Learnings on shifting to a PHEV-type Vehicle
A disclaimer: This is not really a tech blog (it is kinda, but not on the usual topics I write about here) nor a review of the Mini Countryman, but I’ve been capturing data on our car as we transitioned from full petrol to a PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) type of car.
Another disclaimer — I am not an expert on automotives at all. Fuel economy, etc are not my proficiency, so please bear with me — and I do would love to hear about your additional info!
Okay, so about mid-2020 we were starting to explore Electric vehicles. It has been on our minds for awhile, but we started to seriously consider it around 2nd or 3rd quarter of 2020 (you know — within year 1 of the pandemic). We were driving a Mini Countryman, and while we loved it, it was time for us to change and it was then when we considered looking at EVs.
After a couple of researches, our first considerations obviously are cost and whether we wanted to do full electric or not (it depended on distance range — we do like to bit of road trips and if the infrastructure is not there, it will just not work, and unfortunately Australia is not there -yet- in terms of infra).
We were cautious and given there’s not a lot of chargers out there, we decided to go the Hybrid way for now — and we didn’t need to go far from our car model — Mini started to do PHEV Countryman’s — so we decided to go to that direction.
One thing I do have to tell you is around Q3 2020, I decided to start capturing the number of times to fill the tank with petrol in our previous vehicle and wanted to compare it once we do PHEV. Interestingly, with the petrol price increases of late, with the data I started capturing 18 months ago — I can tell you how much dramatic the petrol increase is compared to the price in 2020 (you’ll see in one of the charts below).
The Data — Introduction and some caveats
For the charts you’ll see below, in order for me to get the data I need to compare, I had to use 2 key major sources:
- The receipts we have as we top up petrol (it has the price per L, the date, and the volume of petrol we put in); and
- The amount of kWh requires to charge the car for each plugging are retrieved from the Mini App itself (it has a good granular per-charge data, so happy haha)
The cost to charge = basing this on the cost per kWh on the rate we get from our quarterly electric bill. I know this is not as simple as getting the average price per kWh (there are discounts involved, from my understanding, when you use electricity off peak, it is cheaper, so we schedule the charging of our car to start at 10PM).
Some other caveats — I didn’t compute the mileage (kilometreage? I know, I should have!) so I’ll mark some key points in the chart below (e.g. when the 2021 wave of lockdowns happened, an accident we had with the car that we had to wait for 2 months before getting it back), but in general, the data reflects the normal travel — to work during weekdays which is about roughly 10kms two-way, and weekends have longer trips (but still within the Sydney metro majority of the time).
We are also notorious half-tank top uppers. We generally do not wait until the tank is screaming for more juice before we do so.
The Other Costs
Another cost to consider (which you’ll see in the chart), is when we were able to install a powerpoint in our parking slot in our apartment block. It took a couple of months to get approval, so prior to the installation we had to charge our car in a free fast charging station in a nearby shopping mall, so part of the expenses was to install the point (about 800 AUD for this, including labour), so consider this definitely as potential cost if moving to PHEV.
So now, some charts
Again, note — this is data from our experience. By no means this reflects other experiences, so keep that in mind :)
The first chart shows the petrol vs electricity cost per month since shifting to a PHEV vehicle. As mentioned in the previous section, there are some key callouts to the data (e.g. an accident, when the lockdown started / ended).
The green segments above only considers the times when we were doing the charging at home (and paying for it in electricity bill). Prior to that, we were charging in places where we parked (e.g. shopping malls), but they are “free”, that is, we didn’t need to pay for anything, so excluded it in the chart.
This second chart shows the number of times we went to a petrol station to top up. As you can see, while we were in PHEV starting Jan 2021, we were relying on petrol majority of the time (we were only charging the car once a week across the road from us), and it was only after we got the car back where we were charging on a daily basis.
The red line shows the changes in the price per litre. How dramatic it is, isn’t it, that in Jan 2021 it was at 1.149 AUD a litre, and the last time we topped up in March, it was at 2.199 AUD per litre!
Amazingly so, as of this writing (Apr 3, 2022), in the last 8 months we only needed to go to the petrol station and top up 4 times! So really, the cost reduces if you look at it on a rolling average, too!
Key Wins & Learnings
We are not highly impacted by the petrol price hike as of late.
Recent discussions with friends and colleagues have really highlighted the impact of the increase in petrol prices due to the crisis in Europe. Stories of 90 AUD a full tank — and some have to do this on a weekly basis!
I know, we are still impacted somewhere else (e.g. basic goods) and this is, by no means, reflective of my sentiments on the crisis in Europe, though with this particular point of view, we were glad we made the switch especially seeing the prices.
While it is hard to find chargers in the wild, there are loads of free charging stations and the technology to help has been progressing really well.
Before we were able to charge at home, we leaned on the ChargeFox app pretty heavily to find charging stations. It’s pretty good — you can filter the locations that are free / pay-per-charge, but also eliminate locations where it’s currently being used!
The app will tell you if someone’s plugged in — it’s a very nifty feature to spare you of the disappointment when you physically drive there only to find the slot you want (actually — can) is currently in use.
Having said that, our experience has been great so far — the community has been helpful (we even had an encounter with a Tesla driver swapping to a Tesla-specific point when we noticed he was using it).
Advocating for uniformity in the plug.
This so far, has been our issue with electric vehicles. There’s no standard plug! We have Type 2, but other cars have different types(see the screenshot of ChargeFox above).
Another annoying concern — Tesla also uses Type 2 plug but we can’t use the Tesla boxes to charge our car! And in most of the locations we go to, there are an abundance of tesla boxes. I think there are a few adapters available out there, but they also cost a fortune — so we’re definitely advocates of standardisation of the plugs in the future!
Majority of the Australian Hotels / Locations in Regional NSW do support the infra, but it’s mostly Tesla (annoyingly so).
For the Mini Countryman, it really just need a standard powerpoint so we were able to charge overnight. During our roadtrip around regional NSW, majority of the hotels we stayed in were very helpful in terms of our needs. Some were even letting us park in areas where there’s a close, safe powerpoint nearby for us to charge overnight! We were very happy and grateful.
As mentioned, some hotels (e.g. the one we stayed in Dubbo) have box fast chargers, but most of these boxes we saw were the Tesla-specific, unfortunately. Minor annoyance but most of them were able to provide alternative locations.
At least for our case / choice, the range is good for daily travel / needs, but expect to top up when doing road trips.
After having the PHEV for almost 16 months now, we were very happy we made the switch, and quite excited in the progress of the infrastructure that’s happening.
As you can see in the charts, our daily needs are generally covered by the electricity part of the PHEV, giving us some relative freedom from depending on the petrol.
We were also able to try out hybrids during the time when the Mini was under repair (the ones where we didn’t need to charge it, but the car itself manages both charging, etc) and they were pretty economical too.
With the technology advancements in range, infrastructure support growing / options even progressing, we don’t see it as an obstacle no more for our next car in a couple of years to go fully electric (but that’s far down the line, I reckon, we’re still enjoying the PHEV).