Electric car or not?

[ABBAsnumberonefan]

I’m thinking of getting a bigger car and weighing up my options. What’s everyone’s opinion on electric cars? Is it worth investing in one now or do they still need a few more years to develop?

the prices of them are eye watering even on finance so I’m not sure if it’s worth it yet!!

Electric cars better than diesel certainly, and petrol too. Question for me before any of that is whether you need a car at all, and can you reduce your mileage if you have one.

We are a 2 car family, we need to be as we both drive to work and need to juggle getting the kids to school/clubs/play dates. If we had an electric (which DH does want and I’m not bothered either way) the other car would have to be fillip fuel or hybrid.

We can’t be purely electric just yet, they aren’t good enough and we wouldn’t be able to go and see family that live 100miles away without planning charge stops, or do our holiday every 4 years of driving to Disney Paris.

If we were a 1 car family I would insist it was petrol or hybrid.

We’ve had one for coming up to three years now. Love it. It’s just so easy; a pleasure to drive, charge it at home overnight when electricity prices are lowest, never have to visit a petrol station again. We’ve taken it all over, to the other end of the country and also across Europe. Charging on the continent is even easier than here as there are so many superchargers. We’re driving it to Norway and back this summer.

Very few problems; a cracked windscreen (could happen to any car) and a creaky suspension (sorted under warranty) are the only things it’s had to go into the service centre for.

For me it is 'not yet'.

I have friends and family who have elec cars as an additional car and they have all said they wouldn't take them on longer journeys (1 hour plus) due to charging facilities. All of them have a horror story involving what should have been a simple journey that ended up taking hours longer than it should have. It seems the infrastructure isn't there yet.

I would get one if I also had access to a non-electric car for the longer journeys.

I do need a car - I have two dogs and need to drive into work!

That being said, I don’t do loads of miles so i think an electric cars charge would cover that. Interesting about the hours journey though as I would easily do that getting to work so that is a bit of a worry!

infrastructure is my main concern too, and if the battery breaks.

My mum thinks they’re going to be a scandal in a few years so it’s putting me off! 🤣 I also live in a terrace without a driveway so I’m not sure how the charging would work?

Just to add if I didn’t go electric it would definitely be petrol or petrol hybrid - I’ve never had a diesel car and I wouldn’t want one

if anyone knows where to get a good deal for an electric car I’d be keen to know where too!

I would assume a long wait for one, for order sooner rather than later. We ordered ours a year ago ( with 3 month wait at the time), and it’s still not due until September (15 months later)

some very naive views here.

We have one and as our ONLY car. For 3 years now. We charge it at home (currenty dont even have a charger just use a 3 pin plug) - have only ever needed public chargers a handful of times and never had any 'nightmares' or 'horror stories' nor has any one else I know that has one. Since we got one our BILs and PILs have made the switch. Anyone that thinks the infrastructure is not there yet hasn't actually researched it - there are blackspots in the UK and there is room for improvement but most of it is fine. The app zapmap tells you where they all are.

@ABBAsnumberonefan what do you mean if the battery 'breaks'. It really is not a thing. EVs are in our experience far more reliable than traditional cars there is (much) less to go wrong. Servicing therefore costs less.

@CanIHaveASnaaaaak "they aren’t good enough and we wouldn’t be able to go and see family that live 100miles away without planning charge stops, or do our holiday every 4 years of driving to Disney Paris." Rubbish. What do you mean aren't good enough? And what makes you think you can't see family that live 100 miles away (I do) or go to France (I have done).

I don't doubt they are expensive but offset that against the fact that you never ever have to buy fuel. In time it pays for itself.

we got a very good deal on ours second hand 3 years ago. but at the moment demand is so high that 2nd hand is almost as expensive as new, and in some cases more expensive.
that said I know people who have got lease deals which are barely more expensive than ICE equivalents

ooh which route are you taking and how long? We have family in norway and want to do this. There used to be a ferry from Newcastle which would make it much easier.

@Frazzled2207 it’s a huge shame the Newcastle ferry no longer operates! Our route is eurotunnel across to France, then stopping overnight in Holland, then up through Germany staying in Flensburg the following night. Next day up through Denmark, night ferry Hirtshals to Stavanger. Then a week pootling around the mountains and fjords, ending up in Bergen for a bit and then ferry back to Hirtshals and same route back.

“We couldn’t go 100 miles” does make me laugh. So much misinformation spread about electric cars.

You talk about investing in one — my advice would be don't buy one, lease it. EV tech is changing very fast at the moment, including some fundamental stuff about battery tech. What's current (!) now will be dinosaur tech in a few years time, and this could impact what it's likely to be worth.

