There’s really only one reason for the proliferation of plug-in hybrid vehicles – and it isn’t to “save money” via using less gas.

Plug in hybrids cost thousands more than non-hybrid versions of the same vehicle and most of them only manage about 10 MPG in city driving – where the layout has a fuel-efficiency advantage because the gas engine is often not running at all. On the highway, most plug-in hybrids deliver pretty much the same gas mileage as the non-hybrid version of the same vehicle.

As an example: The plug-in hybrid version of the 2025 Lincoln Corsair that I am test driving this week rates 32 MPG on the highway; the non-hybrid version of the same vehicle rates 30 MPG on the highway. In stop-and-go city driving, the hybrid does much better  – 34 MPG vs. 22 MPG. But it also stickers for $54,265 vs. $39,385 for essentially the same vehicle without the plug-in hybrid drivetrain.

That is a lot to spend in order to “save money” by not buying gas – especially if you do a lot of highway driving. If you do, that will burn up a lot of the putative savings.

On the other hand, you will save a lot – of time – because you will never have to plug in. You can plug it in – if you have time and just want to. The distinction – vs. an entirely electric car that has to be plugged in whether you have time or not – is important. The entirely electric car costs even more – but more to the point, it costs you that which can never be replaced.

Time.

This is the real-but-unadvertised savings you buy when you spend the extra on a plug-in hybrid.

It may also save the car companies. As you probably already know – and as this column has been trying to convey for many years – the federal regulatory apparat has been working to de facto outlaw vehicles that do not tether their owners to a cord by using regulations that only tethered vehicles are able to comply with. It is a very clever stratagem that allows the apparatchiks and politicians who are on the same page to posture as benign. No one is forcing people to buy electric cars, they say with a Glasgow smile. And that is true – for the moment. But it is becoming harder and harder for the vehicle manufacturers to not manufacturer electric vehicles, because they are the only vehicles that comport with the regs.

In this way, vehicles that the apparat wants – because the apparat wants people tethered – are gradually replacing vehicles that aren’t on the manufacturing side. In time, only tethered vehicles will be manufactured and so that is all that will be available and thus everyone will be tethered.

That’s the idea, at any rate.

Luckily for us, engineers are smarter than apparatchiks – the useless eaters of the “governing class” whose only competence is making life more difficult and expensive for the rest of us. Who do so for its own sake, because – like the scorpion that stung the frog that swam the latter across the creek on his back – it is what they do. Take away the power of the rhetorical device called “government” and you see that what afflicts us is who. A relative handful of effronterous and incompetent busybodies that have acquired the power – often unelected – to make us miserable, just because they can and only because they have the power to do so.

Anyhow, the smart engineers figured it out. The regs require a vehicle that is tethered? Ok. Here’s one that is. But also one that isn’t. The manufacturer of the plug-in hybrid can say: Here is a vehicle that can be driven on battery power alone – just like an electric vehicle, because when it is operating as an electric vehicle it is to-the-letter exactly that. And as that, it can tout such EV-esque government-compliance stats as – in the case of the plug-in hybrid Corsair – 78 MPGe.

The “e” part being the EV part.

Of course, out in the real world, a plug-in such as the ’25 Corsair does not go 78 miles per gallon. It averages closer to 33 MPG – unless you restrict how far you drive to the roughly 27 miles it can be driven on electric drive alone. Most people will probably end up driving farther – which is beyond the electric-only range of the system. And when they do, the gas engine automatically comes on, so they don’t have to stop and waste time waiting at least 20-30 minutes to recover a partial charge, as the driver of an entirely electric vehicle must when its batteries run low.

But Lincoln – and every other vehicle manufacturer that sells vehicles that do not have to be plugged in – gets regulatory credit for the “78 MPGe,” which hugely helps the manufacturers deal with regulatory folderol such as the apparatchiks’ Corporate Average Fuel Economy regs. CAFE says – decrees – that a given vehicle manufacturer’s combined fleet must average so-and-so many miles-per-gallon else punitive fines are applied that are naturally passed on to the buyer, causing him to be less able (and wanting) to buy the offending vehicle.

A “78 MPGe” plug-in hybrid helps a lot with those averages – even if it does not actually average 78 MPG, “e” or otherwise.

You can almost picture Randy Watson – leader of the band Sexual Chocolate from Coming to America – doing the microphone drop.

Of course, the apparatchiks and politicians are more vicious than the engineers and they are already snarling angrily about how plug-in hybrids don’t have to be tethered – and that people are taking advantage of that.

Expect them to alter the way compliance with the regs is established. No more “78 MPGe” – so as to close the loophole that allows the manufacturers to sell compliant vehicles that don’t tether people.

But – for the moment – enjoy the frustrated keening of the apparatchiks.

. . .

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