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. Even a hybrid is not cost effective, especially the self charging ones. I don’t see the logic in putting such small batteries in them.
The self-charging hybrids give better fuel economy and better performance than a straight petrol. The smaller battery means less weight to lug around while still giving an instantaneous power boost to improve acceleration.
Ours is a 'supposed' self charging Hybrid but the results are negligible. We relied on petrol and self charge for the first few weeks and averaged about 55mpg, which is what you'd expect from a standard Golf 1.4 petrol engine. On a 100mile run to Worcester we managed to get about 6% charge into the battery which gave us about 1.5 miles worth of electric use.
Now we're charging twice a day, the average mpg is working up - after a total of 3000 miles, it's up to 129mpg which sounds good but doesn't take into account the cost of the charging (about £4.50 per day, but is getting about 60 electric miles out of that, so cheaper than petrol).
