I don’t watch videos but I clicked on the links to the sources.
The ICCT report shows that hybrid passenger vehicles produce about 20% less emissions than a similar gasoline vehicle. That still seems significant, even if there are even lower emissions available.
And that seems obviously true, the way that hybrids tend to use lower power, higher efficiency internal combustion engines than similarly sized full gasoline vehicles, and recapture some portion of the energy that would otherwise be wasted.
They are certainly still better than ICE vehicles, but it could be argued the climate situation is so dire, a 20% reduction is inadequate compared to the more substantial reductions of pure EVs (though even then, we really shouldn’t be trying to replace the world’s cars 1 to 1 with EV cars, but instead transition to public transport as much as possible, with EV’s being useful for areas where public transport may not be viable).
Don’t post random YouTube videos without defending the source, if you think is valid. “Independent organizations” blah
The video makes its conclusion based on 8 studies from different sources, I can’t list each one in the title. You can look at them here if you’d rather not look at the video:
Sources
An even stronger warning from professionals who service electric vehicles https://evclinic.eu/2025/09/27/if-you…
National Vehicle Solutions https://www.nationalvehiclesolutions/…
GridServe https://www.gridserve.com/2025-averag…
ZapMap https://www.zapmap.com/ev-stats/charg…
Fraunhofer / ICCT White Paper https://theicct.org/wp-content/upload…
ICCT European Analysis https://theicct.org/wp-content/upload…
T&E Analysis https://www.transportenvironment.org/…
Carbon Brief https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-…
The point was who is the source of the youtube video first, otherwise you would be attempting passthrough credibility by proxy for whatever their bias may be in presentation of your cited sources, but further from that, you’re giving nothing on if the orgs you list themselves are credible. Are they lobbying groups? Landing pages hosting outright purchased white papers from corporations directly?
And thew you go, first link I clicked on from your listed sources is an EV charging network - I.E. a group that does not profit from more self contained, regenerative hybrids on the road. That’s context worth having.
Until you can do the above for the channel and all of your cited sources, this is simply a wall of text hoping to abuse the basic appeal to perceived authority most of us hold as humans. 4 of 5 dentists agree.
The point was who is the source of the youtube video first
The youtube channel’s name is in the title: Just Have a Think.
The rest of your comment is suggesting I should personally write up a rather compelling case for both the sources and the youtuber himself before it’s worth considering watching the content itself, which would in effect be repeating all of the information in the video itself. That is a time investment I am personally not willing to do, but I would certainly welcome anyone else with the inclination to do so.
Qualifying the author prior to blind posting a link is the point. YouTube is full of misinformation landmines and, as I mentioned, you already mentioned one source that would obviously have a conflict here.
Technology Connections also did a video on this.
The basic conclusions I got from it in terms of efficiency:
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Conventional hydrid cars are not all created equal, with parallel hybrids typically being more efficient than serial hybrids
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Plug in hybrids are frequently less efficient than a well designed conventional hybrid, if they are not charged regularly by electricity
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Both are very inefficient compared to battery electric vehicles by nature of engines being inherently inefficient
For us, it’s an infrastructure problem that wouldn’t be hard to solve, if people weren’t so obstinate about it. Whatever solution you come up with for enabling us to charge our PiH, I’m pretty sure we’ve thought about it and got shot down by the local fossils, with the usual range of “concerns”: Fire, expenses, ugly charging stations, just a fad among the ignorant youth…
Oh, and apparently a local progressive politician is bad because she’s going all influencer and such. God forbid millennials do millennial things to reach millennial voters for millennial policies.
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I’m not a fan of hybrids, but I drove one once for a week and it was massively cheaper/used less fuel. So I can’t believe there aren’t some benefits overall… but I’m still massively on team BEV. Just keep it simple! Get over your blimmin range anxiety people.
Plug-in hybrids can reduce emissions if mostly used for short urban trips, and hybrids can use less gas overall compared to regular ICE vehicles since they tend to use small engines, but the study suggests that the people who use plug-in hybrids like they’re intended (i.e, plugging it in frequently to avoid the engine turning on) is a minority of users, unfortunately.
Hybrids (at least Toyota hybrids; unclear about other brands) don’t just use a smaller engine - it’s a much more efficient engine design. However, this design also requires performance compromises that are only acceptable because there’s an electric motor supplementing it.
Someone else already linked the Technology Connections video that covers it in much greater detail.
This is the problem with halfway solutions. The people that buy them don’t want to change their behaviour, and unsurprisingly, don’t change the behaviour.
