The True Cost
As I said in the EV lead-in, I've never owned a hybrid, but did drive the Honda Insite when it first came out and at the time was impressed with it indicating 3 km / L or less. At that time the BEV option just didn't exist. I can make some observations that many owners may have not considered before purchasing .
Firstly, it's still an ICE vehicle at heart and while a bit more efficient and less polluting, their maintenance costs are no less than an ICE version and are possibly more for several reasons.
They have both a full ICE engine (although the Atkinson cycle is more efficient) plus the same bits as a BEV plus additional parts or electronics to make the two work seamlessly together. Being more complex means more can go wrong. They also cost more to purchase than an ICE version. A recent YouTube video documented a comparison between two identical brand models apart from one being the hybrid version. This ensured that the results showed just the differences.
The basic math was to determine how far the hybrid would need to travel before its additional cost would be recovered due to its better fuel consumption. Depending on where they were driven, city, urban or country, this came out between 80 and 50 thousand Km. City driving tended to be the most economical due the frequent stop and starts getting the most benefit of the battery. However, for shorter distances the ICE motor rarely got to its most efficient operating temperature causing higher wear and therefore more frequent oil changes.Consider the frequent stop/start cycle of the ICE particularly at every set of traffic lights especially in cold weather.
On long country trips the EV part gave little benefit with the ICE doing most of the work.
Of course a plug-in hybrid has a much better electric range and if this covers ones daily commute the ICE part possibly never starts at all solving the wear issues. But in NZ the RUC adds 3.9 cents for every Km driven further increasing the total Km needed to break even.
Regenerative breaking is minimal compared to a BEV. This likely depends on the brand as a hybrid can be configured in different ways. If the EV part is part of the ICE crankshaft some electrical energy goes into rotating the ICE unless some method of decoupling is provided. A lot of design effort has gone into getting the best efficiency in this area with various design differences depending on the patents held and shared. Some feed both energy sources into a differential where they can combine when needed and lock any currently unused part. The whole system can obviously get quite complex and adds to the purchase price and maintenance.
Fuel costs are unavoidable and without a source of refined gasoline a true hybrid is useless as transport. One only has to look at the current situation in Russia. Its whole transport system is based on fossil fuel and when in short supply many spend days in ques to get their 4L weekly ration or nothing at all. With the current world situation there is no guarantee that NZ won't eventually be in the same situation despite what the government says. Australia used to be self sufficient in fuel, but the costs of maintaining the many refineries was higher than importing petrol and diesel and they closed most of them. BEV sales have since sky-rocketed due to the huge increase in home solar generation.
Its surprising how little Solar is needed to support charging an BEV. Twenty 400w panels can return 8Kw per hour and add about 50 km of range per hour. That gives one a free 25 km daily commute. Of course that's no help if the car is at work during daylight hours and is perhaps where adding a battery comes in. However, if one used public transport one day a week and left the BEV at home for the whole day those 20 solar panels could in theory fully charge the BEV leaving plenty of range for the rest of the week. An other idea would be to share one days commute with a neighbour in a similar situation. Each would then benefit with a full day of free charging.
Current cost estimates of installing solar typically have a payback (ROI) of five to seven years depending on including a battery. Over the life of the system of about 30 years this represents a calculated 14.5% tax free return on the initial investment. With the rapidly falling cost of solar and the steadily increasing price of electricity this ROI will only increase.
So, the reasons for owing a hybrid over a BEV are only getting worse. BEV range anxiety no longer exists and if your annual holiday travel takes and hour longer - so what, its a lot less than the time wasted visiting a gas station over the year.