Beyond that it does depend on your budget, really. The way the technology is developing means that at the moment, the better EVs are the more expensive ones. At the lower end, you're generally dealing with (somewhat) lower ranges and more compromised platforms.

Fundamentally, if you can charge it at home and at work, it's probably a no-brainer. If you can't, it's worth considering but you'd need to look at the realities of on-street and public charging both right now and in the immediate future.

If you live with on-street parking, no chargers anywhere near you and you can't charge at work, you might be better off with a hybrid or a petrol car.

@NightmareSlashDelightful
iI agree with you that it’s a heck of a
lot easier if you have a driveway

i don’t agree that it’s not a good investment. We are thinking of upgrading ours and our research tells us that demand is so high at the moment that our now 4 year old car is worth 95% of what it was when we bought it 3 years ago.

I'm talking longer-term really. I know old Leafs (Leaves?) still go for OK money right now but there's a big leap forward in battery tech on the way (according to my dad, who's worked in electrical engineering since the 1960s) which is going to shunt everything on, especially in terms of platform flexibility, battery safety and charging capacity/range.

Besides, demand and prices for everything is high on the used car market right now. My current car is an eight-year-old diesel SUV (yes, please throw rotten tomatoes, etc) and its trade-in price right now is more than I paid for it retail three years ago.

Ps. I'm absolutely smitten with that new Renault 5 EV that got shown at Goodwood this week. WANT.

We have an electric car. So does my mum. She lives in a flat so can't charge at home. It's not ideal. She charges here once a week and uses supermarket car parks etc (altho she constantly moans about having to have loads of different charging apps on her phone....it really isn't that bad!!).
If you can't charge at home then it's worth ensuring whatever you buy/ lease has a fast charger socket it makes a massive difference. On long journeys there are usually more fast chargers. And if.you can afford a Tesla their charging infrastructure is v good.
DH has done v long journeys. The car charges in 20 mins on a fast charger. Time to get a coffee at a service station.

@NightmareSlashDelightful
yes fair point. They have developed significantly over the last 5-10 years but from what I can gather won't keep this pace up. I think there was real incentive to get range up to 300 miles which is the kind of mileage that makes it comparable with an ICE. But compared with 3 years ago when there were few few that could manage it, right now there are dozens. I would be extremely surprised if range etc continues developing at such a pace. Battery power has scaled up a lot but I don't think is necessarily going to scale up a lot more. Happy to be proven wrong.

I don't however think that an EV could right now be a bad investment. If you get one and decide you don't like it, in the next year or two you'd likely be able to sell it on for more than you got it for.

Thanks everyone! A lot of food for thought.

I do like the idea of an electric car - the prices did put me off a bit but leasing wouldn’t be so bad budget wise!

I’ve got one and I love it. It’s really practical for me, fast, quiet, clean, comfortable and cheap to run (though was admittedly a little more to buy than it’s ICE counterpart, not much though as I bought when the grants were good). It works well for my big dog too. It is reliable and the battery has a long guarantee on it. I have no concerns about that side of things, it’s just scaremongering.

However,

> I have a drive and a home charging wall box, so a full charge costs me less than £5. I’ve had my car for about a year and used the public network a couple of times. It is busy and expensive. The free or cheap ones are old, unreliable & slow. The best ones (reliable & fast) are expensive (Gridserve, Ionity, Instavolt). Loads of people bought EV’s in the last 12mo and the public network didn’t increase in capacity sufficiently to accommodate. I wouldn’t buy one if I couldn’t charge at home, it’d be impractical.

> I also have an ICE car for long journeys (now used rarely but useful for occasional long business mileage commute or holiday).

We ordered one in April and it will take a year for delivery so factor that in too!! No brainer for us, we have solar panels so it will be free to charge! I am looking forward to never having to spend £100 on a tank of petrol again!

We've had one for 9 years. No battery issues yet!

I wouldn't want one as I don't have a driveway so charging would be an issue for me.

A question for those who have recently bought an electric car, has anything been done about the lack of sound? There seem to be many silent ones, which I think is dangerous for blind or partially sighted people.

yes right now they all have to come with a 'noise'. Ours has a 'noise' button that we can switch on or off.

I love mine (2018 leaf with 150 mile range)! Yes occasionally it's a pain to charge when out and about, but it's getting better, and I don't do it that often anyway.

For the PP who asked about sound - most modern petrol cars are also pretty silent at low speeds.

We've had ours for 5 years, absolutely love it. We live in a city and it is brilliant for city driving. We have a driveway so installed a charger but for the year before we did that we just charged up every time we went to the supermarket and that worked fine.

If I lived more rurally and did a lot of mileage I'd probably go with a hybrid.

That's good to hear, although I don't think it should be possible to turn it off. It's definitely progress though.