To ask if you'd buy an electric or petrol car in these circumstances?

I don’t remember the last time I was stuck in a traffic jam long enough to drain an entire battery….

This is absolute nonsense. It’s just yet another example of someone who doesn’t have an EV posting misinformation.

EVs use very little of their battery on heating. For example, when I preheat ours in the winter, in 30mins it uses less than 1% of the battery, and that’s to warm it up after being out in sub-zero temperatures overnight.

Reuters actually fact checked this a couple of years ago:

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-environment-ev-idUSL1N2RW0QD/

One of them is that if you get stuck in a traffic jam in winter, you would drain the battery by heating the car. In petrol, you don't have this problem.

You realise its possible to run out of petrol don't you?

This is nonsense, and had been tested in the middle of a Norwegian winter.

Most modern EVs have a heat pump. In the test they did, they kept the interior at 22degs for 59 hours at - 30oC.... If you're stuck on the motorway for that long, youve got bigger problems.

Generally an ev will outlast an diesel engine by 1.5-2x in those conditions.

They do even better idling in traffic, on a day when the heater isnt being used, battery usage is basically zero unless the car is moving.

Petrol/diesel car regardless of circs.

"In petrol, you don't have this problem."

What do you think ultimately powers the heater in a petrol car, exactly?

There are lots of problems with electric which they don't tell you about.

One of them is that if you get stuck in a traffic jam in winter, you would drain the battery by heating the car. In petrol, you don't have this problem.

Perhaps I'll consider electric when politicians start replacing their own Jaguars and Rolls Royces with smaller electric cars.

There are some spots where its a pita...

Inexplicably, the only chargers within 20 miles of the popular tourist spot of whitby are slow 7kw podpoints apart from one newish 50kw at Lidl.

You have to go to pickering or scarborough for a rapid charger.

I have had two EVs so far. A Peugeot 208 and a Hyundai Kona. The Hyundai is so much better as an EV, with the Peugeot I would get a lot of range anxiety. I do a 200 mile return trip every week and struggled with the Peugeot. With the Hyundai it's absolutely fine though.

I can't charge on my drive but live very close to a public charger. Mostly it gets charged at my or DHs work.

In your situation I would definitely go for it.

It's worse than that. It stems from deliberate misinformation campaigns funded by the fossil fuel industry.

Something like the Toyota Yaris Hybrid might work well for you @minniecoop - in short city journeys it's basically an electric car most of the time, burning very little fuel. On longer journeys the electric motor assists the petrol engine so you use a lot less fuel, but the petrol engine is doing most of the work.

Exactly, I generally find that all the negativity about EV comes from people who don't have one.
To be fair I didn't want one but DH did so we leased for 6 months to try it and I was completely converted.
I have no idea if its lack of the correct info, fear of the unknown, affordability or what but there are a LOT of anti EV people out there who don't know what they are talking about.
We get it a lot
"Oh I would never buy an electric car"
Why?
No chargers - there are
Catch fire - no more than other cars
Battery life - not an issue
Heavy - not really
Parts expensive - no and there are fewer parts to replace anyway
Not as environmentally friendly as they claim - no worse than diesel/petrol

It’s never from EV owners who say that they have got really stuck somewhere, only ICE owners who haven’t really thought about it. Once you look for chargers there are more about than you think.

You have to rethink the way you fuel your car. Rather than trying to think about it as petrol, think about it like charging your phone. Usually you charge your phone at home overnight or another time that suits you. But occasionally you will be in an extreme situation, like a long journey. In that case you make sure you take a power bank with you and charge through the day or you charge it when you stop for lunch or a coffee.

Especially when the OP is the absolute perfect use case for an EV! The infrastructure doesn’t really matter for her because she will be charging almost exclusively at home with a cheap overnight tariff, she’s doing short, local journeys with an occasional longer one that’s still easily within EV range.

I’ve had my EV since 2023 and have charged once at a public charger while waiting for our home charger to be installed. I pay 6.7p a unit, so get 200 miles for £3. Even better is my husband’s work pay full mileage if you own your own EV, so he gets 45p a mile or whatever it is when he uses it for work!

Love all these comments about lack of infrastructure for electric cars from... people who don't actually own an electric car.

I charge at home, can count on one hand the number of times I've had to charge 'on the road' and would never go back.

Battery life is not 10 years. That’s usually the warranty (which by the way exceeds pretty much every single warranty for engine life). There are EV taxis with 300k miles on the clock still going, which is more than double the lifespan of the average ICE car. Bear in mind also that maintenance and service costs are also much reduced over the lifespan of the car v an ICE model, because there are much fewer moving parts and therefore points of failure. Newer data suggests 20+ years before any significant degradation of battery life.

The amount of regurgitated myths on EV threads is really something, but if it keeps the energy tariffs low so I can keep saving a fortune then maybe I shouldn’t challenge them

Definitely wouldnt be buying a second hand EV. Battery life is 10 years? Nah

That’s interesting to read. Many colleagues are using the lease scheme and go electric for 3 years then go back to petrol. Those I know with electric have a second car that’s petrol, with one exception being my retired neighbours and my retired in laws.

The minerals in ev batteries are mainly mined in Australia and Chile. Not only is there a plentiful supply, but 97% of the lithium in a battery can be extracted and recycled

Seriously? I used to spend £80 per week on diesel. I now spend £25 per month on electricity. Most suppliers have a low cost ev tariff

I'm very low mileage and had a new hybrid. It has 3 new batteries in a year and I ended up getting rid. I think that you need to do a bit of driving to keep the battery charged. I don't think that my experience is unique. I'm sticking to petrol.

We live very rurally and have an EV. I love it. It can do nearly 300 miles and there’s no where in the uk that far from a charger! We have solar and charge on the drive.

Mine does 300 miles, probably more if I wanted to push it

100% petrol especially if you are driving infrequently including longer journeys.

We have an electric car and it's brilliant for the shorter journeys (of which there are many, with two teens at school in two towns and elderly mum). But we don't use it for longer journeys, we also have a diesel estate. To be honest I'd find only being able to do 100 miles or less before having to stop a nuisance! We're actually considering going to one car as we're retired, and we're looking at the Volvo hybrids while we were waiting to ect our car from the garage recently.