While I'm not the commenter that you are replying to, I do drive a plug-in hybrid.
I find fuel economy is worse if you don't heavily utilise the electric side, and on-the-road cost is more than a straight petrol engine version of the same car, with less boot storage space as well, as the battery takes up space (and space where a spare tyre now cannot be), although it can make economic sense due to some taxes being less. (e.g. BIK tax rate of ~8-10% vs ~25-30%).
You'll only really get good fuel economy if you are plugging it in to charge every night, and doing a correspondingly suitable amount of daily miles.
And if you're plugging the car in overnight every night... you might as well just get a full BEV anyway.
The whole plug-in hybrid thing just feels like a tax dodge (either because it take advantage of perverse incentives, or works around low emission schemes), or a halfway house for people who aren't yet ready to make the jump to a BEV.
For me, even driving one (for the aforementioned financial considerations), I feel the reasons to buy/drive a plug in hybrid don't really make sense from any other point-of-view, and at this stage my next car is most likely to be a BEV.
That doesn't make much sense. Hybrids literally have much better MPG figures and that takes into account that you can't run off battery to cheat these numbers.
Regenerative breaking is a huge MPG win and you can't do that without being Hybrid.
I entirely agree with you, on paper they should have better MPG.
But I don't find those figures reflected in my actual on the road experience.
Edit: That may say something about my driving style though! ;)
Edit2: The situation may be different for PHEV vs normal hybrid (more battery weight for PHEV), and may change with quality of hybrid power management implementation.
