Go electric or get one last petrol car?

[Orangeinmybluelightcup]

Has anyone tackled this one yet? 13yr old estate is now borderline unsafe. Would ideally like to go electric. Most charging could be done at home, so constraint 1: need to investigate getting a charging point installed. Constraint 2 is looking like getting something big enough for X2 kids in car seats and larger sized dog in the boot. Constraint 3 is the price, looking second hand but bigger electrics are newer technology still so look like £25k! Hybrids are an option but from the reading I've done the petrol kicks in soon and when they're running on petrol they're less efficient because they're heavier. But getting one last petrol car seems like a shame... Has anyone else had this debate, what did you do?

Petrol. The infrastructure isn’t all there now.

We’ve just gone for one last petrol car. We live rurally and the infrastructure for charging isn’t there.

My car is 12 this year and needs replacing. I live rurally, wfh full time and do about 9,000 miles a year so I looked at electric but they seem expensive, short range and batteries needing to be replaced about every 5 years.
I've decided to buy one more ICE because I always run my cars for at least a decade, thus less environmental impact through lower manufacturing costs, and I can't find anyone who has kept an electronic vehicle that long.
I'll watch & wait for a while yet.

Does anyone know if you get an electric/hybrid 4wd suv? If not, the answer is no for now.

my local council (Kent) won't let you install a charger on public roads, so unless you have a drive/garage, you can't charge your car at home.

If you live in rented accommodation, presumably you'd need to get the landlord's permission to get one installed. I'm not sure of the position for people in Social housing, does anyone know?

@aurea

Does anyone know if you get an electric/hybrid 4wd suv? If not, the answer is no for now.

Lots.

Mitsibishi Outlander is great.

Our council turns off the street lights in the middle of the night so I have little hope for charging points in lampposts. Especially when there isn't enough communal parking for the cars we do have.

There's going to be an awful divide between people who have a driveway and those who don't.

Has anyone done this through their NHS employer? Dh is NHS and we will need a new car in 18 months, kern to go electric if we can afford it. Does the NHS scheme let you out down a deposit? Dh thinks not.

Following as I'm in a similar position.

DH is starting a new job with a car allowance (9k pa) which requires that his car is no older than 7 years. Our car is currently 6 years old, so we've got a year to sort this out.

I'd love an electric car. We only bought our current Skoda Octavia 2 years ago and wanted a hybrid then but the secondhand market didn't have many and the prices were too high.

Our budget has changed now, partially due to the extra cash, though we need to pay tax on it obv.

I'd really like to make the move to electric on the next year but I'm not sure there are many which have the bootspace we need. We camp a lot and regularly fill up the Octavia's boot, so not willing to compromise on that.

I'm beginning to conclude we might need to trade ours in for a slightly newer Octavia and then make the change in eg 4 years instead of now.

We have a drive with a garage so hopefully getting the charger fitted is easy at least.

Most of our journey are short except holidays at the other end of the country maybe 3 times a year. Would a hybrid work for this lifestyle?

Pm.

We had a PHEV for 3yrs (VWGOLF) and then made the leap to fully electric (iPace)
Ours is on lease as it made financial sense to go this way for us (very good deal) but also because the technology is changing so fast we felt it gave us more flexibility.
We have off road parking and a charging point which is linked to our solar panels so we literally have a sun powered car!
I was skeptical at first but now am a full convert.

We'll be keeping petrol for as long as we can. Live remotely and like days out and holidays. Fill the tank and go, not worry about being able to charge up.

We have an EV and can drive from London to the highlands no problem, yes you have to plan your breaks but that is normal and I’m happy for a coffee and leg stretch whilst the charger does it’s job.
Currently planning for our summer visit to Cornwall.

Next up is to replace our 2nd car with a small EV, no way I would get another petrol car

I’ve just changed to a plug in hybrid. It’s about three weeks old and a change from manual to automatic as well as from wholly petrol.
I don’t often plug it in as my husband is using the charging point at home and it’s a faff to swop around.
However, I love it. It’s cheaper to run and definitely uses less petrol. It’s much cheaper in terms of tax too.
It’s also fabulous for finding car parking when there are many spaces left - dedicated charging spaces are usually empty, often free and wider than standard. I do use the charging when out and about. When we’re in our holiday homes, I don’t use any petrol at all. The island is small enough to get anywhere on one charge and as we’ve only the one car with us, there’s no in-house competition for our charger.

Don’t most affordable electric cars only go about 50 miles before they need recharging?

Even my little smart electric does more than 50 miles on a charge. I get at least 70-80 miles in a charge weather and journeys dependent.
The bigger cars do way more.

