What type of car would you buy? Petrol or electric?

[EverydayImPuzzling]

If you needed to replace your car now, would you go for petrol, hybrid or electric? I only need a runaround hatchback, not interested in expensive badge cars. My main priority is reliability. Electric would work for me practically but I’m worried that with my low annual mileage (c. 3k a year) the saving in petrol cost wouldn’t make up for the extra few £££s I’d have to spend to buy it in the first place.

Plan to buy in cash, second hand, and run it into the ground.

I would go for a self charging hybrid mainly due to having no drive and not parking anywhere near enough to my house to install chargers, my electric bill is also expensive enough now without adding something else to the mix to charge an electric car

I have a driveway so could plug in, but can’t really do the maths to know whether the higher electricity usage would be more expensive than filling up at the pump?

@EverydayImPuzzling probably would be cheaper at the minute but the electric car savings will be coming home to roost shortly and we probably won’t be any better off once the government start losing revenue, for example the pricing per mile they are trying to bring in.

It’s not just that though I actually couldn’t afford the initial outlay for an electric car and get the same size I have now with enough room to carry all my nursing gear

That’s it really, they are so much more expensive to buy and I just don’t think there’s much point unless you’re doing higher mileage?

3k mileage a year I would definitely buy petrol

Hybrid plus solar panels

I bought an electric corsa

Best thing I did. It’s cheaper to run and much better for the environment

We've got a deposit on a self charging hybrid. We have a drive but the charging infrastructure around us is poor. We currently have a small diesel and the new car is bigger but will have similar fuel efficiency (and cost less to run because it's petrol).

Solar panels not an option for us. Just a quick look at electric corsas and they are over £20k second hand. It just seems astronomical.

I think petrol or hybrid probably. Even leasing is looking more attractive than buying second hand at the moment (I am replacing a company car where I pay a private contribution and more tax, and leasing won’t cost me any more per month than I pay now)

Hybrid I think
I’d imagine in the long run it will save you - check that, but I think the penalties will be going up and up.

OR if your mileage is that low, kick the decision by buying a cheap 2nd hand you can run into the ground after a couple years. I know cheap 2nd hand isn’t as cheap as it was, but still.

Hybrid

you can calculate the cost of charging an EV by multiplying the battery capacity by the cost of 1 Kwh of power, e.g:

2018 Nissan Leaf has a 40Kwh battery and the price cap for 1 Kwh of electricity is 28.34p so it would cost £11.34 to charge. At a range of 160 miles, that's 7p a mile.

As a comparison, the average cost per mile for a small petrol car is 12p.

Petrol, based on your low mileage and cost of purchasing. I'm probably bias too because we can't charge here due to covenants, trying to get them overturned currently

Longer term they are also likely to last longer / cheaper repairs as the engine generates less heat

I agree hybrid. Bear in mind the difficulty of getting certain makes of car now too. A friend has just been quoted a year’s wait.

Useless factoid coming up. A neighbour used to work for a company that sorted out cables for housing estates. He told us that when planning which cables to use, they had to know if it was an all electric estate, or whether there was also gas. The specification for all electric was higher, so the cables were up to the job. He said that if everyone wanted a home charger, cables and substations wouldn't be able too cope and there'd be lots of outages - people all wanting to put cars on charge at a similar time.

We bought a self charging hybrid. Had to sell our diesel car due to the ULEZ round London

Hybrid, bought last year, because DH had 200+ mile journeys several times a week for work, and although battery technology has improved enormously as he might not have been able to charge up at (or indeed near) destination, it was still not certain enough.

As it has kinetic return as well as charging we've found fuel bills are down

Petrol.

We can't afford an electric car, and even if we could, there's nowhere around here to charge it.

What's your budget? Are you not interested in a hybrid? I only ask because to say you don't reap the benefits on low mileage is wrong.

Bought a 2nd hand hybrid Hyundai iconiq, self charging, unleaded petrol and electric so no plus in at home. Omg I love it, so powerful, fun to drive, every gizmo going, cameras, sensors, heated seats and steering wheel. Self charges so get so many miles to the gallon that I'm only filling up £60 once a month, and I drive 9 miles to work twice a week.

We just bought a petrol car a few weeks ago.

I'm not willing to spend an extra twenty grand in electric plus I live in Scotland and there are still not enough charging points.

[quote AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii]@EverydayImPuzzling probably would be cheaper at the minute but the electric car savings will be coming home to roost shortly and we probably won’t be any better off once the government start losing revenue, for example the pricing per mile they are trying to bring in.

It’s not just that though I actually couldn’t afford the initial outlay for an electric car and get the same size I have now with enough room to carry all my nursing gear[/quote]
Yes I think you are right on that one

I’d probably go small or medium hybrid — Toyota Yaris, Auris or Prius.

I, like many in this country, live in a street of Victorian houses with no drives or dedicated parking. I've been giving this some thoughts All it needs is for a company like Octopus to stage enough charging points that enable you to key in to your own domestic supply and we would be sorted. Demand would increase and the price of the e cars would drop surely?

I want to go electric however waiting for the costs of maintenance, batteries to reduce, something to consider. Although I probably drive 3k a month.