Electric vehicles – Your questions answered

Electric Vehicles… produce zero tailpipe emissions, are powered solely by one or more electric motors and are sometimes called BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles).

EVs plug into off-board sources of electricity and store the energy in a battery. Most BEVs will also recover some charge through regenerative braking whilst braking (and often when being driven downhill).

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles… These are powered by an ICE and by an electric motor that uses energy stored in a smaller battery than a pure electric vehicle – check the battery size because the electric range may vary greatly from 10 to 50 miles. Once the battery is empty you will be back to petrol.

PHEVs can be plugged into off-board sources of electricity to charge the battery, however the Government has dramatically reduced incentives for these, partly because people didn’t plug them in at all!

Hybrid Electric Vehicles… These are powered by an ICE that runs on conventional or alternative fuel and an electric motor that uses energy stored in a very small battery.

HEV batteries are charged by the combustion engine and through regenerative braking. HEVs are not plugged in to charge and simply improve the vehicle efficiency by recovering some energy.