Can someone explain electric cars, hybrid and any other options

[m00rfarm]

I am honestly not a stupid person, but I really cannot get my head around what I should be looking at purchasing. I find something that looks interesting, then find there is a hidden battery cost per month for example.

I really want an SUV type electric vehicle (well, I think I do). But would a hybrid be better?

Any simple explanations would be greatly appreciated.

"hidden battery cost per month"

what does that mean?

We (society) need better infrastructure & support for public transport & active travel. The electric car revolution will improve air quality hugely within cities, but it's not going to bring other hoped for benefits without making it much easier for most people to leave (whatever kind of) car at home for routine short-distance journeys.

I'm also very interested in the responses to this thread as I have been trying to decide on our next car.

For environmental reasons I like the idea of at least partially electric but our mileage is reasonably low (less than 10,000 a year) so I do wonder whether the extra expense is worth it. I would buy new and would expect to keep the car for at least 15 years (current one is 17 years old) at which point I would expect to get a much smaller car for my final years of driving.

I'm trying to decide between a plug in hybrid like the Hyundai Tucson and a full electric (looking at the Skoda Enyaq, Hyundai Ioniq and Kia EV6, all of which will do more than 300 miles on a fully charged battery). I could charge the car on the drive when I'm at home so that wouldn't be a problem and have solar panels so generate a lot of our own electricity.

Most weeks I don't use the car that much. Most journeys are reasonably local. I probably do no more than 50 miles a week. I reckon if I had a plug in hybrid I could do everything using electricity.

However, several times a year I do much longer journeys. A plug in hybrid wouldn't get me far and would be expensive to run when using petrol. The full electric cars I'm looking at should get me there in one charge but I would worry about not getting as many miles out of the battery as the manufacturers claim and running out during the journey. The infrastructure en-route is not brilliant. There are a couple of places about half way along where I regularly stop for a loo break, but neither currently has a charging point. I might have to stop twice on the journey - once for the loo and then a second time to charge - or take a detour to somewhere with a charging point, neither of which is a particularly attractive options when the journey already lasts at least 4.5 hours.

I also couldn't charge easily when I got to my end point. There are not many charging public points in the local area, but I have been keeping an eye open and things are definitely improving.

The car would be our main car, and in a year or so could well become our only car. My husband very rarely drives so I am the main driver and will be the one who decides what to buy.

I'd be very interested if anyone has any thoughts! Thanks.

@Fifthtimelucky - we do similar. Low mileage in general, weekly we don’t need to drive far daily. Some weekends longer 60-90 min each way drives. Few drives a year of 4-8 hrs. We have a VW id4, it’s 550km full mileage.

Thanks @Caspianberg. That's very helpful.

I definitely like the idea of full electric but have been putting off a decision for the last year or so, while I watch out for improvements in the infrastructure.

I just hope our current car lasts until we've made the decision!

Hidden battery cost - some of the electric cars look cheaper to purchase second hand, but then you find out that you have to rent the battery at a cost relating to how many miles you are likely to do. I would rather just buy a car outright.

I'm a bit of a gambler so would take the punt on the infrastructure improving, but am perhaps influenced by living in a prosperous area. It's happening - there are public charging points popping up all over the place. We did a walk starting from Twickenham and found more than one street with 2 points in the lampposts using the ZapMap app. I suppose the converse of the increasing number of chargers is going to be the increasing demand. But if I had a home point I'd consider offering access via JustPark.

I have a Tesla and love it, wouldn’t ever buy a non-electric vehicle again.

Range is getting better and better, I’m sure someone told me about one being released soon with over 500 miles from a single charge.

Check out Zap Map to see what your local charging infrastructure is like.

From just having come back from a UK holiday involving a fair amount of driving, the infrastructure would have to improve quite a lot before I'd consider a fully electric vehicle.

We stayed at campsites and hotels with small car parks so didn't bother trying to charge the car while we were away as we have a hybrid.

