Hybrid vs. Electric Cars

Looking to spend less money on gas, or just less money on automotive upkeep in general? Electrified vehicles, both hybrid and fully electric, offer reduced cost, increased convenience, and many other tangential benefits. If you’re considering both, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons of the established hybrid technology, and the new and transformative fully electric vehicles. Let’s compared hybrid vs. electric cars and see which is best for your Dayton and Springfield drives. If you have any questions, be sure to get in touch with us here at Dave Arbogast Buick GMC!

Hybrid Cars vs. Electric Cars: the Basics

To start the hybrid vs. electric comparison, we’ll go over what a hybrid is and what an electric vehicle is, from a cursory perspective.

Hybrid Cars

Hybrid vehicles use both a gasoline engine, and an electric motor. The electric motor enormously improves the efficiency of even the most fuel-sipping gasoline engines, due to the inherent losses in efficiency that come with internal combustion engines. In many cases, hybrid vehicles, especially crossovers and SUVs, can be twice as efficient as their purely gas-powered siblings. So a vehicle with 20 mpg could get as high as 40 mpg, and in city driving at that. Hybrids have different ways of charging the batteries that power the electric part of the powertrain, from self-charing using the engine, to plugging in like an electric car, to a combination of both.

Electric Cars

Electric vehicles, or EVs, use no gasoline. They run purely off of electricity like your cellphone, and the same battery technology that enabled your smartphone also made EVs possible. As electric cars only use batteries to store power and electric motors to use that power, they are even more efficient than hybrids, and can roughly double what a hybrid can do in terms of how much energy it takes to move them a certain distance. Electric cars plug in to charge, and can also use regenerative braking, which uses the motors as generators to put power back into the battery under braking.

Benefits of Hybrid Vehicles

Hybrid cars are a great way to dip your toes into electrification. While less efficient than pure EVs, they are less expensive and are easier to road trip. Gasoline still has more energy density than batteries do, so hybrid vehicles can generally go further before running out of fuel, both gasoline or electricity. Here are the main benefits of hybrid vehicles:

• The battery charges itself
• You can stop and fuel up quickly at any gas station
• Hybrids are often more affordable than EVs

Benefits of Electric Vehicles

While EVs aren’t yet ready to replace everyone’s daily driver, they are already a dramatically superior option for many Sidney drivers. Even though certain issues like energy density and charging time aren’t solved quite yet, electric vehicles make for incredibly convenient and low cost daily drivers, as they can be charged overnight in your garage for far less money than a tank of gas costs. Here are a few benefits:

• Low or zero tailpipe emissions
• Quieter ride with no engine noise
• No money spent on gas 
• Fewer maintenance costs (no oil changes or engine upkeep)
• Potential EV incentives based on your location 
• Flexible charging options, including home and public options

Compare Hybrid vs. Electric Cars at Dave Arbogast Buick GMC

Whether a versatile hybrid or a forward-thinking EV is best for you, we look forward to providing you with the car buying tips and online financing application to make your purchase easy. Visit our showroom today!