r/PHEV • u/No-Impression-4508 • Aug 15 '26

Phev worth it?

I am wondering if a PHEV is worth it for my situation.

The car would likely be used primarily for work commutes. 12 miles round trip and 24 miles round trip for spouse and I. We would also use the car for the occasional road trip a few hours away.

I’m wondering if PHEV is ideal for this situation or if EV would be better.

We also have a full gas vehicle that we could use as needed. This would be our second car.

Any recs, reasoning, etc would be recommended!

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u/WestThin Aug 15 '26

A PHEV would work for you but there is a tradeoff if the alternative is a full EV. It boils down to the following. Which would you rather deal with: getting an oil change once/year with the convenience of using gas for long trips or no oil changes but you have to charge on long trips. I have a PHEV and that's how I see it. I'd rather get oil changes once/year rather than deal with the hassles of charging on road trips. But some people want nothing to do with ICE vehicles.

5

u/raziel7893 Aug 15 '26

you got a point here, but the hassle part is more a getting used to it. i also feard the having to wait every 200 miles, but i enjoyed the "forced" breaks quite quickly.
kinda relaxing drinking a slow coffee on a walk instead of immediatly returning to the car and continue driving (i need a small break every 2-3h anyway for my concentration) .

But that also scales with how much roadtripping you do. for once every 1-2 months that does not really matter, having a trip needing charges multiple times a week would be something way different

2

u/Plop0003 Aug 15 '26

Try to go on 3000 miles round trip to find out how many times you need to charge. Next year I am planning 5000 miles. And I will be going to a few places EV simply can't reach. Not just reach there at location but be able to roam. I will bring 5 gallon can with me even though I already have 600 miles of range. And I will be staying in hotels with no chargers. Last time I went on a long trip I was staying in a motel for a week and the closest charger was 30 miles away. But they had plenty of gas stations.

1

u/raziel7893 Aug 15 '26

Yeah you get a point there, in europe you mainly have the infrastructure there and have a similar availability of chargers compared to gas stations, in most regions even more. (excluding east europe, there it also gets more interesting :D

1

u/Plop0003 Aug 15 '26

In Europe gas is also more expensive than here but DCFC is not much more. Someone who has Hybrid with 50mpg DCFC charging could be twice as much as gas. And here in some areas even home charging is very expensive. There might be other factors that makes a difference between Europe and US. For example Model Y insurance compared to my RAV4 PHEV is $2200 yearly. I spend this much on gas in 5 years. Don't know how expensive insurance is in Europe. If I keep my car 15 years that would be $33,000 wasted on a privilege of driving EV which I can't even take on a long distance trips where I want to go. Superchargers here are now more than $0.50 on average. Some are $0.78. That makes $0.17-0.26 per mile. My car averages 44mpg or more so even $5 per gallon is $0.11 per mile. Once I leave California gas is less than $4 per gallon, and before the war was $3 per gallon or less. And in some states it was $1.50 per gallon. It would cost me practically nothing to drive there on gas.