Why hybrids are bad

I never liked hybrid cars. To me, a hybrid car always looks like a duck. A duck that cannot walk fast, cannot swim well, and fly very averagely. Basically, it is a jack of all trades, master of none.

There is a good reason why it happens. Battery, electric engine, battery cooling system, and other stuff are quite heavy and bulky. There are a lot of extra wires as well. And the typical engine compartment for a modern internal combustion car is quite tight and adding all this electric stuff is not easy which makes it harder and as a result, more costly to maintain.

To combat this problem, a hybrid car usually has a smaller engine, smaller wheels, and a lot of plastic to reduce weight and help fit all that new heavy stuff. It means that the engine must work much harder, and MPG will be quite bad on the highway.

Many people are not aware of these issues because they only check combined MPG and high MPG for them is a huge deal. But recently I found there are way more problems in hybrid cards than I know of and here is a post about this subject.

The first problem is often the start and stop of the internal combustion engine. And each start and stop wears off the engine, starter, and a little bit of battery life. And the more you stay in start-stop traffic the heavier the wear.

The second problem is water. Many people are not aware that one of the byproducts of gasoline combustion is regular water. Also, air typically contains some water and when the engine shuts off, small amounts of water can condense. In any case, eventually, that water will go down into an oil pan.

Normally it is not a problem at all because the engine is quite hot, and the water is simply evaporating and leaves the engine with exhaust gases. But in the hybrid car, the computer shuts the main engine off while you are waiting in the traffic. It means that the engine never reached 100C required for water to evaporate.

Typically, it stays 60-80C in these conditions and even colder in the cold weather. As a result, water stays in the engine and creates emulsion with oil. This significantly reduces the lubrication properties of the oil and in general, most metal does not like water as it creates corrosion.

The third problem is gasoline. Normally, during the pressurization part of the combustion, a little bit of gasoline can go down to the oil pan as well. It is not a problem for most engines because the engine is quite hot, and it will quickly evaporate. But if the engine never reaches 100C then gasoline can accumulate in the bottom of the engine.

It is bad not only because gasoline is also quite a bad lubricant but because if there are enough gasoline fumes it can combust due to temperature or because of spark. Some turbo engines had this problem in the past when they were used for short trips only.

The last problem is that the engine may never reach the optimal temperature. As you probably know there is an optimal engine temperature and the normal engine quickly reaches that temperature and keeps it. But with a hybrid car in the city traffic, the temperature will be relatively low but for highway driving it will be relatively high. As a result, in one of these cases, the engine will not have optimal conditions, and it will work sub-optimally.

There are special engine oils developed specifically for hybrid cars that help with the second and third problems but in general it is still a compromise. But there is nothing that helps solve the first and the last problems.

As a result, a hybrid car is an even bigger compromise than I thought before and engineers must work very hard to solve all these problems. As a result, the car will be quite complex, and as everybody knows the more complex is something there more often it will fail.

A hybrid car looks very nice on paper, and they had their prime time some time ago but now they are ok only if you are driving in a lot of traffic jams, and you don’t have a place to charge an electric car. For all other cases, it is better to buy an electric or regular gasoline car.

Here are my two cents on the subject of hybrid cars, and I hope someone will find it helpful.