I rented a Jeep plug-in hybrid in January. They did a pretty good job of integrating ICE and battery. The change over from a pure battery start to ICE at about 15 mph was seamless. But the drive-by-wire creates a weird driver experience because things just don’t respond as you are used to with a pure ICE.
The other strange thing is the rental companies require you to return the car with a full gas tank, but there’s no such requirement for topping off the battery. When I drove away from the rental lot, the battery was on 0% and I returned it at the same charge level. It seemed to have enough juice to go from 0 to 15 mph and that was the end of the battery propulsion. I thought regenerative braking would have charged the battery up somewhat, but nope — no additional charge.
Maybe I should have RTFM, but I’d much rather jump in a rental and go rather than spend 30 or 40 minutes reading the book-size manual.
My experience was so-so. I wouldn’t go out of my way to rent a plug-in hybrid again.
The overall user experience behind the wheel was horrible. The auto makers just keep making it more and more difficult to figure out how to do anything, even the simplest things.
I’m from the pre-electronics era where you had two heater control levers, one for temperature and one to select where the air went and a knob to control fan speed. You punched the radio button to change stations. You mashed the button on the floor to get high-beams. It was simplicity perfected. You never had to take your eyes off the road, much less try to hold your finger tip steady to tap a pin-head size button on a big LCD screen.
Can’t really understand the hype for plug in hybrids. At best, you can drive 30 minutes on the battery. If your car gets 30 mpg average your saving about 1/2 gallon of gas. In California, that amounts to about $2.50. Offset that with the higher cost of charging your plug in, 11 hours on a 110v connection, about 4 hours on a 240v connection. And if you don’t have a 240 line in your garage you have to pay an electrician to install one. So where’s the savings?