how does a full hybrid get charged if not plug in?
Six grand for a new car battery ain’t bad, It costs £1200.00 for a battery for an illegal Stealth Bomber, so what?
is that what a full hybrid is? I thought regular cars worked that way. Why don’t they just run cars on solar power?
It gets recharged by harvesting the excess energy produced when you brake or coast and feeding it back into the battery.
The battery takes over under certain road conditions like, in congestion etc but, when not in these conditions the petrol motor has to lug about the extra weight of the battery so. not sure it’s all win win win.
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I don’t drive or understand cars so no technical stuff from me, but we’ve had Herman the German, a BMW i3, for many years
The poor thing is butt ugly and getting on a bit now but it’s economical to run, helpful with parking, motorways etc and silent enough in electric mode to creep up on people!
Many years? That car was only produced from 2013, so it cant be more than 10yrs old and that is no age for a car. One of my daughters owns and runs a Moggy T (Morris Minor Traveller) which was first registered during 1966 and has been in my family since new when my grandmother bought it.
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Isn’t it? I thought 10 years was quite old for a car, he keeps mumbling about needing a new one, perhaps he’s telling me a tale 
He got got it when they were quite a new fad. We do have a 20 year old Skoda that was my dad’s that’s still running …… It’s got lots of room in it with the seats down and we just use it for lugging stuff about
An Octavia or maybe even a Superb …both roomy cars. Skoda’s are good cars and built on VW rolling platforms (basically rebadged VW’s), so reliability and longevity was built-in 
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It’s an Octavia, still going strong. It’s the electrics, like the windscreen wipers and speedometer that are starting to go more that the engine.
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Quite often it’s a spot of corrosion around the fuse bases, so a good clean up and a spray with a good water repellent such as WD 40 should do the trick.
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Thank yo, we’ll give it a go 
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Sounds good for now Dachs, but as your battery deteriorates don’t expect to get the same mileage from the electric side of the vehicle. And, depending how long you keep the vehicle will depend on how much money you’ve saved gross. New batteries are very expensive and nobody will want to buy a second hand motor off you with a five (or more) years of battery deterioration. Either you have to factor in the price of a new battery, or the purchaser will.
If it’s the ecology that is the reason Dachs, think of all the extra parts required to produce a petrol engine to charge a battery, to power the vehicle some of the time…The electrical system alone (with battery management circuits) will be far more complex than a standard petrol or diesel engine, and the battery alone is an ecological nightmare when you consider the mining, pollution and damage to the environment that recovering lithium and cobalt has produced, and mainly to 3’rd world countries. And as these rare earth minerals become more rare (China actually owns the rights to mine over one third of all cobalt and lithium mined in Africa) they will also become very expensive.
A hybrid Annie is a standard petrol or diesel engine (mainly petrol) charging a big heavy lithium battery. Minute amounts of energy can be harvested from the heat produced when braking and directed into the battery. The vehicle can then be driven using the battery and an electric motor configuration. When the battery is discharged, the petrol engine takes over and again the cycle is repeated. Lets say for example that a new vehicles battery will provide power for 300 miles. It appears that it is cheaper to run than a conventional petrol engine. But as you know with any apparatus that uses a lithium battery, over the years the charge that a battery holds will be reduced, so the petrol engine will have to take the strain more often.
As with all hybrids and plug in EV’s they are very expensive to purchase and run, especially in their later years as the battery deteriorates, so there will be a very limited second hand car market. Consequently, many people who have a car now will be driven off the road in the future, especially the poorer end of the market.
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You’re right, Bob, the traction battery is expensive, deteriorates, and will gradually reduce the resale value of the car, yet this is not my concern, partly because there’s a ten-year guarantee. It looks like all combustion engine cars will suffer the same fate due to a lack of demand in the future. I’d have got about £3-4,000 for a 10 yo car with 80K km on the clock. No attractive resale value either, is it?
I agree to what you say about the complexity of the hybrid system which is why these cars tend to be rather for techies and unsuitable for kerbside parkers. One constantly has to keep an eye on their needs which is not everybody’s alley. And yet when faced with the question of which car to buy I couldn’t go for a conventional one again. You’re also right about the ecological price to be paid for individual transport. Today the choice for everybody is always between the devil and the deep blue sea no matter which car you buy or drive. I consider the price tag on CO² emissions higher than that on other eco-sins.
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The trouble with lithium is that batteries can spontaneously combust. What is the answer? Horse and cart? Some would complain they poo too much. They should be investing in better public transport (not HS2, just something that works and is accessible. So many of our problems are down to patchwork quilt planning (not just ref the environment but in general). Various groups go off and do their own thing with no regard for how this impacts the society as a whole or how inconsistent they might be with other areas. Duplication, inefficiency and a lack of long termism causes so much wastage. So much more wastage than just leaving things as they are. At the moment the big thing is to erect thousands of tower blocks around the country. Totally detrimental to the environment and likely to be knocked down in 30 years. Just to tick a political box.
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Hydrogen, that is the way “forward”
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The technology is already available, hydrogen fuelled ICE vehicles. During WWII my paternal grandmother drove a conventional gas engine car, but due to severe fuel shortages, it was adapted to burn hydrogen (coal gas) with a storage tank (balloon) on the car’s roof.
EDITED to add 
a more modern approach would be a hydrogen fuel tank instead of the petrol tank.
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If you’re thinking of BMW’s Hydrogen 7 of which it built 100 units, it is. If you consider that cruising range and performance didn’t meet expectations and that there’s no infrastructure for refuelling the car, it’s not. Price tag aside.
I hope you haven’t taken offence Dachs. I’m not having a go at you, but the technology that has been forced upon us by giving us very questionable science. For what reason I do not know…But one thing I do know is, it’s got nothing to do with the climate.