Would you buy a electric car?

[ghtt]

So I need a car for my new job after only having one car that my husband uses, I can only drive a automatic, so debating a electric car, would you get one?

I have a Leaf and I love it but its a lease car.
I wouldn't buy one yet, the mileage is limited. Mine limped home after a 100 mile round trip.
We had to have the heating, radio etc off and toottle home at 50mph to make it, only had 7 miles charge left. Will never do that again! It was the really cold spell after Christmas which limits mileage.
We have a charger at home and use it for my driving to, from and at work and all our local trips.
DH has a hybrid on order for long journeys as the charging network just isn't there yet.

I've noticed that rural areas with no nearby petrol stations tend to have more electric cars than more convenient areas.

Having lived 10 miles from the nearest petrol station and often had to detour to visit it when I'd not otherwise been passing, I can very much see the appeal of being able to 'fuel' the car at home...

Where I am now we have an overpriced shell and gulf with a less convenient drive to a supermarket with a petrol station. Home "fuelling" will save a lot of annoyance of trying to shoehorn a petrol station visit into other journeys!

I wouldn't consider one yet. The issues of lithium supplies, charging infrastructure and cost of servicing put me off. I was standing behind a customer at our local garage last week who was paying for some work on his EV. It was being explained to him that tyres and breaks parts are much more expensive. His bill was clearly more than he'd expected.

Those of you who use an overnight tariff to charge their cars, but also run appliances, please don't. Every fire brigade will have a warning on their website telling you not to run washing machines, dishwashers or tumble dryers overnight or when you are out. It's so dangerous. I used to ignore the warning until a family member had a house fire caused by an appliance, just as they were about to leave their house. Imagine if that had happened at night. Sorry for the derail.

Big SUV shape cars have expensive tyres... Regardless of engine type. Brakes are generally less likely to wear out if the car has regenerative braking.

The electric car we're looking at has cheaper tyres than our big ICE (non premium) estate.

When comparing costs to petrol/diesel cars, you need to factor in the following:

• they remove a lot of the least reliable components from petrol, diesel and hybrid cars eg no gearbox, no clutch, no head gasket, no timing belt, no exhaust, no catalytic converter, no fuel/exhaust filters…
• down hill, the electric motor acts as a generator, converting kinetic energy back into electrical energy and using it to charge the battery. This is called regenerative braking which reduces wear of the mechanical brakes, meaning they rarely need replaced, which saves you even more money vs a petrol or diesel car.

If you’re worried about the environmental impact of batteries:

• 95% of materials in batteries can be recycled
• Batteries that are no longer good enough to be used in a car can still be used to store solar power

if you’re worried about dangerous mining of cobalt:

• 10% of mined cobalt used in EVs
• 30% in phones, laptops
• Tesla does not source cobalt from the Congo where the dangerous hand-mining happens
• Some EV makers have batteries that don’t use cobalt at all
• cobalt is used as a catalyst to refine petrol and diesel – so petrol and diesel cars use cobalt, too.

If you’re worried about the range:

• 68% of journeys taken in the UK are under 5 miles, and with an average round trip commute in 2019 being 23 miles. All Electric Cars can cover these distances.

if you’re worried whether lithium is sustainable:

• Lithium isn’t a rare metal: there are 14 million tonnes of lithium on land, and 230 billion tonnes in the sea

You do need to think about whether you can have a charger at home, will you do most of your charging at home, if it will be your only car - what is the infrastructure like near you and places you are likely to travel to?

He didn't have a big SUV? The most appropriate tyres for electric cars are more expensive. Yes, the brakes last longer because of the system being different, I don't disagree, but the owner was astonished at the cost of replacement parts. The woman was telling him that many owners were surprised at the expense. It's just something to be aware of when comparing prospective running costs.

The only reason why I don’t have an electric car it’s because I can’t afford it. I live in London so it would be great so having to worry about ULEZ zone, etc. I have couple of friends who have an electric and they’re delighted with it and the low maintenance.

