red cars at sunset

I've been using one of those telemetrics systems in my car recently. It's the type that tracks the journey, provides feedback about driving style, as well as providing rudimentary monitoring of the car's diagnostics.

My regular work driving to a specific office used to clock up around 55 miles per day, mainly along commuter motorway in rush hour. Add in a few long journeys and I'd be clocking up many miles per year, with a rolling average of around 60,000 over three years.

My newer driving has a different pattern, which is quite bi-modal. I'm surprised at the number of ultra-short journeys of between 2-5 miles but less surprised at the number of 80 mile plus journeys.

The gadget lets me be more scientific about the capture of recent journeys, so despite the dilution through the short journeys (dare I say bicycle-worthy journeys), my average journey is still clocking around 25 miles.

There's a dilemma in this, because my split journey types are probably representative of many people, yet the types of new vehicles are not quite ready for this type of scenario.

My example. My current V6 turbo-engined car averages 40 miles around town and maybe around 50 on longer journeys. Its range between fuel stops is around 500 miles. But it's a now-unpopular diesel.

I look around at new cars on offer and realise that we must be between innovation cycles. The manufacturers are trying to move to greater use of electric, but are stuck with manufacturing plants and designs that predominately use petrol and diesel. Watch normal telly at the moment and every advert break is filled with red cars driving along twisty roads. Follow the herd?

It means that many of the hybrids around are rather ineffectual. They might have a 20 mile electric range, which is okay for short journeys, but their combined cycles are running less that 40 mpg, despite claims of 100 mpg. Ironically the hybrid diesel electrics seem to give better mileage, but surely that must be a temporary combination? The car press don't know what to make of it all either, with reviewers saying these mashups have great acceleration rather than great range.

Then there's the pure electric cars. Teslas seem to offer the best mileage, but are still only 200 mile range for their best £90,000 plus cars. I looked up the nearest high speed charging point to me. It's about 3 miles away, but is the only one within an 80 mile radius. I suppose I could make longer journeys more leisurely, but there's a different stress having a fuelled car on a quarter tank, compared with having a battery car on one blip. I followed a 2016 plated Tesla around a roundabout the other day, it was on the flatbed of a rescue truck.

I suppose in another three years there will be a wider range of plausible hybrid alternative vehicles. I'll stay with my current vehicle until that point. At least I can drive it to Newcastle-upon-Tyne without refuelling. Although I might need to update the sat-nav.