EV campaigners call for crackdown on ‘confusing’ car names

Electric car campaigners are calling on the advertising watchdog to crack down on the “alphabet soup” of terms used to describe electrified vehicles.

Those behind the campaign said acronyms such as PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle), HEV (hybrid electric vehicle), FCEV (fuel cell electric vehicle) and MHEV (mild hybrid electric vehicle) should be banned.

Lobby group Electric Vehicles UK led the call on car manufacturers and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to “clear up the alphabet soup of meaningless acronyms associated with hybrid passenger cars and end the consumer confusion”.

“The fact that some carmakers can describe vehicle power trains with such confusing, and sometimes inaccurate names, needs to be investigated,” explained Dan Caesar, the chief executive of Electric Vehicles UK.

“Such confusion has a negative impact on consumers making the right choice for their next purchase. We call on the ASA to look into the naming of ‘self-charging hybrids’ and also for the companies that perpetuate this confusion, to revisit its naming conventions.”

Caesar was joined by Ginny Buckley, the founder of EV advice website Electrifying.com, who added: “The widespread myth that a ‘hybrid’ is a self-charging electric car highlights the urgent need for clarity. It’s time for carmakers and the advertising industry to hit the brakes on jargon and misinformation, replacing it with simple, honest language to make car buying more straightforward.”

Research commissioned by Transport & Environment, a Europe-wide lobby group, found “much higher emissions than advertised from some hybrids” and that they were “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”. It added that governments should focus on incentivising the purchase of fully electric vehicles rather than hybrids.

This is not the first time that hybrids have come under scrutiny for being misleading in their naming. In 2020, Norway’s advertising regulator banned Toyota’s “self-charging hybrid” campaign. The body stated: “It is misleading to give the impression that the power to the hybrid battery is free of charge, since the electricity produced by the car has consumption of gasoline as a necessary condition.”

In 2022, the ASA published the findings from a study into the public’s understanding of commonly used environmental terms, including terms relating to electric and hybrid vehicles.

An ASA spokeswoman said: “Off the back of this research, last year we published new advice to electric vehicle advertisers. We told them it was important to be clear about the terminology and technology they used in their ads so this wasn’t misleading.

“We’ve also previously published rulings where we’ve considered electric vehicle ads to be misleading. For example, in 2023 we banned an ad from Nissan because we considered that the ad’s references to ‘e-Power’ made the nature of the vehicle’s power source unclear.

“Whilst the ASA can act if the terms featured in an ad are used in a misleading way, we can’t lawfully mandate fixed definitions for terminology or technical specifications used to substantiate performance claims.

“We do, however, encourage anyone who has seen an electric vehicle ad they’re concerned about to get in touch.”