The cars fine. It’s great it works for him. I wouldn’t personally buy one today when lots of options for real BEVs exist, but you do you.

What I do care about, and why I care that he’s an outlier, is that low range PHEVs mainly exist to get emissions credits for manufacturers so that they can sell more gas cars, and those emission savings aren’t real [1]. You could say everyone’s dumb for using them this way, but clearly the ergonomics of the electrical capabilities in this category are lacking in important ways.

And I can’t prove it but I bet the manufacturers have known this for a long time. But adding a plug to a hybrid with a tiny battery was an awfully cheap way to get your existing car counted as “green” for credits, so too tempting.

(1) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...