Should you buy a Hybrid car in India?
When we think about fuel efficient engine options, we have options of – CNG, Electric, and Hybrid cars. The CNGs are fuel efficient but pretty slow to drive whereas the electric cars do have low running cost, they certainly give us the range anxiety. In such a case, hybrid cars can be the best suitable option as they have the best of both worlds, electric and petrol.
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Hybrid cars in India – Mild Hybrid vs Strong Hybrid
The term hybrid cars are broadly divided into two categories – mild hybrid and strong hybrid. Talking about the mild hybrid first, it has two major functions like auto engine stop/start, wherein the car turns off the engine when you come to a halt. Not just that, the engine even turns on itself, once you press the accelerator pedal. The other function is that the energy while decelerating is being saved which is further used when the car is idling. Both these methods are said to improve the fuel efficiency with marginal results in real life conditions. Whereas the strong hybrid technology is more effective as you get a bigger battery pack and motors, paired with the petrol engine. Here, the car completely runs on EV mode at low speeds, ensuring maximum fuel efficiency.
More options in Strong Hybrid
Earlier when we talked about hybrid cars in India, the only brand we used to talk about is Toyota. However, they offered hybrid tech in expensive cars. Fast forward to 2023, we have hybrid options in more mass market cars like Toyota Urban Cruiser Hyryder/Maruti Grand Vitara, Honda City, and Toyota Innova Hycross/Maruti Invicto. All these cars offer hybrid options along with their regular petrol powertrains.
Out of all these options, it is the Toyota Urban Cruiser Hyryder that offers hybrid under Rs 20 lakh. The S variant for the strong hybrid is priced at Rs 19.55 lakh (on-road, Mumbai), which is around Rs 3 lakh more expensive than the S variant of Petrol Automatic. We are taking auto into consideration because Hybrids are only offered in AT, if we take manual into consideration then the cost difference shoots up even more, going as high has Rs. 4.xxL (S Hybrid vs S Petrol Manual). So that clearly indicates that hybrids are noticeably more expensive than the regular petrol powertrain.
Hybrid cars in India – Kitna deti hai?
Well, to make it simple, let’s look at the official ARAI figures of both Hybrid and Petrol AT models. While ARAI figures are not easy to achieve in real world conditions, it will help us have an apples to apples comparison. Toyota Hyryder Hybrid S has a claimed mileage figure of 27.97 kms/l whereas the regular petrol auto model has a claimed mileage figure of 20.58 kms/l. This makes the hybrid model more efficient by 7.39 kms/l. To make it simple, have a look at the per kms cost below.
Hybrid cars in India – Does it make sense buy one?
In Mumbai, as we write, Petrol costs Rs. 106 per litre and if you divide this by the mileage of both cars you get Rs. 3.8 per km for Hybrid and Rs. 5.15 for the regular petrol AT model. Do note that we have taken ARAI mileage into consideration hence this might not entirely be accurate but the overall result will not be drastically different even in real world conditions.
So in essence, you will be saving Rs. 1.35 per km if you go for the hybrid variant of the same car. So is it a win win? Well you are also ending up paying 3L extra for this Hybrid option and even to just break even the cost, you will have to drive the car in excess of 2L kms.
Let’s take another assumption, since hybrid cars give excellent mileage in city traffic, lets double the cost difference benefit of Hybrid and assume that we end up saving Rs. 2.7 per km over the regular petrol. Even with this, you will have to drive the car in excess of 1L kms to recover the additional 3L rupees that you have paid for the Hybrid variant.
If we consider factors like inflation, car loan interest for the 3 additional lakhs, low boot space and the fact that most people will change cars once it touches 1L kms, the reason to get a Hybrid car reduces even further.
So let us know in the comments, what you think of Hybrid cars?
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