Car makers and their suppliers have defended plug-in hybrid technology after data extracted from cars on the road by the European authorities showed that models on average were emitting more than three times the carbon dioxide shown in official tests.

Sales of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) grew 34% in the first three months in the UK to 42,492 as more company car drivers took advantage of their tax-friendliness. That in turn helps car makers to drive down their average CO2 emissions to meet legislation and softens their 22% electric car target this year. In Europe, sales were up 7.4%, with the UK now only fractionally behind Germany for the title of the biggest PHEV market in the region.

However, figures collected by the European Commission as part of a wider study into the effectiveness of the WLTP fuel economy test show that plug-in hybrids might not deserve their low-CO2 status, along with the perks that go with that. 

Under new rules that allow European authorities to download data from cars in use, the European Commission found that among the 191,197 PHEVs interrogated, the average fuel economy was just 47.5mpg against the 167mpg claimed through the WLTP test. 

The commission concluded that the “large discrepancy” between figures achieved by PHEVs in the lab test versus the real world “shows that they are charged and driven in electric mode much less than how they were expected to be used”. The – perhaps predictable – assessment was that “assumptions used for calculating the WLTP test result do not hold in real-world conditions”.

Don’t blame the car makers, argued Mike Hawes, CEO of UK automotive body the SMMT. “By law, manufacturers are required to test all vehicles of all technologies to the same, repeatable standard – the WLTP Test. There will, however, always be a difference between lab tests and real-world use,” he told Autocar.

The advantages go beyond their emission reduction qualities as consumers make the sometimes difficult switch to EVs. “Plug-in hybrids are a crucial stepping stone technology, giving consumers the experience of charging and peace of mind if they experience difficulties,” Hawes said.

Don’t blame the car makers, argued Mike Hawes, CEO of UK automotive body the SMMT. “By law, manufacturers are required to test all vehicles of all technologies to the same, repeatable standard – the WLTP Test. There will, however, always be a difference between lab tests and real-world use,” he told Autocar.

The advantages go beyond their emission reduction qualities as consumers make the sometimes difficult switch to EVs. “Plug-in hybrids are a crucial stepping stone technology, giving consumers the experience of charging and peace of mind if they experience difficulties,” Hawes said.

BMW, the UK’s third-biggest seller of PHEVs in the UK so far this year, also pointed to the official tests in its defence of the technology, which requires owners to charge the battery via a plug to gain the full benefit. “These tests show clearly that plug-in hybrid technology, when the vehicles are charged regularly as intended, can save significant fuel consumption and emissions over the equivalent petrol or diesel models,” the company told Autocar in a statement.

JLR meanwhile pointed to the chunky batteries in Range Rover and Range Rover Sport plug-in hybrids. “Typical Range Rover customers will be able to complete up to 75 per cent of trips using electric power only if they begin each journey with a full charge,” the company said in a statement to Autocar. ““Plug in hybrids offer clients a great combination of performance, fuel economy, low emissions, with zero emissions at the tailpipe.”

Automotive supplier lobby group CLEPA took issue with the results. “The Commission’s recent study does not account for technological progress,” the organisation said in an email to Autocar. It defended the technology as an important addition to the choices available to consumers as they make their shift to lower CO2 technologies. “Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles should be seen as a bridge towards electrification, not a U-turn,” it said.

Mercedes-Benz pointed the blame firmly at the tests themselves, calling the measurement process “unrealistic” and flagging upcoming changes. “The utility factor consideration in the WLTP is unrealistic: the main reason for this is that the assumed driving and charging behaviour deviates from real customer behaviour,” the company told Autocar in a statement.

Mercedes also referenced its own data that it said showed PHEVs “have significantly lower CO2 emissions than corresponding combustion engine models” even without recharging.

The PHEV hasn’t been mortally wounded by this report – far from it. As CLEPA points out, the data is relatively out of date, given it was harvested from cars first registered in 2021. Many car makers didn’t report data, meaning the numbers were dominated by just a handful of brands. The plug-in hybrid dataset consisted primarily of Mercedes-Benz (39%), Volvo (19%), and Ford (16%) vehicles. The European Commission admitted the flaws. “At this point, it is too early to identify trends in the gap size as data is only available for one year,” the commission said.

The purpose of the data collection is to work out whether authorities in the European Union (and the UK, given it also uses WLTP figures to calculate CO2) need to change the way they calculate CO2 figures. 

