I have been given a 65 plate PHEV for the next three years as a company car. Personally I wouldn't buy one for personal use, but as a company car it is good for tax, although the 330e I had previously was so much better as a hybrid.
I don't charge the car as there's nowhere to charge it at work, and I'm not using my leccy as I can't claim it back. So based on mainly running on the engine, the computer says I get between 30-35 mpg, but they do tend to read more than actually calculating it on a tank to tank basis. I have used the charge button and this will drop the mpg to about 25, so not worth it if you pay for the fuel yourself. The car will always put some charge into the battery, so in traffic, it will run on leccy only for short stints. If you're going to charge it, it will return close to the claimed mpg, but only for short journeys and keeping the batteries topped up.
Driving it on long journeys isn't too bad, it's comfortable and sits on the motorway munching the miles. The gearbox is rubbish imo, but I am comparing it to the BMW ZF 8 speed box. Put your foot down and it just seems to rev really high and not really go anywhere (I'd advise doing this if you test drive one just to experience it). It weighs almost 2 ton, so acceleration is not going to be great as you would expect, but it's fast enough for most roads.
The PHEV does have flappy paddles, but they're not for changing gear, they are used to add/remove regenerative braking. This ranges from B0 - B5, with B0 giving no resistance and no charge into the battery. This can be good on long downhill stretches as the engine isn't running and so no fuel used. B2 is similar to normal engine braking and the car starts in this mode. B5 will slow you down quite quickly, which I find worrying if someone is behind you, as no brake lights are on.
The sat nav works ok, although whoever recorded the voice commands must've been in a real bad mood (see honest John's review of it
HERE.
The multimedia screen menu is very messy (as described in the above link), it took me 20min just to figure out how to get radio 2 on it. Bluetooth seems to work ok, and the voice dialling works pretty good, once you've figured out how to upload your phones contacts.
Hope the above helps, if I think of anything else I'll let you know.
It's better fuel economy than our previous Sportage & petrol CRV before that.
