Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) pump out nearly five times more planet-heating pollution than official figures show, a report has found.<\/p>\n
The cars, which can run on electric batteries as well as combustion engines, have been promoted by European carmakers as a way to cover long distances in a single drive \u2014 unlike fully electric cars \u2014 while still reducing emissions.<\/p>\n
Data shows PHEVs emit just 19% less CO2 than petrol and diesel cars, an analysis by the non-profit advocacy group Transport and Environment found.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under laboratory tests, they were assumed to be 75% less polluting.<\/p>\n
The researchers analysed data from the onboard fuel consumption meters of 800,000 cars registered in Europe between 2021 and 2023. They found real-world carbon dioxide emissions from PHEVs in 2023 were 4.9 times greater than those from standardised laboratory tests, having risen from being 3.5 times greater in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cReal-world emissions are going up, while official emissions are going down,\u201d said Sof\u00eda Navas Gohlke, a researcher at Transport and Environment and the co-author of the report. \u201cThis is the gap that is getting worse and it is a real problem. As a result, PHEVs pollute almost as much as petrol cars.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The researchers attributed most of the gap to overestimates of the \u201cutility factor\u201d \u2014 the ratio of miles travelled in electric mode to the total miles travelled \u2014 finding that 27% of driving was done in electric mode even though official estimates assumed 84%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The European Commission has announced two corrections to the utility factor ratio that will narrow the gap but not close it entirely, according to the analysis.<\/p>\n
Even when the cars were driven in electric mode, the analysis found that levels of pollution were well above official estimates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The researchers said this was because electric motors were not strong enough to operate alone, with their engines burning fossil fuels for almost one-third of the distance travelled in electric mode.<\/p>\n
Patrick Pl\u00f6tz, head of energy economics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, who was not involved in the study, said it was a \u201cvery useful contribution\u201d after years in which parts of the automotive industry argued there was too little data to accurately assess real-world emissions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe results demonstrate, beyond any doubt, that the gap between official and real-world PHEV fuel consumption and CO2 emissions is much, much larger than for gasoline or diesel cars,\u201d said Pl\u00f6tz, who has published research on the topic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAny policy changes with respect to PHEVs should be made with utmost care and in the light of that data.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hybrid cars have been drawn back into the political debate as carmakers have pressed the EU to weaken CO2 targets. A ban on new combustion engine cars in 2035 has been subject to heavy lobbying from the automotive industry and opposition from member states with large car industries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere must not be a drastic cut in 2035,\u201d the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said after a summit last week with the country\u2019s struggling automobile industry, promising to do \u201ceverything in [his] power\u201d to achieve that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other senior German politicians have floated plug-in hybrids as one example of possible \u201cflexibilities\u201d they could introduce to the legislation.<\/p>\n
The researchers calculated that the underestimate of PHEV emissions had let four major carmaker groups avoid more than \u20ac5bn in fines between 2021 and 2023, by making it artificially easier to comply with the EU\u2019s fleet-average CO2 targets. They added that drivers of PHEVs would also be paying about \u20ac500 more a year in running costs than would be assumed under laboratory tests.<\/p>\n
\n The Guardian\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) pump out nearly five times more planet-heating pollution than official figures show, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[8221,79,442,18,440,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-126843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-transport","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}