The Zeekr 9x is a PHEV offering up to 188 miles of all-electric range, and it’s allegedly coming to the UK in 2026.

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The big news for car owners from Wednesday’s UK governmental budget was the introduction of a new per-mile tax for plug-in vehicles from 2028. The headlines focused on the 3p per mile levy that was proposed for battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which MoneySuperMarket calculated would cost the average owner £243 ($322) per year. But the new fee could have an unintended consequence of giving plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) a revitalized lease of life – particularly the new breed coming from China.

The Plug-In Hybrid Problem

Some consider PHEVs to be a bit of a con. These are hybrids with an internal combustion engine, battery, and electric motor, like a regular hybrid, but you can plug them in and recharge them externally. With bigger batteries and longer all-electric range than misleadingly named “self-charging” hybrids, PHEVs on average should have much lower emissions, and that’s how they are rated in official tests.

But that assumes owners actually bother to charge their PHEVs externally. As far back as 2020, Greenpeace alongside Transport & Environment research argued that most owners don’t do that. If you don’t charge your PHEV, it’s just a regular hybrid with a large, heavy battery adding extra weight, making its fuel economy worse. In the UK, due to the reduced taxation on company cars with lower emissions, PHEVs have been popular with businesses. But that saving is available whether you plug in or not, so PHEVs have just been seen as a tax break, with all the potential emission benefits wasted because they’re never plugged in.

This is purely anecdotal, but my own experience confirms this. I bought a secondhand Mercedes PHEV in 2020, which was originally a company car and was demonstrated to me with a full charge. But when I got the car home, it wouldn’t charge with its plug, and my local Mercedes garage confirmed that it had a longstanding software charging fault, which they were able to fix. It was clear the car hadn’t been charged externally for some time, so the previous owner obviously didn’t care.

How Plug-In Hybrids Will Have Tax Benefits In 2028

So why could the forthcoming pay-per-mile tax change this? Well, while the rate for BEVs will be 3p per mile, PHEVs will only pay 1.5p per mile. That means the average UK driver, who covers 8,116 miles per year according to the MoneySuperMarket research, will pay just £122 ($161) in per-mile tax from 2028. This is an understandable distinction from the UK Chancellor’s point of view. A PHEV may drive on its battery a lot, but on longer journeys it will be powered by fossil fuels, which are taxed directly at a much higher rate. So the owner will pay tax in two different ways.

If you have a previous-generation PHEV like the Mercedes I bought in 2020, this logic makes sense, because the electric range could be 20 miles or less. But this is where the new breed of PHEVs, many coming from China, enter the fray. There has been much talk of how the Chinese are leading the EV revolution, but the headline numbers refer to “new energy vehicles” (NEVs). Over half of China’s car sales are NEVs now, but this includes PHEVs, range extenders (EREVs) and fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs) alongside the BEVs. Massive growth in PHEVs since the beginning of 2024 has been one of the drivers of this NEV success, rather than just BEVS.

A key factor in the 89.7% expansion year-on-year of PHEV sales in October 2024 in China was the rise of the Super Hybrid. This is a PHEV with a very large battery, enabling considerably greater all-electric range. This is a sensible setup for countries with large cities that have good charging infrastructure, but long distances in between cities that don’t, which is what a lot of China is like.

Plug-In Hybrids Get Super In The UK

One Chinese Super Hybrid that has made it to Europe (but not the UK yet) is the Lynk & Co 08. This boasts a massive 39.8kWh battery, larger than many city-oriented pure BEVs. This gives it 120 miles of all-electric range. If the average UK car covers 8,116 miles per year, that equates to about 22 miles per day. That could mean as much as five days of use between charges for the 08. If you have home charging and a cheap overnight tariff, you will rarely need to fill up with fossil fuel, giving the low running costs of a BEV but with the reduced pay-per-mile usage tax of a PHEV.

This won’t kick in until 2028. However, there are plenty of PHEVs arriving on the UK market with very competitive electric ranges ready for this year to come. The BYD Seal U DM-i offers up to 78 miles of WLTP electric range. Chery is about to launch its Tiggo 9 Super Hybrid in the UK, with a pure electric range of 87 miles. The existing Tiggo 7 and 8 Super Hybrids have shorter 56-mile ranges. The Zeekr 9X is due to arrive in the UK in 2026 with a whopping 188 miles of electric range, while BYD’s premium brand Denza is imminent, with the Z7 GT offering 125 miles of WLTP range in PHEV form.

European automakers also have longer-range PHEVs, although none go quite as far as the Chinese Super Hybrids on a single charge. Most offer under 60 miles, although Range Rover plug-ins offer up to 76 miles of WLTP range. This makes the Chinese Super Hybrids the leading options if you want a PHEV with the longest possible electric range. Volvo has launched a PHEV version of its XC70 with 124 miles of electric range, but only in China so far, and of course Volvo is now Chinese owned anyway.

These Super Hybrids could all be tempting BEV alternatives in the UK when the new pay-per-mile tax regime arrives. Of course, the logic still only works if you plug your PHEV in and provides the best saving if you have cheap overnight charging. But with plug-in hybrids tending to be cheaper than equivalent BEVs, they could become more attractive options for UK drivers than BEVs, which would delay the transition to battery-electric and the journey towards decarbonization.