Real-world CO2 emissions of plugin hybrid cars (PHEVs) are on average 2–4 times higher than official values, which for most plugin hybrids are less than 50g/km on paper. Almost 1 million of them will have been sold in the EU in 2021 alone — carmakers are pushing their sales because their unrealistically low official CO2 emissions allow them to easily meet their CO2 targets. Yet PHEVs do not deliver the expected CO2 savings on the road due to both their design and lack of incentives to charge, undermining the car CO2 regulation and reducing the sales of truly zero emission cars.
