Would you buy an electric car?

[poppyart]

DM has just found out she is entitled to a mobility vehicle which will be driven by my DF and probably myself as she doesn't drive, to get her to appointments and help out with shopping etc.
I've had a look and seen there are electric vehicles available but I honestly don't know the first thing about them, is there anything I should be looking for? When looking for a petrol or diesel car i was looking at MPG and the shape/size for the practicality of getting her in and out so not to low or too high.
Has anyone went electric and been converted?

I have a Corsa-e. Love the driving, very responsive and easy. Have a pod-point at home and usually charge overnight. Definitely cheaper than fossil fuels. Negotiations are the way with the garages. 220 mile radius on Eco,but tbh it goes way further

I have 2 relatives with electric cars who don't have a home charger, both of them charge the vehicle at their work. This works for them as it's a guaranteed place they can charge and not out of their way (and for one of them it's free).

If you didn't have a home charger and relied on public chargers that you needed to go out of your way to get to, that would be very inconvenient.

Read my subsequent post. I need to tow about 8,000 lbs. Nothing out their does that.

Yes. We have two electric cars. No ICE.

One is a Hyundai with 330km range that we charge once a week, the other is an older Leaf - 2015 - that my husband uses for his commute and it gets charged a few times a week. We've been all electric since 2019 with zero regrets. Once you switch you never go back!

I have a plug in hybrid I guess, I get between 20 and 40/50 miles of electric before I run our but then it switches to petrol.

For the journeys I do it's ideal, day to day I never use my full range and only use petrol for longer trips. If I want to go on a long trip I can without worrying about stopping to charge.

I plug mine into a normal plug and whilst the electric bill has gone up it's nothing in comparison to what I was paying for my previous car at around £150 a month for petrol when I barely did 10 miles a day.

It wouldn't be good for someone who does longer journeys regularly though, charging takes hours and the range is crap really.

I have a love hate relationship with my electric car. I love charging at home, the ease of driving, the responsiveness (not just speed, but the lack of delay when you put your foot down). I love the regenerative braking which means you basically drive with just one pedal, the tech that is usually in the electric cars.

I hate it's reliability, 4 year old Tesla and it's shockingly bad. I don't think it's ever lasted more than 3 months without needing repair. I certainly am not impressed with Tesla as a brand. I also find that our range isn't quite enough. I wish we'd gone for the bigger battery. We get less than 200 miles of range now and it makes lots of day trips a bit of a pain.

Personally I'd never go back to petrol or diesel, but it works for me as I don't do hugely long journeys that often. We have a charger at home and a tonne of solar panels so it makes for a nice set up. They don't work for everyone yet though, I'm looking forward to more cars coming out as I think people will be pleasenly surprised by how good electric cars are to drive.

I love my electric car (had 3 now over past 7 years). Anyone who is worried about infrastructure take a look at-ZapMapapp and I think you might be surprised how many chargers there are - the pink ones are good for charging your car quickly / on a journey. httpsZap-Map

No.

Too expensive and where I live in Scotland I don't trust there are enough charging points yet.

Still just a thing for the urban rich.

I hope that will change soon for the sake of the plant but until the price plummets and the charging points escalate it's petrol for me.

I think to be honest it wont be long for it to catch up. I will expect that I can charge a car up in 5 mins to get a 400 mile range, once it matches like for like with my own car then i will look to get one, and even pay more than I would normally. I expect to pay about 5k for a second hand car, I could go over that for an electric car, perhaps even double but not more than that.

We don’t live in the UK so that is 100% not our experience! Sorry if that’s yours. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Scotland is better than England for charging we’ve found! We live in rural England and it’s fine but there are pockets where it’s tricky. I dread East Anglia for seaside for example as it’s still limited there. But we’ve done a fair few Scottish road trips and found the provision excellent.

But we find we rarely public charge when at home, there’s usually no need. I rarely exceed 200 miles in a day without going home. We only public charge on day trips that exceed 200 miles or holidays.

We have a hybrid that can tow our caravan. I wouldn't have an all electric car until there is good infrastructure everywhere.

We have a plug in hybrid through Motability. We have the Kuga PHEV which easily fits in DD's wheelchair. It did need an advance payment though.

For us it's the best of both worlds. It has a EV capacity of 30-35 miles which suits us for bobbing around locally. Longer journeys just use fuel when the electric has run out, just as it would do with a non-EV car. I can't be doing with stopping and charging it en-route

We just have a normal 3-pin socket outside the front to charge it. Even with the grant, we would still have had to pay around £400 to install an EV charger. It charges the car fully overnight and we had it installed with thicker 6mm cables so it could be upgraded to the EV chargers if needed in the future.

