Tuesday, 8 September 2026

Plug-in hybrid vehicles emit six times more pollution than official testing indicates, according to a Transport & Environment analysis reported by Electrek.

The group's update drew on data from 220,000 plug-in hybrids in Europe, gathered through the On Board Fuel Consumption Monitoring system, Electrek reported.

Real-world emissions from those vehicles are rising rather than falling. Transport & Environment found the fleet average moved from 138 gCO2/km in 2023 to 145 gCO2/km in 2024.

That 5% year-on-year increase runs against what regulators expected: government testing over the same period indicated plug-in hybrids should have become cleaner, according to Electrek.

The gap between laboratory results and road performance rests on utility factors, the assumption regulators make about how much of a plug-in hybrid's driving is done on battery power. The EU has planned to update those factors to better reflect how drivers actually use the vehicles, Electrek reported.

Automakers have consistently lobbied the EU to weaken those updates, according to the same report.

The stakes sit in compliance accounting. Utility factors set the official emissions figure attached to each plug-in hybrid model, and that figure feeds fleet-wide targets. A utility factor that overstates electric driving lowers a manufacturer's reported average without changing a single tailpipe. Transport & Environment's measured 145 gCO2/km for 2024 is the number that the monitoring system records from vehicles in service, not the number the testing procedure produces.

The direction of travel matters as much as the multiple. Emissions climbing 5% in a year, while the official method points the other way, widens a divergence that the utility factor revision was designed to close.

BYD has begun operations at a car factory in the Subang Smartpolitan Industrial Park in West Java, Indonesia, according to electrive. The site spans 126 hectares and offers annual production capacity of 150,000 units.

The plant is the Chinese automaker's third vehicle assembly site in Southeast Asia, electrive reported, after facilities opened in Thailand in 2024 and Cambodia in 2025.

Headcount at the Indonesian site currently exceeds 5,000, and electrive reported that BYD could potentially raise that figure above 20,000.

The first vehicle assembled on the line was the M6 DM plug-in hybrid MPV, according to electrive.

On the sales side, Liu Xueliang, Vice President of BYD and General Manager of the BYD Asia-Pacific Auto Sales Division, said at the inauguration ceremony that the company operates over 100 sales outlets in Indonesia and aims to grow that figure to over 200 next year.

The local demand case rests on a smaller model. The Atto 1 city car was Indonesia's best-selling electric car in 2025 with 22,582 units registered, electrive reported.

Chinese carmaker ROX has begun assembling its ADAMAS SUV in Abu Dhabi, with the first vehicles leaving a new line in the emirate's Kezad industrial zone, according to Semafor Net Zero.

The company plans production capacity of 20,000 vehicles in 2027 in the UAE, Semafor Net Zero reported.

ROX moved its global headquarters to the UAE last year, per the same report.

Sales of new electric cars and plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles in Russia reached 26,543 units between June and August, more than double the 12,187 sold in the same period a year earlier, according to analytics provider Autostat.

The segment remains small in the national market. Autostat reports that electric cars and plug-in hybrids accounted for 4.3% of total car sales in Russia last year.

Fuel supply has tightened at the same time. Reuters reported that Russia's petrol production has recently fallen to about 70% of its usual domestic consumption, following Ukrainian counterattacks that forced some refineries to halt operations.

The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority has ordered 30 Enviro100EV battery-electric buses from Alexander Dennis, according to electrive. Deliveries are scheduled for 2027.

The electric midibuses sit inside a much larger procurement. electrive reported the wider order covers at least 207 buses worth GBP 57 million. Battery-electric models account for a small share of that total: the other 177 vehicles are low-emission combustion buses.

The contract carries options that would lift the volume to 357 buses and GBP 95 million, per electrive.

With the Enviro100EV units included, the combined authority's known electric bus orders from Alexander Dennis reach 88 vehicles, electrive reported.