EV for the main family car

[Ticketybloop]

If you have made the transition to electric for your main family car, how has it been? Do you regret it or are you glad you made the switch?

We have been sorely in need of a new family car as our old diesel is on its last legs. Really wanted to go electric with this one, but with 3 kids and periodic live-in grandparents, we also needed something large and practical. When the Volvo EX90 (aka electric XC90) came out, we took the plunge and ordered one for 2024 delivery.

I am now second guessing our decision and am worried about how we will fare as a family on pure electric. 600km
on a charge seems okay to me, but now we have family members now telling us we will regret it. For day to day use I think it will be great as we can charge in our driveway or garage. We chose electric over hybrid for a number of reasons, and maybe by the time it’s delivered in 2024, the charging infrastructure will be better, but now I am worried we have made the transition too soon.

Would love to hear personal experiences of making the move to EV for your family car if you have done so!

Mine is EV and we will go for EV for DH's car as well, when it's time to change. How often would you drive 600km without stopping?
And of course depends on what energy package you're on, but on mine charging it full costs about 1/10 of the price of a tank of petrol. Plus there is very little maintenance compared to regular cars.

This is all nonsense. For a start, fires are significantly more common in ICE vehicles.

I’d say we do maybe 5ish 8h+ road trips per year (and live in Europe so almost all are in continental Europe except for the annual pilgrimage to see UK family). As it is, we stop every 2.5-3 hours with the kids anyway, so I am hoping that euro motorways + an existing pattern of regular stops will mean it‘s not such an issue.

The maintenance was a selling point! 5 years of free maintenance came included with the car.

I believe this is the "pre conditioning" thing DH goes on about.

We definitely preheat on cold days reducing the cold drop effect - not only an efficiency thing but nicer to get in a warm, defrosted car.
When it's just me in the car I often tend to use the heated steering wheel to warm my hands up and that's all I need rather than boost the whole car.

We are mainland Europe also. There seems to be way more chargers here maybe than uk by the sounds of it.

In the last 9 months we have owned it, we have driven in Germany, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia and always found somewhere easy to charge. Our nearest main town has just added x2 areas with x10 Tesla superchargers in also ( can use on non Tesla also). We haven’t used as just go home and charge, but they are only a 3 min detour off the main motorway so someone driving south for summer to the coast could easily detour 3 mins off the motorway and charge there. There’s a cafe and Mac Donald’s with kids playground over the road, plus local shops like John Lewis equivalent with cafe/ toilets etc. So an easy 30 mins charge and bite to eat.

Yes, this is exactly the sort of road trip we do! So good to hear you have been finding it okay. I know the big motorway we usually take down south via Lyon has a lot of rest areas with dedicated places that look just like petrol station pumps except they’re chargers. The prices for electric are on the signs alongside the petrol and diesel prices.

We have an electric Audi, it’s our only car. We used to spend £400 per month on petrol, now we spend about £70 charging it.

I’ve got a Nissan Leaf e+, which is the extended range, I got it in October 21 and I’ve now done just over 20,000 miles. I’ve lost no battery capacity, and from Essex I’ve done two really long trips, one to Devon and the other to Scotland.

The UK infrastructure hasn’t been great, to the point there are certain brands of chargers I’ll avoid, but apart from the annoyance of waiting for a charger (where the incumbents thought it was ok to FO for a two hour lunch), I’ve not had major problems. It’s improving rapidly, and we now have several electric-only forecourt’s which are wonderful.

Money-wise, it’s a huge saving over my previous petrol car, in the summer I pay £2.07 per 100 miles, so far this month it’s averaging £2.49 per 100 miles. Make sure your car comes with a heat-pump, the old style resistive heaters used a lot of power for not-much heat!

I work shifts, and it’s amazing at 4am to squawk “Alexa, ask my Leaf to warm up” and get out 20 minutes later to a defrosted and warm car with a toasty steering wheel and seats. The other gadgets and tech are wonderful too, I really wouldn’t be without it now.

I was a bit sceptical like you, and got cold feet after ordering, but I feel that was down to a lot of deliberate lies misinformation. The early electric cars (which are now the ones available second hand) had quite poor range etc, and maybe soured some people? However, if you’re able to afford a new one, with the current battery sizes and ranges available, I think you’ll love it!

I'm in France as well and really the infrastructure here and neighboring countries is excellent, also free charging in many places (IKEA for example).

Switched Tesla model Y in December from a hybrid. Best decision we’ve made.

We’re lucky we have a driveway so have a home charger. No bother plugging it in each night, just routine.

Electric cost is 15% of what our fuel was - even in this current very cold and uneconomical weather.