That’s already going to happen. The “mismatch” between the so-called utility factor – that is, the percentage of time the test assumed the car will be driven in electric mode – and the actual drive time is going to be narrowed from 2025. Then, the test will assume the car will be driven half its time on electric, rather than the current 70-85% assumption. A further change is expected in 2027, informed by another interrogation of figures this year.

That’s going to remove some of the more fantastical CO2 and MPG claims from new plug-in hybrids sold. For example, reducing the expected electric miles driven in the changed 2025 test (the so-called Euro 6e-bis) will increase the recorded CO2 for the BMW X1 xDrive25e, a plug-in hybrid SUV, from 40g/km to 96g/km, the International Council of Clean Transportation (ICCT) calculated. The proposed change in 2027 would increase that again to 122g/km.

With those numbers, the PHEV would wither and die. The cost to integrate an expensive battery and electric motor into a combustion engine car would blow the business case out of the water without the attendant low CO2 figure to reduce average emissions and offer some tax benefits to the customer

However, car makers are responding by increasing the battery size to give a greater electric-only range, meaning that they’ll be able to match the pace of the WLTP changes to the electric ‘utility factor’.

Battery sizes grew by a “massive” 27% between August 2022 and the same month last year, according to the most recent study by metals and minerals consultancy Adamas Intelligence, bringing the average battery size to 21.8kWh.

Examples include Mercedes’ recent overhaul of the GLC to increase the battery size in the 300e PHEV to 24.8kWh from 13.5 kWh, boosting the claimed electric-only range to 81 miles from 28 miles. The pack – which is slightly larger than that fitted to the Mk1 generation Nissan Leaf EV – has also gone into the firm's new E300e and C300e.

Meanwhile, the Volkswagen Group has increased the size of the battery in its new plug-in hybrid cars on its MQB Evo platform from 13kWh to 19.7kWh, including the VW Tiguan, VW Passat, VW Golf, Skoda Kodiaq and Skoda Superb. In the Golf, that gives a claimed electric range of 62 miles.

Volvo meanwhile shared its own data showing that the effect of increasing battery size on its plug-in hybrids was to increase the number of journeys travelled on purely electric. That went from 38% in 2021 model year PHEVs with an effective electric range of around 31 miles to 50% in 2023 model year cars with an effective range of around 40 miles.

The downside of increase battery side however is that it makes plug-in hybrids even more expensive, given the need to package an even bigger battery along with electric motor and regular combustion engine. It’s probably no co-incidence that three best-selling plug-in hybrid brands – Land Rover, Audi and BMW – in the first three months of UK sales, were all premium. The Audi A3 was the UK’s top selling PHEV in the first three months.

The technology has even pulled in luxury brands including Bentley and Aston Martin, both of whom have pushed back plans to launch electric cars in favour of an expanded plug-in hybrid range. The technology suits customers who "want some electrification but still have the sports car smell and feel and noise,” Aston Martin chairman Lawrence Stroll told investors recently.

The poor real-world figures versus the test results are partially linked to their strong fleet usage. In the first half of this year, three-quarters of all plug-in hybrids were bought by companies. Incentivised by the low CO2 figure extrapolated from the test, company car drivers often lack the follow-on incentive to actually charge the battery and achieve the quoted figure, or even get close to it.

In fact, company cars are driving on electric just 11-15% of the time, according to the green transport pressure group T&E, meaning there’s still a way to go before the real figure is reached. “This is particularly problematic as company cars make up 71% of new PHEV sales,” T&E said.

If PHEVs were only a European phenomenon, they might have died on the development table, squeezed on one side by rising sales of hybrids and on other by EVs as they become cheaper. In the UK, despite the sale growth, they still accounted for just a 7.8% market share in the first three months, compared with 15% for EVs and 14% for hybrids.

However, their growing popularity in China (half of all BYD sales there are PHEVs) and the US are likely to mean they will continue in Europe as well. One possible path before the door  shuts for good in 2035 is the range-extender, where the battery and electric motor are the dominant motive force, aided by a small petrol engine to fill in charging gaps. Use of the technology has empowered China’s Li Auto, a premium start-up that actually makes money. It’s also found in the LEVC London taxi. 

Meanwhile, a fairer assessment of their real-world contribution to CO2 emissions could even save the PHEV if it convinces authorities they should remain a tax-friendly option.

