Mine gets a 40-45 mile all electric range. I drive 10-12k miles per year, and ignoring extended multi-day vacation road trips once every couple years, I fill up the tank 2-3 times per year.
The only time the ICE turns on before my EV range is up is if I hit the windshield defrost button when it’s cold. That’s presumably to prioritize getting heat out through the vents quickly. I’ve never accelerated fast enough, nor gone fast enough to trigger the ICE engine taking over. It’s straight up an EV for my first ~40 miles every day.
PHEVs in the US are gimped by poor regulatory incentives - we should be forcing manufacturers to increase overall range + EV range. If this model were sold in the US by a US manufacturer, I bet the ranges would be halved (and still considered good/decent in comparison to existing alternatives).
That sounds like the real issue, vs. EVs. This sounds like you basically have to plug it in every time you park it. And there’s no way you could do any sort of (even small) road trip without using gas.
(For comparison, our EV6 has about 200-250 mile range, and we charge it about once a week or so, give or take, unless we take a road trip.)
Also, one of the main advantages with EVs is their insane low maintenance, but sounds like PHEVs still have to all the same maintenance issues of ICE vehicles.
Yep, so people (mostly) don’t , in aggregate:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...
I keep seeing this repeated, but I kept a detailed decade-plus spreadsheet of maintenace costs for my last ICE car, and ~2/3 of the costs were for components that are common to EVs.
When I take my EV in, it’s for one of two things: I need my tires rotated, or I need new tires. That’s it. There’s no “curtsy inspection” that comes back with literally 40 different things that I could have done to it.
2. Our household has four vehicles: one EV, three ICE vehicles. There’s no way the occasional new tires (rotations are free where we bought our tires) amount to 2/3 the cost of the maintenance needed on our ICE vehicles. It’s probably closer to 1/10.
I think you’re overestimating what all needs maintenance on an EV.
That being said, if you're in the market for a used EV right now, that depreciation actually works in your favor. I was looking at prices on used luxury EVs recently, and have to admit I was pretty tempted by some 2-3 year old cars selling at less than half MSRP.
But yes, there is engine oil to be replaced and whatnot.
And also, to your point, my experience with my PHEV is my short range driving is electric, but it turns out most of my miles is consumed by annual long range trips. If I commuted to work, things would tip more in favour of EV driving. All to say how much EV you get out of your PHEV will depend highly on the type of driving one does.
> (For comparison, our EV6 has about 200-250 mile range, and we charge it about once a week or so, give or take, unless we take a road trip.)
its gasoline car. You use 45miles for every day commute while charging overnight, and use gas for roadtrips: 500 miles range + 3 mins put gas into car
Anyway, the real world data from PHEV usage shows you are the outlier, most people don’t bother plugging them in regularly due to their limitations.
I don't believe your last statement because you've been wrong about everything else, and it doesn't make sense. Plugging it in is exactly as easy as literally any electric car, and it simply doesn't have the limitations you claim it does.
I don't know what you've been reading, but you should evaluate the veracity of it as a source and talk to actual owners. I know several others who have one and we're all quite happy with them and don't get gas often
“ The researchers attributed most of the gap to overestimates of the “utility factor” – the ratio of miles travelled in electric mode to the total miles travelled – finding that 27% of driving was done in electric mode even though official estimates assumed 84%. ”
Perhaps the rav4 prime @ 41ml max ev range is a better system than all the other low range PHEVs like it, and has better real world usage data than them. I doubt it though, but I don’t have the data on just the rav.
And who cares if this guy is the outlier? You're going to bash on the car because people are dumb and don't know how to operate their cars?
What I do care about, and why I care that he’s an outlier, is that low range PHEVs mainly exist to get emissions credits for manufacturers so that they can sell more gas cars, and those emission savings aren’t real [1]. You could say everyone’s dumb for using them this way, but clearly the ergonomics of the electrical capabilities in this category are lacking in important ways.
And I can’t prove it but I bet the manufacturers have known this for a long time. But adding a plug to a hybrid with a tiny battery was an awfully cheap way to get your existing car counted as “green” for credits, so too tempting.
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...