The sat nav plans charging stops at free superchargers on very long journeys, so we don’t get range anxiety.

I agree with PP - the fart noises from Tesla are fabulous, there’s lot of little hidden jokes and gimics in the system that make it so much fun for the family.

Enjoy!!

We were early adopters and bought a Nissan leaf in 2012. It only had 100km range and we managed fine. We even did a few long journeys and charged up during the journey.
We recently got a new leaf with a 225 range. We don't know ourselves.
EVs are great.

Bmw i4 and I absolutely love it. It's great for running for work or when going out and about at the weekend. However, we've not used it for long journeys as just don't have the confidence in the public ev charger availability, condition, etc.

How are EV owners finding tyre wear? Any more than ICE due to additional weight?

EVs use different tyres. The compound and sidewall strength are different/uprated, and also the tread and groove design is different to factor in the additional weight and instant torque effect.

If you put ordinary tyres on an EV they'd wear quicker. But this isn't recommended, because they're not designed for them.

We’ve had a Tesla model 3 for three and a half years as our only car. Never looked back. It’s like the transition from the old Nokia bricks to iPhones when they first appeared - the technology is a huge leap.

It’s lovely to drive, the Tesla supercharger infrastructure is excellent and we’ve never had any problems on long journeys. We’ve driven it on many, many driving holidays all over Europe, from France all the way up to Norway and back.

Another advantage is the lower maintenance costs. There’s nothing to go wrong so nothing to fix. Very cheap MOTs.

I found it drove very well in the recent snow - better than I expected. The weight helps I suppose.

I’d never go back to an ICE now.

We would have seriously considered the Model Y if it was available with the third row here in Europe, especially now with the price drop! In any case, the two back seats would probably be too small for us, so a moot point about availability, but would have been a great choice if it had met those criteria.

Our family car is a Mercedes EV.
My car is also an EV - Fist 500.

I've had two EVs now so about 4 years, and dh has had his for about a year and a half.

We are unlikely to go back to petrol cars again.

If you use the fast chargers at service stations, even larger cars don't take too long. We normally only have to stop for half an hour max - time for a coffee and a toilet break. Sometimes we stay a bit longer than we necessarily need too as we have lunch. It does encourage you to take more regular breaks - which is actually a good thing for driving and roads overall.

Normally we just charge at home.

But we have had EVs a while now and have done some long journeys in the bigger one, including a fortnight travelling down to Cornwall, spending a fortnight down there and driving back. My smaller one hasn't been as far as that - battery is smaller - but I'm so take it on longer 2.5-2 hour type motorway drives and it's fine. We plan stops, and always have a back up plan for charging stops though more and more these days they aren't needed. Thenchsrgers seem to be a bit more reliable - or at least the ones we've been using.

Once you make

they can often only operate at about 30 % of their battery

This simply isn't true of the EVs we have, my last one or our friends’ EVs. Even in a bitterly cold day it's no where near that. A pp say]is 50% and ours ranges have never been reduced to this amount - anywhere near that low!

I do wonder how many people making such comments actuallymiwn one and use one daily.

Likewise those saying it takes 2-3 hours to charge.
At a service station it wouldn't take anywhere near so long.
Also many have a fairly large fine if you stay over 1 hour, so no one actually try to!

Is* it possible to get them up to temp
On your driveway whilst plugged in ? - I know our engineers are advised to warm the seats before setting off to save range*

Yes. Most, if not all, have an app which allows you to preheat your car. You can often even set it to do that a set time each day if you wish. You can be plugged in if at home when doing this.

We preheat our cars for 5 minutes before going out to them.

The car remains locked throughout, and the engine won't turn on allowing the car to be driven, as the key isn't in the car.

Here’s another question for the EV owners. Are you happy enough with your car that you plan to keep it for 5-10 years? Do you feel that your EVs is staying current for longer with the OTA updates? Resale is something I’ve been wondering about.

EVs are, not is. I hate that there is no edit option for typos!

We bought our Audi outright when my DH retired and plan to keep it for about 8 years. We haven’t thought about resale value.

Same here. Intend to keep it for ten years as we have done with our previous cars. Had it three and half years now and still love it as much as the day we bought it.

People talk about batteries degrading, but there’s no noticeable difference so far. And the tech still feels light years ahead. As I said above, maintenance is incredibly cheap. All it’s needed so far is a new windscreen as a result of a stone chip on a motorway - could happen to any car.

We went for the long range version (BMW iX) for this reason. We intend to keep it for around 5 years.

Having said that, battery technology is surprisingly difficult to improve so it’s not hugely likely that there’ll be cars offering double this range in 5 years.

We love our EV so much, it’s an absolute pleasure to drive.