To briefly summarise that row, immediately after the UK gave notice under Article 50 at the end of March 2017, the EU Council produced its draft negotiation guidelines, which included a paragraph to the effect that no agreement on the EU’s future relationship with the UK would apply to Gibraltar without the agreement of Spain. Quite what that meant at that time was slightly obscure, since there were different understandings in play as to whether the future relationship would require unanimous agreement of all EU members (which would include Spain anyway), and for that matter different understandings of how the future relationship would be negotiated (at that stage, the UK was still pushing for it to be done in parallel with the Article 50 talks).

However, one thing it very clearly meant, even if only symbolically, was that the EU regarded Spain as having some kind of special status as regards Gibraltar and, whilst that might be taken to be no more than a recognition that it was the only country apart from Ireland where there was a land border with the UK territory, it also seemed to recognize, if not to uphold, Spain’s claim to sovereignty over Gibraltar. Certainly that was how it was taken by Brexiters, and it unleashed a torrent of jingoistic nonsense, to the extent that some even speculated about going to war with Spain over the issue.

This episode happened almost exactly seven years ago, and many may have forgotten it, but it is worth recalling now, not just because a Gibraltar deal is finally in the offing, but because even at the time it foreshadowed some more general lessons, which I identified in my post of 2 April 2017, the consequences of which are still playing out.

The lessons of Gibraltar

Lesson #1: The negotiating process

One lesson was, indeed, about the issue of the sequencing of exit and future terms negotiations, and the fact that the EU was clearly not going to accept the UK’s suggestion, in Theresa May’s Article 50 letter, that these be conducted in parallel. The roots of this actually went back much further. Before the referendum, the Vote Leave campaign had promised: “Taking back control is a careful change, not a sudden stop - we will negotiate the terms of a new deal before we start any legal process to leave.” This was always nonsense in terms of the Article 50 process – the only legal leaving process that existed – and an hour before the referendum result was officially confirmed the European Council had already circulated an advisory note to EU members reiterating this.*

In one way, that lesson was fairly quickly learned. Having threatened that it would be the ‘row of the summer’ of 2017, when the time came, shortly after May’s disastrous 2017 election, Brexit Secretary David Davis immediately capitulated to ‘sequencing’.  Yet in other ways the lesson went unheeded in that, throughout the negotiations, UK politicians and the media frequently confused or conflated exit and future terms, and Boris Johnson deliberately did so in the 2019 election, when he proposed his ‘oven-ready deal’ as something which would ‘get Brexit done’ when it was, in fact, only the exit deal.

Ever since then, many of the Brexit Ultra MPs have persisted in the belief that the Northern Ireland Protocol part of that deal was somehow temporary, contingent on the terms of the future trade deal (on the most charitable interpretation, this rests on a confusion between Johnson’s ‘front stop’ Protocol and May’s ‘backstop’, but even that degree of charity entails that those MPs were lamentably incompetent). More generally, even now, Brexiters represent the acceptance of sequencing as the first failure of May to ‘play hardball’ with the EU, and hence it is a foundational component of their explanation of why Brexit hasn’t been done ‘properly’.

It’s a myth which will not die, and was trotted out yet again this week by Liz Truss (as she seeks to drum up sales for a political memoir variously described by reviewers as “self-serving” and “ludicrous”, “shamelessly unrepentant, petulant … and cliché-ridden”, and “weird”). I suspect it will be years, if not decades, before this myth finally disappears from British politics.

Lesson #2: The meaning of a union

The second lesson of the April 2017 Gibraltar row was that whilst the EU would negotiate as a bloc, and in the interests of the bloc, it would do so with particular regard for the interests of those members most directly affected by Brexit, such as Spain, Cyprus (in relation to UK military bases) and, perhaps most of all, Ireland. This again exposed the hollowness, if not downright ignorance, of the Brexiters’ pre-referendum position, most notoriously articulated by David Davis when he asserted in May 2016 that “the first calling point of the UK’s negotiator in the time immediately after Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike the deal: absolute access for German cars and industrial goods, in exchange for a sensible deal on everything else. Similar deals would be reached with other key EU nations.”

It was an especially idiotic idea given that one of the Brexiters’ own objections to the EU was that it did not allow its members to make their own trade deals, and such nonsense was quickly exposed as such. However, it never quite died and, throughout the negotiations, the UK frequently used – whatever the Ultras may say – “hard tactics” to try to pressurise individual states or even regions into breaking the EU’s unity, as recorded by a key member of the EU’s negotiating team, Stefaan de Rynck, in his book Inside the Deal (p.61).