Obviously a fully electric vehicle would have a much longer range than our 30 miles, but would still - I assume- need charging for a number of hours after a significant amount of mileage in a day. At the minute it feels like you'd need to be quite organised to factor that in to your plans and it could restrict your flexibility in more rural places.

I’m getting 42.9 mpg on average in my petrol car and so the figures people are posting are interesting. And I get around 350 miles on a 40litre tank 1.25 engine.

I also wonder if eventually manufacturers will add driving / engine noises to electric cars. In the same way digital cameras added the satisfying click.

Probably not as big as the car you're after, OP, but I've an 05 Prius hybrid, it charges the battery as it drives. I can get 400 miles a tank full, a 35 litre tank I think. Small, anyway. Not as powerful as I'd like, but I'm learning to let the feeling of amazing MPG outweigh my frustration at not zipping around like I used to. It's fine, I can cruise at 70 if I want but the consumption goes down a LOT.

What make please?

I have just got a fully electric Peugeot and I love it! It's the best car I've had so far. I don't do many miles, during term time 10 miles a day but currently without the school run it's about 5. DH has a diesel BMW 5 series which has always been the family car (fuel covered by the business) but my car has now become the family car as we feel happier not using so much diesel. We did a "long" drive (45 miles each way) yesterday and as we got home I only had 45 miles left as it had been 3/4 full, I did get panicky but I switched it to eco mode and I knew if I really needed to I could find a BO garage and do a fast charge which would take half an hour.

We haven't fitted a charging point at home yet as we live next to a supermarket that provides free charging and there are charging points at my office. I would recommend you go and visit a few showrooms, you will probably have a wait for one and you can test drive them and get more information.

I'm really interested in this and my main query is if you're stuck in unexpected delays, how easy is it to top up the electric and also how accurate is it when it tells you you're running low?

Appreciate it's the same dilemma with petrol but I'm used to that and knowing my car and also that a garage usually = guaranteed fuel

I have to say the quietness is something I absolutely love about the electric car, wouldn't want added noise.

There's no doubt that dp gets twitchy when the charge gets below about 40 miles and I don't blame him. We're doing the drive from Berkshire to Scotland later in the year and staying a week, and it will be interesting to see how we get on.

We've had a Kia Soul (all electric) for a few months now and it's great. It will go about 280 miles if fully charged and that ekes out a bit further as well with careful driving. We charge at home and only rarely have needed to charge when out and about. We have solar panels at home so have basically paid almost nothing to run the car over the last few months. It's taken me a while to get used to it as the car is quite gadgety, but I love it now.

We now have 2 electric SUVs and I can't see us ever going back. Both DH and I love them. One does about 220 miles and one does about 280 miles - both are very genuine mileages but you will got a lot less if you drive very uneconomically (same as an ICE car which nobody seems to realise!!) - over 70mph on the motorway, heavy right foot etc. Not that that means we drive very conservatively, it's just made us realise how much petrol we wasted with our driving styles previously.

I drive about 25-30 miles a day to work and charge at home 99% of the time. DH drives about 160 miles each way to work and either charges at home or using public chargers. Our home charger cost about £500 and we easily made that money back in savings in petrol in the first few months.

We've just taken one to France - 2 adults, 2 kids, 4 bikes. Super easy journey! Yes we stopped to charge but only after a couple of hours driving when the kids would need a break anyway. We certainly didn't seem to be stopping to charge all the time!! We spent about 60€ on charging over the 2 weeks so significantly less than petrol.

The public charging network isn't perfect but it's improved hugely in the last 12 months and will only continue to grow. It really isn't that much of a stress to use it most of the time and the more big charging hubs they build, the easier it will be. The chargers that are available aren't necessarily obvious if you're not an EV driver so don't assume they're not there. For example, rather than being at a traditional motorway services, there might be a charging hub with 8/10/12 chargers just off a motorway junction but you'd never notice them until you're part of the EV network. Zap-Map is worth downloading to get an idea of chargers in your area or on your regular journeys.

