German engineering specialists FEV estimates fitting a battery, motor and electronics to a combustion engine car to make a PHEV costs up to 4,000 euros ($4,700) per vehicle.Įuropean automakers are dividing over whether to fight for PHEVs, or spend their financial and political capital accelerating the leap to fully electric vehicles and pushing for better charging infrastructure across the continent. Consultancy AlixPartners estimates carmakers and suppliers will invest $200 billion in electrification from 2020 to 2024. Gauging carmakers' investments on PHEVs is hard because they only announce broad 'electrification' plans. PHEV sales in the EU more than tripled to 507,000 vehicles in 2020, almost as many as the nearly 539,000 all-electric vehicles sold. They add that PHEVs are a popular transitional choice for consumers who want greener travel. This is a change in the group's position from as recently as 2018, when it saw PHEVs as a transition technology.Ĭarmakers say hybrids, used properly with electric as the primary power source and combustion as a back-up, emit far less than conventional cars. 'From the perspective of environment and climate, today's plug-in hybrid technology is worse than what it is replacing.'

Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and e-mobility at European NGO Transport & Environment, said its own research showed that when driven in combustion-engine mode, hybrids' CO2 emissions were higher than conventional cars' - they're heavier than combustion-only cars so used more fuel. One study, from the International Council on Clean Transportation last September, said PHEVs' fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are up to four times the level they are approved for because people do not charge them often enough.

The rules, which are still being drafted, come against the backdrop of a shift in the position of some leading environmental groups which are pushing to dispel PHEVs' green credentials and do away with their subsidies.

To reach an overall climate neutrality target in 2050, nearly all cars on the roads must be zero emissions by that time, the Commission added. 'For most people, a battery electric car is not yet practical,' he told Reuters.Ī European Commission official declined to comment on the green finance rules specifically, but said its policies were 'technology neutral', adding that PHEVs were 'a transition technology towards zero-emission mobility'.

2021 plug in hybrid vehicles