Fueling the debate, Bringing the truth about hybrid vehicle consumption to light
Investigating the discrepancy between stated efficiency and actual fuel consumption.
Who could have predicted that hybrid vehicles would consume more than the stated 1.7 l/100 km ?
Well, we did, didn't we ?
Vehicles that are less aerodynamic than an excavator and weigh at least 1.6 tonnes, for daily use of a few dozen kilometres per day.
When the advertisements stated 1.7 l/100 km, 1.5 l/100 km or even 1.1 l/100 km, we were convinced that this was true.
but according to a commission that investigated the issue .
And the conclusion is that hybrid vehicles bought and used by private individuals (who are very much in the minority, nowadays 80% of hybrid vehicles are bought by companies) consume and emit 3.5 times more than the registration standard = around 6 L/100km instead of 1.7 L/100km.
Hybrid vehicles bought and used by companies consume and emit even 5 times more.
According to the Commission's survey, the average difference between actual and theoretical consumption is + 4 liters, but for some brands it reaches + 6 L/100km.
In my personal experience as I was a fleet manager with hundreds of electric vehicles, I have met people who consume 3 to 4 L/100km when they use their hybrids properly, and I have hundreds of vehicles in my fleet that consume 8 to 10 L/100km on average, with peaks of 16 L/100km for some drivers (and this for a model approved for 1.1 L/100km and 17 g CO2/km).
It's high time that the automotive industry got serious and stopped boasting about energy and climate balances that everyone knows are false.
Electric cars don't emit 0 g, the reality is around 100 g CO2 / km in the life cycle analysis.
Thermal cars don't emit 100 g, in reality it's around 200 g.
Hybrid cars don't emit 20 or 30 g, in reality it's often over 200 g.
The WLTP standard, which allows these misleading fuel consumption and emissions figures, was an improvement on the NEDC (and the associated NEDC) that preceded it. But it is no longer acceptable.
The automotive industry and the authorities need to come up with a new LCA standard that reflects real-world use: acceleration that makes it possible to get onto a 2x2 lane or a highway without running the risk of being cut in half by a lorry, stops at red lights of fluctuating and sometimes very short duration, traffic jams in which you move forward 5 metres every few seconds, uphill and downhill gradients, temperatures that are not ideal ...
As for the journalists who expressed their astonishment, have they ever sat in a car ? Have they ever filled the gas tank ?
And were they surprised by the results of this study, which shows that hybrid vehicles consume more fuel than stated ?