If 90 percent of your battery is used to cover the 5% of your travels that a PHEV's battery doesn't cover, it seems like it could potentially be more wasteful to own a BEV.

(I checked and it seems that a Tesla model 3 does indeed have a battery on the order of ten times the capacity of, say, a Prius Prime)

My token battery gets me to work 20 miles away, and I rarely fire up the ICE, but it means that I can still drive from London to Scotland with only a single stop for petrol.

How is this an achievement? I drove from London to Edinburgh with no stops for fuel in a diesel car. Hybrid presumably should do better.

You left out the part about where they use zero fossil fuels for their daily commute.

Unfortunately you can't get off fossil fuels by buying a car - they contain embedded energy of which a large percentage comes from fossil fuels.

If the lifetime of a vehicle is say 400000 kms, I calculate that a new Prius emits less CO2 than a new Model S if manufacturing etc is included.

It highly depends on energy mix that Model S uses (ie. compare Quebec to Ontario): http://www.neb-one.gc.ca/nrg/ntgrtd/mrkt/snpsht/2018/09-01-1...

embedded energy (production) for EV is higher but not that much higher https://blog.ucsusa.org/rachael-nealer/gasoline-vs-electric-...

From that blog: "Driving an average EV results in lower global warming emissions than driving a gasoline car that gets 50 miles per gallon (MPG)".

A Prius gets approx 50 MPG!

We’re in a transition phase, so hybrids are a practical solution for a lot of people. A “token” battery is useful to a lot of people. Especially those living in the city. Electric charge points aren’t abundant just yet.

> Electric charge points aren’t abundant just yet.

Every wall socket is a charge point, and most people have dozens of those around their house. They're surely more abundant than petrol stations.

240 V 50 A dryer outlets are said to work pretty well, if you happen to own a house. Normal 15 A appliance outlets barely work (Tesla says one hour per three miles!) and no apartment building has ever offered me a parking space that had one.

I wouldn't buy a pure-electric until nearly all apartments have charging, and that work has barely started.

Just to clarify, I was talking about inner city. Most existing apartment blocks (in London) don’t have charge points available in their car park.

On top of that, I find public charging points to be hit and miss. Quite often you find ICE only cars taking the space or the charging points just out of service/neglected.

I do look forward to the day when electric charging networks are available everywhere with rapid charging.

A lot of people in cities don't have "their house" and don't want to hang a 50m cable out of their window.

“Around their house”- key point when youre not near home.