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The majority of my driving is relatively high speed motorway trips of a hundred miles or more - the engine is running continuously.

You didn't fully read my post - my PHEV runs almost exclusively as a petrol car - it is three and a half years old with 45,000 miles on the clock and still smells hot after ten or fifteen minutes in "Charge" mode. I bet that yours can run for an hour along the motorway - effectively running as a...

I am not sure that this is a reasonable explanation - the exhaust on a conventional car stops smelling soon after it is delivered - why should a PHEV take years? Our PHEV has effectively been run as a petrol car for the last three and a half years, but it still smells "hot" when running on...

Personally, I would not go for a high mileage one - people are beginning to see significant battery degradation at figures like that.

I don't remember the last time I had a car with a temperature gauge - they seem to have disappeared from production cars a long time ago. The PHEV does smell hot after running on Charge mode for any length of time. The strength of the smell does reduce with age, but ours at about three and a...

Definitely - I don't think mine has ever been switched off since the car was built about three and a half years ago.

Has anyone actually had a crack spread, or is this just good advertising from the repair companies? I've had cars that have had a variety of cracks for years that have never changed visibly.

I'm not completely sure to tell you the truth - would you expect it to make any difference? I don't regularly drive in "Charge" mode - as you know, I drive in "save" to retain the charge that I put in from the mains. On a few occasions, I have allowed the SOC to drop low and have used Charge to...

Definitely - unless the electricity is free or close to free, public charging stations seldom make sense for a PHEV because it simply cannot take on enough charge.

I would go for the Lexus - with your journey profile, the PHEV is not going to be much cheaper to run and the Lexus is a far better built car.

Mine will happily burn petrol continually in an attempt to get the battery up to 100% in CHARGE mode!

That picture is misleading - the power split device is a three port differential with two of the ports coaxial on the left hand side of the picture as it is shown above. The output shaft of the petrol engine is directly coupled to the central shaft of the differential and the MG1 motor-generator...

you remind me of an old college friend who specialised in philosophy. He spent a long time explaining to me that the phrase "a broken clock" was meaningless - a "clock" is defined to be a device that tells the time and if a device of the physical characteristics of a clock has a fault which...

OK - I'll grant you that, but this digression began when you questioned my statement that "For me the primary reason for buying a hybrid (apart from the tax concessions) is mechanical simplicity - virtually no gearbox, virtually no clutch, and an engine that is ticking over most of the time." I...

Well, the thing in the middle of the axle on a conventional car contains multiple gears, but I don't describe it as a "gearbox", do you? There is nothing in the Toyota hybrid drive train which contains multiple gears and implements multiple drive ratios - either fixed steps or continuously...

it does not have anything that I would describe as a gearbox - and I understand the Toyota drive train very well. The petrol engine and electric motor couple into two ports of a three port differential and the third port is coupled to the input port of a second three port differential with the...

The Toyota drive train has no gearbox and the ICE drives the wheels directly at all speeds. Power is supplied to the wheels from both the ICE and the electric motor via a three way differential with a fixed ratio and the gears in permanent mesh. The gear ratio of that differential is equivalent...

I just want to minimise wear and tear on my car! For me the primary reason for buying a hybrid (apart from the tax concessions) is mechanical simplicity - virtually no gearbox, virtually no clutch, and an engine that is ticking over most of the time. I prefer the idea of the Toyota drive train...

As has been discussed here many times, ignore the range displayed on the instrument panel. The car guesses the remaining range based on your recent usage and battery performance - and usually gets it wrong - sometimes very wrong. The only figure that matters is the range that you actually...

Ours is about 3 years and 7 months old now with about 43,000 miles on the clock. We bought it new and I've never got 32 miles EV from it even when brand new - the best I ever saw was 29 miles which was achieved at 30mph on flat, traffic free roads on a warm autumn day with aircon off. The PHEV...