That these failed reflects, as the early Gibraltar row portended, the care which the EU took, and will continue to take, over protecting the specific interests of its member states, including small ones like Ireland (compare this with Davis’s airy reference to “key” EU nations). As such, it also served as a reminder of the ways that sovereign power is magnified, rather than extinguished, by EU membership. The contrast with the carelessness, bordering on disdain, with which the London government treated the interests of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and, in a sense, Gibraltar itself, was a marked one. There is still no sign that Brexiters or the British government have learnt any aspect of this second lesson.

Lesson #3: The complexity of Brexit

The third of the lessons identified in my post about the 2017 Gibraltar episode was that, even leaving aside the nature of the exit process, it was an early example of the huge number of complex problems which Brexiters had poured scorn on during the referendum, but which the UK was now going to have to face up to. For although it was certainly not a major campaign issue, the possible implications of Brexit for Gibraltar had been pointed out.

In particular, in May 2016 the then Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond had said: “I genuinely believe that the threat of leaving the European Union is as big a threat to Gibraltar's future security and Gibraltar's future sovereignty as the more traditional threats that we routinely talk about.” The reaction from Brexiters was furious, with Liam Fox enraged that the possibility should even have been mentioned, saying “I think there are limits to what you can and cannot say in any campaign that goes way beyond acceptable limits” (sic). All this had been reported in the Daily Express under an inevitable headline about ‘Project Fear’ yet, just a few months on, and there was actually talk, admittedly ludicrous, of going to war to defend sovereignty over Gibraltar.

As the months and years have gone by, just about everything which the Brexiters said would be simple, quick, and easy has been shown to be complex, slow, and difficult. It’s true that there have been exceptions. Rolling over EU trade deals proved less difficult than many, including me, thought, and so has the creation of a Nuclear Cooperation Agreement with the EU, following exit from Euratom. That’s not to say that either of these things has been beneficial, but they haven’t presented the intractable problems associated with, say, the search for ‘frictionless trade’, or a solution to the Northern Ireland Trilemma.

However, the general picture is that almost everything, from fishing quotas to residency rights, has thrown up massively more complexity than the Brexiters had admitted, or even understood, before the referendum. And this remains the case. Just this week, Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch spoke of the increased trade barriers with the EU as being something done by the EU to the UK rather than something chosen by the UK. Then came yesterday's truly ludicrous news of yet another delay in the introduction of import controls on goods coming from the EU (more on this in future posts, no doubt).

Gibraltar in limbo

As regards Gibraltar itself, after the initial flare-up in 2017 its post-Brexit future became detached from the main Brexit negotiations and effectively ‘parked’, following an agreement in November of 2018 as part of the attempt to get May’s ill-fated Withdrawal Agreement off the ground, and it was not covered by the eventual trade agreement, simply leaving the single market at the end of the transition period (it had never been part of the customs union).

Since then, the territory has been “in limbo”, operating under the terms of a series of Memoranda of Understanding created in 2018, and then a temporary agreement made in December 2020 which also set the path for negotiations for a UK-EU treaty. This has enabled Gibraltar to be a party to the Schengen agreement, allowing an open land border with Spain, and for Spain to be involved in policing its port and airport – these, along with regulatory alignment, being amongst the most disputed issues in the negotiations.

However, this does not mean that these temporary arrangements have run smoothly. For example, in April 2022 several British citizens were refused entry into Spain from Gibraltar because they did not have documentation showing onward travel or evidence of being able to financially support themselves in Spain. Brexiters expressed outrage, apparently unable to understand that they are not alone in wanting to secure borders from potentially illegal immigration.

Meanwhile, after some fractious pre-negotiation, negotiations for a formal treaty began in October 2021, since when there have been seventeen rounds of talks. As discussed in relation to other policy areas in one of my recent posts, the churn of Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries since then may have been one barrier to progress. It is of note that the conduct of the negotiations gave rise to one of the allegations of bullying against one of these Foreign Secretaries, Dominic Raab, which led to his subsequent resignation as Deputy Prime Minister. That allegation arose because a senior civil servant had supposedly jeopardised UK sovereignty over Gibraltar, emphasising how this concept has continued to lie at the heart of the negotiations.  

There were rumours of a deal in December 2022 and again in November 2023, so it is possible that nothing will come of the latest announcement. However, there is now a clearer sense that there has been political agreement, perhaps a result of David Cameron becoming Foreign Secretary, and that the outstanding issues are of a technical nature. It seems likely that any agreement that is reached will entail Schengen area passport checks being undertaken at Gibraltar’s port and airport by EU Frontex staff (rather than Spanish border staff), accompanied by an agreement to keep the Spanish-Gibraltar land border open without checks, and some form of joint UK-Spanish management of the airport (which has a particular sensitivity as it is also an RAF base), as well as full regulatory alignment.