With your mileage & as a 2nd car - YES! To make it worth while you'll also need to install a home charger as the public networks is indeed relatively expensive & not that reliable / can have queues or be blocked. Plus you can benefit from cheap EV rates & preheat both the battery & the car before you leave in cold weather.

You could go for a cheap 2nd hand early-ish model as even 2014 reg cars have 60 mile minimum range (even in this 🥶 weather - batteries work loads better in the warm).

We've had our 2014 plate BMW i3 for 8 years & it is still the most fun to drive of any car I've owned. We've done 114,000 miles in it & it is still giving us the same mileage with no battery degradation. So 60 miles in winter & 90 miles in hot weather (which is the smallest of the 3 battery sizes BMW made - the newest version had double our mileage).

Barely any moving parts so it only need servicing every 2 years and we've only had to replace tyres through wear & tear in that time. Plus brake pads. That's it. (Whereas I specifically wouldn't get a hybrid as that's two different lots of things to go - more complicated than an ICE or a BEV plus extra weight so less fuel efficient.)

If you're buying second hand then I'd join the EV you're interested in FB owner groups as (like ICE cars) they all have their quirks. I like our i3 because BMW do all the battery balancing for you - so you just plug it in and walk away. (Where some other models suggest you only charge up 80% most of the time for their battery health.)

I wouldn't buy anything that didn't have "rapid" charging (20 mins to 80% full battery), as opposed to "fast" (which isn't that fast - 3 hours to fill up our small 60ah battery - these are the home chargers / in lots of supermarket carparks) or "granny" - 3-pin plug (7 hours to charge).

That's the boring stuff - the fun stuff is the i3 is a joy to drive even on a commute. Laugh out loud acceleration, one foot driving & you even feel okay when stuck in traffic as you're not burning fuel or pumping out exhaust fumes.

Haven't read all the comments but we got one 6 months ago. We have a charger at home which is amazing but also haven't had too many issues charging on the road. My biggest issue is it's not good for long distances. We have to factor in a few charges if we do long trips but thankfully they're few and far between. If you drive mainly locally, go for it!!

Weird, an EV should never need it's brakes changing, you simply don't use them, resistance from regenerative braking is all that's needed to dlslow down 99% of the time.

The thing about replacement parts may be true to an extent but in 4 years we’ve only had to replace the small battery (£80) and punctured tyres (no difference in cost to usual tyres). The fact is there’s far less to go wrong. No moving parts for example.
generally although they cost more upfront over the lifetime of a car they cost quite a lot less.

And pp is right a hybrid literally has both an EV and ice engine so (almost) double the amount of stuff to go wrong. EVs are super reliable.

This is absolutely true in my rural area! Every fifth or sixth car I pass on the A road to work seems to be an EV now.

I absolutely love the convenience of it. Cannot even imagine having to stop at a petrol station every week/fortnight like I used to. It was such a ball ache to plan it in. Much happier plugging in at homes with zero thoughts given to 'fuel'!

Yes to all of this! I’m glad someone is posting facts instead of perpetuating misinformation.

No because as another poster pointed out living rurally with no driveway, no access to parking near my house etc and lack of infrastructure and no plans to change that currently means it won’t be a choice for a while yet

I can't see the infrastructure changing much anytime soon, maybe in the 'important' places like major cities and routes but it will be like all other things in small towns and rural places, they are forgotten.

We have only just got full fibre internet down our road and that has been around for years, an example of poor infrastructure. My smart (dumb) electric meter doesn't send readings, they have had years to sort that out, I know that is the same wherever you live but another example of 'half a job' and affects the price that an EV will cost me to charge as I can't get a specific EV tariff.

Electric charging from lampposts and stuff like that won't arrive in our town for years going by the rate everything else is done. Like everything else this EV infrastructure is 'half a job'.

I don't think we will ever have the infrastructure to support all these electric cars. The goal is to get the majority of car drivers off the road ultimately.

Hear hear!!

Nope, I would consider hybrid though. We make long distances with our car, sometimes 12 hr journeys etc., so electric car isn't fit for purpose for us. Also need big car=more battery usage.