Hi there,

Difficult to answer this one, because it depends on what you mean by ‘hybrid’. Technically, that specific term means petrol or diesel-powered cars with only modest electrification, with no facility to plug the car in and recharge the batteries from the mains; all the battery recharging is done by the car on the move and hybrids usually can’t do more than a kilometre or so on electric power alone. Typically, this is a domain that has belonged to Toyota and Lexus for quite some time, so the fourth-gen Toyota Prius is one of the best ‘Hybrids’ you can get, although do also check out the Kia Niro.

The situation is complicated, however, by both the advent of ‘mild hybrids’ (cars that use a 48-volt system to gently eke out fuel, most commonly seen in the Volkswagen Group; for instance, most brand-new, big Audis, like the A6, A7 and A8, are mild hybrids) and ‘plug-in hybrid electric vehicles’ (PHEVs), which have more powerful electric motors and bigger lithium-ion batteries. These cars can run for much longer on electric power alone, sometimes up to 50km, and they have the means to be plugged into mains rechargers to top up their battery power when you’re not driving them. In the PHEV field, you currently have a huge range of choice, from more day-to-day machines like the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and Volkswagen Golf GTE, up to cars from prestige marques like BMW, Volvo, Porsche and Range Rover, to name just a few.