Why Hybrids Are Now A Dumb Idea

Hybrid cars are now a dumb idea. They briefly had a place, back in the 1990s and early 2000s, in demonstrating electric technology in a very limited form, but have no place in the world today and should be banned along with gas cars as soon as possible.

Why this apparently extreme view? The hybrid car is complex, heavy, and only marginally more efficient than a polluting gas equivalent. With some hybrids you plug them in (PHEVs), others you don’t (HEVs). Non-plug-in hybrids are the dumbest of all. The hybrid car came into existence to meet increasingly stringent emission standards, and at the time of their introduction, high gas prices.

From a clean air and climate perspective, buying a hybrid car versus a gas car is like a heavy smoker deciding to quit by going from 20 a day to just 18, the real benefit is minimal. Whenever I take this strong line on hybrid cars, I immediately get a pushback that goes something like “but they are still better than gas, and better than doing nothing at all!”

Yes, I agree, they are slightly better than gas when it comes to air pollution and our climate and they proved interesting for a decade or more, but their time is now at an end.

Along with the internal combustion bans planned by many countries, from the mid-2020s onwards, hybrids are also slated to be banned, however typically these bans kick in five years after ICE bans. This is because there is a misbelief that retaining hybrid cars longer is still better for us. It's the opposite. I would argue hybrids should be banned today. The reason I propose such a draconian measure is because hybrid cars are slowing the transition to zero emissions fully electric cars. This is due to two main reasons, number one they are an unnecessary false distraction for consumers, and number two, they are blocking infrastructure which should only be used for fully electric cars.

I'll start with the first reason. Today there is an increasingly broad variety of pure electric cars on the market, capable of catering for almost every need. Range is not really an issue for 90% of use cases and range limitations of electric cars are often exaggerated deliberately by internal combustion car makers. The hybrid is therefore used as a placebo, a fake product to make the consumer feel more at ease.

By playing on people’s fears about the range of electric cars, even if they don't want to continue driving a polluting car, the hybrid appears to have the answer to both. You will never have to worry about running out of range, because you still have an internal combustion engine in a hybrid car, and you can feel good about yourself because you reduced your emissions, right? Wrong.

Research has shown the pollution and climate benefit impact from hybrid cars is negligible. Indeed, it has been suggested that the existence of hybrid cars is actually encouraging people to buy bigger-engined machines, safe in the knowledge that a tiny proportion of their miles will be covered by electric propulsion. With a plug-in hybrid, PHEV, you charge usually a very small battery that gives limited range, typically less than 50 kilometres on electric, the rest of the time you're on gasoline. So, 50 clean kilometres is better than nothing at all, right? Well not really, because hybrid cars are using electricity to carry around an internal combustion engine and its fuel. The reality is, for 90% of use cases there is nothing stopping somebody going for a full electric car and the hybrid option is just an unnecessary distraction that offers no real climate benefit at all.

Indeed, it has become quite common for people to state that they will try hybrid first before going full electric due to the irrational fear of range of electric cars. Within weeks of adoption, 97% of people switching to electric cars are used to it and state they would never go back. The hybrid is therefore delaying people's purchasing decision to switch full electric.