I don’t drive so I have no skin in the game so to speak. However what I would say is:

Currently charging points are cheap/free because most cars are not electric so the cost of charging is still minimal to those who offer it, and it’s possible to do it cheaply or for free. As the number of electric cars increases so the numer of paying charging points will increase and so will the cost of said charging points.

With utility bills rising at a phenomenal rate the charging of cars is going to dramatically increase your electricity bills assuming you have a charging point.

I suspect that in 5/10 years time as the electric car market increases people will be complaining about the cost of owning an electric car in the same way as they now complain about the cost/efficiency of certain fuel based cars.

From a personal perspective, as a guide dog owner I hate them because they’re silent. There was some talk of making them have a mandatory noise level but that hasn’t happened. Currently being able to hear whether an electric car is coming behind a fuel one is virtually impossible, and the idea of crossing some of the busy roads round here where there are only electric cars in future and so no knowing whether they’re there or not fills me with horror. And no, it’s not the dog’s job to cross the road, it’s my job to know when it’s safe, only if I get it wrong does the dog stop,.

No.

We live very rurally with very few charging points, and we also live in terraced housing so there's no guarantee of being able to park outside your own house (to use your own charger). We can't always access our driveway at the back either so couldn't install one there either.

If I lived somewhere with guaranteed off road parking and where all the local patrol stations and supermarkets had electric chargers, then it would be different.

Yes as someone else has mentioned the silentness of the cars really frightens me, I nearly got hit by one in Wales down a quiet country lane some years ago, frightened the life out of me. As a cyclist and someone who is very wobbly and slow on my feet they are dangerous

@AlternativePerspective Agree about the noise of the cars at low speed is an issue for visually impaired. How are cyclists currently dealt with? (I realise they don't pose the same threat as a vehicle but I'm guessing they're still avoided currently). I did hear a couple of years ago about a noise being required at low speed. My old EV had a noise when below 20mph but my newer car only has a noise when reversing.

Not many chargers are free and those which are are the 7kw chargers so take quite a while to fill up. They're usually at supermarkets where the user may spend an hour shopping and get a few KWh's to top up. It doesn't cost the supermarket much to offer this and is a good pull factor for attracting shoppers. I would expect more supermarkets to offer this as EV's grow in popularity, perhaps making it free only to 'clubcard' holders or something.

I don't think electricity will ever be even half as expensive as petrol. Even the current high prices have turned 1p per mile energy cost, into 1.7p per mile - still cheap in comparison.

What I'm sure we will see in the coming years is a per-mile tax levied on EV's once they have passed the tipping point. Maybe we'll submit annual odometer readings and get a bill through for the miles driven.

What I'm sure we will see in the coming years is a per-mile tax levied on EV's once they have passed the tipping point. Maybe we'll submit annual odometer readings and get a bill through for the miles driven.

You won’t need to. Your vehicle will be tracked wherever it goes and you will get the bill automatically. Road pricing is likely to vary depending on time of day, where your are and what you are driving.

It could also be means tested, so the rich pay more.

There’s a thought.

You could be right about the tracking if it's built into the car. That would be really interesting for road pricing, and having a satnav take the quickest route, or if you're not in a rush - the cheapest route.

Not sure means testing is the way to go though, but rates could be adjusted for the curb weight of the vehicle (expensive cars are generally heavier).

We could move to a hybrid system, such is with water bills - older properties are still on rates but can choose to install a water meter, all new properties have water meters; older cars pay VED as per current system but can choose to install a tracking device and pay per mile, new cars are all trackable and pay per mile

I live near a now busy road and am hoping EV are quieter.

You could be right about the tracking if it's built into the car.

It already is being built into new cars to comply with the speed limiter regulations.

I just thought that sometimes the car will have to stay at mine depending on appointment times so realistically I don't think it would work, I would want a charger at both properties and if i had to pay I don't think it would be worth the expensive

You don't need a special charger installed at home. If you are happy to trickle charge, you can just plug it into a standard plug. Do you have a garage or carport or outdoor safe plug? It takes longer but we just plug in at night and it's fully charged by morning.
Day trips should be fine with any electric car range. We have a small and a large fully electric. We drove 150 miles from Surrey to Wales the other day. Charged at that end and drove home the next day. I'm doubting your day trips would be that far!! The charge cost us £25. In petrol it would have been well over £100.