You might find this article of interest OP.
Personally I'm not a fan of Adam Kay and I find it hard to believe he didn't know you would need a proper charging point setting up at home and that none of the sales men gave him advice around that. Even I know you don't just get an extension lead out of the kitchen or wherever he plugged it in.

Aside of that the car sounds a nightmare.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cb93914c-f6e7-11ec-9dc9-dea4f592180c?shareToken=6d99240cab7a02b4b3ad39277f9c3e21

My experience is EVs love a traffic jam! The range drops by very very little if you're sat for quite a while so it is actually much less stressful than if you're running low in a petrol car and get caught in traffic.

The mileage on our two cars is very accurate so we always feel in control of when we need to charge and haven't ever had to worry that we wouldn't have enough. But also, our cars do 220 and 280 miles. How often in most people's day to day life do people do significantly more than that in one journey? I know somebody will pop up saying they do 500 miles every day with a trailer but the reality is most cars take most people to work and back and do fairly local journeys (less than 100 miles from home).

@SilverLiningPlaybook - vw id4

Our car has regenerative braking. Meaning it actually creates energy if your using that in low speed areas like town driving or traffic jams and braking often.
Locally around towns I only drive now with the regenerative braking on as it makes it so easy to drive.

I'm looking at replacing a car next year and hybrid/electric seems to be the way forward but they're all automatic. I have four kids that will be learning to drive over the next ten years so I'd much prefer to have a manual for them to practice in. I have had a couple of automatics over the years but I also much prefer a manual car.

We have had our electric SUV a couple of months and love it. We were advised to lease rather than buy as the upfront cost of the car would probably not be recovered due to changes in battery technology over four or five years. We have always had a car loan and leasing is loads cheaper. The car is a very smooth ride, responsive and quiet. We had a home charger installed and use that most of the time. We are not in the UK so electricity still very reasonable. We plan longer journeys where we know there are chargers and back-ups. If you have a lot of long, unpredictable journeys under time pressure then I think it might be difficult, but for us it works fine.

We are currently trying to decide between EV and PHEV. The thing that’s bothering us about an EV is the long journeys - eg, holidays in Scotland and France. I’ve tried looking at ZapMap in the past, and the thing that worries me is when it says the chargers are out of order. Eg, looking at the chargers near Aviemore, I’ve checked on a couple of different occasions and it says nearly all the chargers in the local area are not available or issues reported. Do you find yourself driving miles and miles trying to find chargers that work? It sounds stressful on a holiday somewhere remote with no facility to charge at a cottage.

@mafsfan Would really like to
hear more about how it has worked for you in France, and @PermanentTemporary how you get on when you’re in Scotland.

We live in France. Chargemap is the app you need. The network is considered to be pretty good, motorways are well supplied with Ionity charges. There are already four times as many chargers as there are petrol stations and lots more planned. Our small towh has half a dozen chargers and they are never busy. Having said that if you are in deepest rural France you will need to plan your route with Chargemap or similar.

OP you should cost it with your travel distances and potential cars. If you can do that distance on full electric you will save a fortune.
My full electric Hyundai Kona costs £16 to fill up and does 260 miles on that. So equivalent to approx 125 mpg.
For best savings you would need somewhere you can regularly charge which isn’t the motorway services.
To explain, EVs can gain energy from 2 sources.
Theres regeneration (energy is collected when slowing down and seems to give a range of about 30 miles basically for free). Hybrids therefore drive approx 30 miles “for free” on electric regen.
Beyond this distance you would need to use petrol or have a plug in hybrid with (slightly) higher electric capacity, or a full EV with much larger battery capacity.
Then there’s the “plug in”. All full EVs use regenerative power but in addition can be “filled up” to their battery capacity instead of filling at a petrol pump. Hybrid plug ins might have say a 60-90 mile electric range, some of it “free” from the regen and some from plugging in.