These possibilities have already attracted the ire of Brexiters such as Bill Cash and Andrew Rosindell, and dark mutterings of “the EU taking Gibraltar by stealth” in the Telegraph, but how much actual opposition they would put up to an agreement is unclear. Very likely, as with the Windsor Framework, the power, and perhaps even the interest, of the ERG will be shown to be much reduced.

Crucially, as with the Northern Ireland situation, and in a different way with the import controls situation, the Brexiters have no answer to the fundamental conundrum, which is of their own making: they have created the need for a border but don't want to create a border. More generally, their naïve idea of untrammeled sovereignty has again been exposed to the realities of power and found wanting. But if they are not able to prevent a deal, nor are they able to understand why a deal has been done. The warships will not sail, and Gibraltar will become yet another grievance of Brexit betrayal.

The Brexit bill of goods

As Brexit issues go, Gibraltar has received less attention in the UK, at least, than it should have done (I include myself in that criticism) although, of course, there are good reasons why Northern Ireland, to take the most obvious, somewhat comparable, issue, has received so much more. Yet it is a revealing one, not least as a reminder of the quite casual, careless way in which the Brexiters tossed the lives of so many people into disarray, uncertainty, or even crisis.

It is also an example of the way that the entirety of the Brexit process is a still unfolding lesson in the realities of what Brexit means, as compared with what Brexiters claimed it would mean, a lesson which is only very slowly and painfully being learned as Brexit continues its relentless degradation of national life. Just in the last week there have been more installments, from news of medicine shortages to news of restaurant staff shortages to news of garden centres having to stockpile goods, whilst the latest import controls delay continues to expose us to increased risks of disease and sub-standard products. But although the lesson is by no means over yet, there comes a moment at which it is reasonable to set a test, and that surely cannot wait for the 25, 50 or even 100 years that, since though not before the referendum, some Brexiters have suggested need to pass to assess their project. Nor can the test of success be, as most Brexiters these days seem to imagine, whether it has been less damaging than the worst predictions made for it. Brexit was, after all, sold as a positive project.

In an interview the other day, the actor Michael Douglas remarked, apparently in passing, that Britain was “sold a bill of goods” (meaning something passed off in a deception or fraud) and that “they should take the old political speeches that were made [before the referendum] … they should remind people of what they were promised”. It’s such an obvious point, and yet one rarely made in British political discourse. People should indeed be reminded of what David Davis promised in the article I referred to earlier. Or of what Daniel Hannan promised. Or of what Vote Leave’s slick, shamelessly manipulative video promised Brexit would mean for the NHS.

This isn’t about picking around in the entrails of long-past events. It is about promises made to the British people less than a decade ago, and made by people many of whom are still active in political life. Moreover, many of those people are now, like Hannan, using the same tricks to urge us towards an equally ruinous Brexit 2.0 of ECHR derogation to, as he put it this week (£), “finish the work of Brexit”, whilst others are now seeking a referendum on immigration.

We live in a time when almost every controversial decision or event is made subject to an independent inquiry. None of them relates to anything of the magnitude of Brexit, which surely warrants such an inquiry. If a Gibraltar deal is about to be done, and the long years of literal Brexit negotiation are finally ended, that would be the ideal time. It won’t happen, of course, but here’s a thought: if, as David Lammy said this week, the coming Labour government will be committed to ‘progressive realism’ in foreign policy, including relations with the EU, then what better place to start than a realistic assessment of whether Brexit has lived up to the promises made for it?

 

Note

*There are two different issues nested within this. One is about the EU successfully insisting that there could be ‘no negotiation without notification’ (i.e. without triggering Article 50). The other is about whether any discussion of future trade terms could be undertaken prior to the completion of the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement. On the latter, whilst refusing the UK’s attempt to undertake the two sets of talks in parallel, the EU somewhat softened its position to the extent of agreeing that the talks within the Article 50 period could encompass two sequenced phases, the first broadly agreeing exit terms and, subject to ‘satisfactory progress’ on these, a second that would finalise the exit terms whilst also discussing preliminary future terms. Phase one was ostensibly completed with the agreement of December 2017 but, for reasons far too long to be summarised here, phase 2 discussions about future terms never really happened (for details, see just about every post on this blog for the two years after that date, or chapters 2-5 of my book Brexit Unfolded).