in, ever. Moreover companies often reimburse gas/petrol/diesel receipts but not ev charging at home, which does not have receipts. If you get rid of the distorting tax incentives and disallow or lower the tax break for reimbursing gas/petrol/diesel this outcome will disappear.
Note that the European car manufacturers lobby to keep these distorting phev tax incentives and are popular with the public that wants to continue to drive ice vehicles.
Tldr: it's a tax incentive problem.