@Honeyroar

We were at a motorway services the other week. There was a man on his mobile just outside speaking to someone on his mobile. He was saying he’d only hired this electric car to try to be green, but he’d missed the turnoff on the motorway and had to go an extra ten miles to the next junction to turn round. Those twenty extra miles meant he had to stop and charge the car before he could carry on. His three hour journey was now going to be five hours. He said he was never having an electric car ever again!!

Why did 20 miles mean 2 extra miles? Even if he needed to do a big charge to get a lot of miles, going to a service station charger to use a fast charger (also found in plenty of other places, we often see the faster ones in supermarkets such as Morrison's) it would be 45 minutes - that's for a biggish battery. Enough to do the extra 20 miles it would be a lot shorter time.

I suspect he was exaggerating a lot!

As @Abraxan says yep fully electric have much better ranges now
Officially ours does 292 miles but we've found it's more like 250 (ours is a larger car)

We recently changed our main car and thought about a hybrid, but ended up with a diesel as you couldn’t get many hybrids with a 3rd row of fold down seats.

I wouldn’t go full electric yet because the technology is still developing rapidly and today’s electric cars will look poor on range in another 3-4 years, which is about how often we change cars. There is also still a good chance that, over this time period, the infrastructure for hydrogen fuel cell cars might be developed, which would be a much more practical alternative to batteries.

If you don’t need a third row of seats then there are a lot of good hybrids around, both plug in and self charging. Personally I think this is a better bet for a main car where you don’t need to have the range anxiety that comes with full EV.

I've got electric but only ever do short journeys. We still have a non electrical car for anything longer. As pp posters said there isn't the infrastructure yet. Some places have charge stations but only about 4 and if they're full you're stuck

@Frenchfancy

We've just changed and decided on a diesel.

Electric was so much more expensive and the infrastructure just isn't there. Hybrid looks great in paper but we get better mileage on our diesel than most hybrid cars.

If we wanted a city car we would have gone electric, but we live rurally, need a car big enough to take teens and a dog, and do daily commutes of +50 miles.

I’m due to change mine this month and the electric one are far too expensive on the car I have ! Mine it’s diesel at the moment and the 3 years is finishing this month

We’re having the same dilemma currently and have been talking around in circles for months. We have. Ford Galaxy diesel which has been fab, but is getting very old. However we need a car large enough for 2 adults, 3 teens, 1 dog and lots of gear (sailing, cycling, camping) that can have a towing hitch attached without invalidating the warranty, and this doesn’t exist yet. Plus the cost is way too high. We almost ordered a Skoda enyaq but backed out as back seat just too small for 3 adult sized teens and cost was prohibitive after lockdown loss in earnings. 8 really which the government would subsidise EVs.

Did a 360 mile trip yesterday in my EV. Yes, we had to stop to charge up and therefore it took longer than it would have done in our old car but we would have stopped for coffee and loo break anyway so didn’t make that much difference in the end and tbh I have found being “forced” to stop on long journeys actually makes the drive more relaxing and less rushed. I actually charged for 1 hour in total yesterday on that trip but that was longer than I needed to as got home with 25% battery left.

Re:home chargers we have had Pod Point for about 4 years now and been really happy with it. Make sure you pick an installer who can claim the gov grant for you.

I would recommend looking at some EV reviews on YouTube - I like the Driving Electric channel. Also on YouTube Fully Charged Show, and if you have Facebook then EV Drivers UK group mostly friendly with good advice.

Just wanting to add that it definitely takes more planning with an EV - making sure that there are chargers on route, that they are reliable, that there isn't likely to be a queue for them, that you don't have to have a membership card to use them, that you already have any app you need to use them downloaded to your phone.

You can look at charger locations on zap-map.com and use abetterrouteplanner.com to take a look at routes you are likely to do - will give you an example of what to expect.

@Wotrewelookinat

We’re having the same dilemma currently and have been talking around in circles for months. We have. Ford Galaxy diesel which has been fab, but is getting very old. However we need a car large enough for 2 adults, 3 teens, 1 dog and lots of gear (sailing, cycling, camping) that can have a towing hitch attached without invalidating the warranty, and this doesn’t exist yet. Plus the cost is way too high. We almost ordered a Skoda enyaq but backed out as back seat just too small for 3 adult sized teens and cost was prohibitive after lockdown loss in earnings. 8 really which the government would subsidise EVs.

It does exist in the Tesla model x, it's way too expensive though! Keep an eye on the Rivian too, it's going to be an amazing EV for those with an active lifestyle. I can't wait for it to come to the UK.

My next car will definately be a petrol or maybe a diesel as I have currently. I do like the look of the Mini countryman electric but its in excess of 25k from what I've seen so far. I live in a mid terrace where parking is tight & the lack of options I would have to charge an electric car would be very limited. The infrastructure needs to be massively improved & the prices more affordable before I would contemplate going electric. It makes me wonder if this is part of a wider government plan to get as many people off the road as possible & force them onto public transport which btw i will do over my dead body!