Is car finance now a good idea with petrol/diesel cars being phased out?

[Hopedun]

We always buy our cars outright and keep them for a few years. We bought a nice car a couple of years ago (2 yrs old when we bought it) and are quite happy with it. I'm worried about it losing its value though since petrol cars are not going to be made anymore in a few years time.

We usually have a good amount of value to part exchange when we trade them in after five years or however long.

This makes me think that maybe for our next car we should be leasing then the risk isn't ours of the car dropping in value.We do have room for a electric charger on our drive but the hybrid cars I've looked at are very expensive and I've also read that the batteries are more or less ready for scrap by about ten years old. My parents all have hybrid cars and they're costing as much as petrol would to charge now.

Does anyone know more about this?

They aren’t being phased out though because they haven’t got the infrastructure for electric cars yet.

Im planning on keeping my diesel until it costs too much to get through the MOT. Then ill get a second hand petrol car.

@pinkstripeycat I read that all new cars will be electric by seven years time. Whether this happens or not, who knows.

Once petrol and diesel cars are no longer available they may become more sought after

We've got an electric Porsche at work which is currently totally dead because it has a software problem, nobody can get in it or move it

Yesterday we had a Tesla stuck on a truck because it wouldn't unlock using the stupid credit card style key fob

I will avoid buying an electric car for as long as possible

No. All new cars have to be hybrids. They just will not be allowed to sell petrol or diesel only cars.

I might just happily use our petrol car til it dies then as long as it's not uneconomical to run it.

My dad went to Scotland in his hybrid car from England and found that he couldn't charge it due to not being a member of some sort of Scottish charging scheme. If he hadn't been able to fill it up with petrol then I'm not sure how he would have managed.

We looked into getting an electric car but after research we were concerned about the charging network and about the lifespan of the current crop of electric cars- I think they’re going to massively improve in terms of range over the next few years which will render the expensive electric cars currently on the market almost worthless. I asked the dealer about this and he admitted that probably would be the case so we’d be better off on a pcp or leasing if we wanted to go electric at a cost of ….. £800 a month! So we bought another used diesel and will run it until it becomes financially unviable.

I have two colleagues who cannot stop bragging endlessly about their electric cars; kill me now.

Tedious isn't it! Top Gear says the running costs are more or less on par now the energy prices are so high.

In a few years time it will become absolutely apparent to even the thickest people that all-electric cars are not the future. It’s a scam and an agenda being pushed right now but the fact is that these cars are horrific in terms of their environmental cost overall. Hydrogen is probably the best bet but won’t be available for a while yet. I’ll be running my petrol car until I just can’t any more.

From 2030 no more new petrol or diesel cars cns be sold. It will by used cars only or new hybrid and electric.

I've just changed mine due to ulez and got a petrol car. I aim to keep it going as long as possible, in 10yrs ill see if its worth switching to hybrid. I wont be doing it now ill do it when I absolutely have to and even then I'd go hybrid to avoid any issues like we saw where ppl queue for charging at serive stations and so on. At least the hybrid means the petrol can kick in and get you home.

So much can happen between now and then I'm not focusing on that at all. They are massively behind on getting charging points installed they are so far behind.

If you tend to keep cars for five years, then keep this one for five years and then replace with an electric one

I think you're overthinking this waaaay too early!

@ChiefWiggumsBoy not really if I'll have extra thousands to find because my current car is worth nothing in part exchange. I will have to factor that into my finances. Not everyone has extra thousands of pounds lying around 🙄

I have a friend with a nissan leaf,he has huge problem finding chargers that work. He has a home charger. Says charging cost him £40 per week. You don't get anything like the millage the manufacturer states. (He's an electrical engineer on the railway) he has a little electric Citroen in the garden, been there for 4 years, battery US. We bought his diesel astra estate, now 15 years old,and owned by my oldest DS. DH was in the motor trade over 40 years,last year, they had a brand new Corsa , batteries US, the batteries were £17k,no one could rectify the problem. He said hybrid is the sensible way to go.