I got a PHEV and two months (that was at the start of covid, it took ages) before it finally arrived my city got rid of the charger near my house. Cool cool, thanks.
The next one wasn’t extremely far away, but you’ll think twice if you want to walk ten minutes through a hail storm.
I wonder how many actually want to, but can’t. We sure tried arguing with a HOA that blocks all feasible options and a landlady that won’t push the issue because she doesn’t live here and couldn’t give less of a fuck if she was paid to.
I also wonder how many would if it was easier and cheaper. Like, who’d want to pay for a charging station or walk ten minutes?
I imagine that kind of speculative figure is harder to pin down reliably though.
I have a PHEV, and try very hard to avoid the gas engine from starting. I can go about every other day without gasoline, and even on the days where I go further than my range it’s not too much. I measure my effectiveness overall on miles between fill-ups (7 gallons). 1000 miles is what I consider good.
As I say, you appear to be in the minority by being mindful of plugging it in regularly.
Then the title is stupid. It should say PHEV and not Hybrids
The studies appear to show that regular, non-plugin hybrids are even worse at lowering emissions than the poorly utilized PHEVs :\
Overall it seems to suggest that hybrids aren’t a terribly good solution for lowering emissions overall, since only PHEV’s have the capability to drastically lower them, but only for a minority who are mindful enough to take advantage of that ability.
Worse than something people don’t utilize? Im calling bullshit.
I can get 700+ kms on 35 litres on a 2015 Prius V.
Every other vehicle that was ice I’ve used at work could. Barely break 600kms on 55 litres.
If phevs aren’t good because people don’t use them correctly and only use the ICE component of them, having an always on hybrid reducing fuel consumption by over 50% is absolutely better in every way.
Whatever they are using in your examples are misleading at the very least and outright bullshit at the worst.
I also think the conclusion is suspect. But note that they are comparing “emissions”, not amount of fuel used. One would think they’d go hand-in-hand, but maybe not.
I wonder what the ratios of hybrids are. My in law has a hybrid SUV that barely gets better gas mileage than the equivalent gas model on the highway, which is most of their mileage. If the majority of hybrids are those, not Priuses, then I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the extra materials from the battery and engine offset the extra 3-4 mpg gain.
Worse than something people don’t utilize? Im calling bullshit.
A regular hybrid is always using its ICE to charge its battery. A PHEV can either charge via the grid, or with its ICE.
The minority of people who do opt to mostly charge their PHEV via the grid and do not constantly take long distance trips are able to fully utilize a PHEV’s advantages, and thus they help bring the overall average down for the PHEV category, but since there are so many more who do not, the average is still quite poor despite PHEVs having the real potential to be much better.
a non-PHEV hybrid, by not having the grid as an option, does not have the benefit of that mindful minority of people helping to bring the average down as much, thus it is worse than PHEV, but still better than ICE.
A regular hybrid still generally have reducd emissions compared to an ICE vehicle if used in an urban setting, and due to how small their ICE engines tend to be, they usually use less fuel even on long-distance trips compared to the average ICE vehicle.
The point of the study is not that they don’t emit less than ICE vehicles, it is that, overall, due to how most people use them, they don’t save all that much carbon over their lifetime compared to non-hybrid EVs (which, I will mention, also pale in comparison to public transport). And in the case of PHEV’s, they could be used to great effect, but the majority of buyers appear to not do so, thus making them similar in carbon reduction to regular hybrids.
If you would rather not watch the video itself which goes over the studies and their conclusions, the creator provided sources to all the studies in the text description, which I will provide here for you to look through:
Sources
An even stronger warning from professionals who service electric vehicles https://evclinic.eu/2025/09/27/if-you…
National Vehicle Solutions https://www.nationalvehiclesolutions/…
GridServe https://www.gridserve.com/2025-averag…
ZapMap https://www.zapmap.com/ev-stats/charg…
Fraunhofer / ICCT White Paper https://theicct.org/wp-content/upload…
ICCT European Analysis https://theicct.org/wp-content/upload…
T&E Analysis https://www.transportenvironment.org/…
Carbon Brief https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-…
we need more bus access
Did this account for car class? Weight?
How? A 200hp hybrid puts out less emissions than a 200hp ice.
Per the study, most owners of hybrids are not effectively utilizing their hybrids in ways that actually drastically reduce carbon emissions, only a minority do.
I don’t think this was the case early on. Prius owners were the hypermiles thing sorta got going.