We normally keep our cars for 6-7 years (last few have been bought as nearly new - ex demonstrator cars), this tends to be when repairs start becoming a bit more expensive. My diesel is 6.5 years old, and I'm currently awaiting delivery of a small electric car - however, we've done it on a lease basis for 3 years as we feel that the electric market will look different again by then, and we may go back to buying outright if prices are a bit more levelled out.

TBH, with various clean air and ULEZ zones (albeit my current car is currently compliant), I suspect driving an ICE car will become less straightforward if you need to drive into towns and cities as we approach 2030.

This is a really good point. Our nearest city has already introduced clean air zone for HGV, taxis etc

From 2030 no more new petrol or diesel cars cns be sold. It will by used cars only or new hybrid and electric.

The chances of that happening are pretty slim. With a bit of luck, we might just have got out of the current financial situation (inflation, increasing mortgage rates etc.) No political party would be daft enough to ban the sale of ICE cars that soon.

I reckon we're a very long way from petrol being completely phased out. I suspect anyone with a petrol car is likely to be ok for 20 years.

DH works in a related field. He won’t have an electric car. Although I’m sure we won’t have a choice in 10 years.

I can see no infrastructure being put in apart from charging points at shopping centres, and then only a few. Already sick of peoples charging cables hanging over pavements. Are new housing estates being built with charging points?

I think it's a difficult time to predict future value of any car just now, because the market is changing so much and will continue to change over the next decade.

Petrols and diesels may see their values drop as EVs become more commonplace and more cities introduce LEZs that effectively exclude older diesels.

Although I do think certain high perceived-value cars, such as some sports cars and supercars, and rarer models, may hold their value better. This is the way I'm going; my cars are both unusual models and one of them is a desirable collectors' item. I'm hoping — and there is an element of fingers-crossed here — that their rarity and desirability will count for them in future years.

But EVs aren't immune from market shocks either — the tech is changing very fast, meaning some of the models around now will look highly dated, even obsolete, in just a few years time when (for example) ranges improve, the make-up of battery materials changes, or charging times or methods shift again. Look at the old-shape Nissan Leaf; it's a good product and still a useful EV for people in certain specific circumstances. But it's very old-tech compared to (say) a Polestar 2 or a Hyundai Ioniq 6.

Also you get disruptors like Tesla coming along and cutting % off the prices of new cars, which immediately hits the second-hand market. A lot of second-hand EVs have seen their values plummet this year because of that stunt. I know a couple of people who have tried to trade in their EVs this year (one a Cupra Born, the other a MG ZS) and in both cases the dealers have simply refused to take the cars in part exchange. I have never seen that happen before.

Electric isn't an option for me as my current house only has street parking.

I assume you sell after 5 years because of concern about mounting repair bills? I do the opposite. Sticking with brands that age well statistically - currently on my second Toyota - and drive them into old age. My current car was bought at 3 years old and has made it to 22 years with minuscule average servicing costs. It's now getting to a point where more substantial parts are beginning to need changing, so would normally look at upgrading but waiting for used car prices to normalize a bit more.

Just to add - my son is a mechanic, and he works for a small, independent family garage, where the owner has spent £1000s and the last 3 years at least, investing in training for him and his staff to be fully qualified in EV maintenance. He’s now an experienced Master EV Technician and still wouldn’t touch electric cars with a barge pole right now. He’s seeing huge issues with them daily, and there isn’t one that’s a cheap fix either.

I'm planning on keeping petrol until the bitter end (unless things massively improve with electric vehicles) there will always be people who want petrol.

It will always be like that at the start of something this revolutionary though, we've got a new EV and I am worried but just feel I need to make that move across. It's going to change so much over the coming decades, the emissions issue is so dire. We have to make it work somehow 🙏