Hybrid car or fully electric or neither

[MerryMarigold]

We live close to Ulez and when it extends in August, we will be very much on the border. Our car is not Ulez friendly so to avoid the 12.50 per day charge, we need a new car.

I'm thinking fully electric. Dh isn't keen. We have 3 teens so really need a decent sized 5 seater or a 7 seater preferably. These are v expensive in any shape or form so I think maybe electric is better as it'll save money (will it actually?) over the long term. However, I'm worried about whether garages have experience with fixing electric cars.

Anyone have any good/ bad experiences they can share of moving to hybrid or fully electric?

I love mine. Nissan leaf, reasonable second hand and no problems at garages. Needs less maintenance.

I looked say those but I'm worried about 5 adult sized people in it (and a dog!).

In our experience (7 years with various electric cars) they need very little to no repairing.
Whether they work for you cost wise depends on how many miles you do and how you are going to charge.
If you can charge overnight at home on an EV tariff (like Octopus Intelligent) then you will save money on petrol.

It's quite rare that an electric car will save money, you have to do a high mileage for the extra cost to be recouped in cheaper 'fuel' bills.

Can you charge the car at home?

Can either of you take advantage of any tax breaks or discounted leasing plans through work?

Do you ever do longer journeys where the extra time needed to charge the car during the journey is going to be a big inconvenience rather than just a bit of an annoyance?

I have a jag e pace hybrid and love it

We have a plug in hybrid and it is great. Lots of choice and no worries about range for long journeys.

I'm not sure why only a high mileage would save you money in fuel bills? The running cost (per mile) is cheaper for electric than diesel, if you are able to charge at home.

We switched to electric in Feb and definitely wouldn't go back. Almost all charging is done at home as we've only been on one longer journey where we didn't quite have the range (that would be normal - we don't tend to do loads of looooooooooong road travel). But charging on the go is so easy anyway - as long as you're not trying to use key service stations on peak times at bank holiday weekends, when you will probably come across queues.

I have a plug in hybrid V90. We have very low milage but don't have a drive where we can charge it so rely on public chargers. I thought we would be able to cover most of our day to day driving on charges but it hasn't really worked out that way. Although, we do definitely spend less on petrol.
Plug in hybrids don't fast charge which is fine if you are leaving it overnight. But I charge while my children are at an activity they do and I don't get that much. Then the place I charge is one of the only free places with lots of chargers. As such, it is often busy and sometimes I have to wait for a place. Elsewhere I find electric chargers sadly lacking. Eg a car park will say it has them, but it only has 2 for a massive car park! Or on another retail park I visit all have been out of order for a long time and I suspect they just have no plans to repair them. I don't think I would want to rely on full electric at the moment. And I have been fairly determined not to make extra journeys just to charge as its completely counter productive!

Basically, if you have a drive you can full charge your car on either should be fine. But if you make long journeys fairly regularly then I wouldn't feel confident having full electric- there just aren't enough public chargers and you could easily find yourself stuck or wasting hours trying to charge up

Because you've also got to account for the extra cost of the car. If you're going to save £1000 a year on fuel, but the car costs £10k extra, it will be 10 years before you're ahead in financial terms.

That's how it looked when I was comparing a 2 YO small petrol vs electric a couple of years ago, and since then it's got worse for the electric car, because electricity has got a lot more expensive and petrol prices have come down a little. The petrol version I bought was £8k and the electric version only a few months newer was £19k, I would probably have never recouped the cost of the higher price back due to savings on fuel.

We've got a self charging hybrid bought 2nd hand, as nowhere to charge at home. It's great, very fuel efficient!

You don’t say what your budget is, and whether you’d be looking at used or new.

But setting that aside, in order to be ULEZ-compliant you just need a petrol made after 2005, a diesel made after 2015, or an EV.

I don’t think you’d ‘save’ money with an EV — the increased purchase costs vs (say) a petrol model would take a long time to recoup.

In the future it’s likely that EV will be the only way. But it isn’t right now, so you could buy a ULEZ-compliant petrol or petrol-hybrid seven seater like a Ford S-Max, Volvo XC90 or Seat Tarraco for now, and aim to go electric for your next car but one, when there will be more around, a more buoyant used EV market, and better infrastructure.

Seven seater EVs are limited just now anyway. It’s basically the Tesla Model X, Mercedes EQV and EQB, or the Citroen e-Berlingo.

There’s a big new seven-seater Kia coming out — the EV9 — but it’s not out for a few months yet (end of 2023) and it’ll be expensive.

I have an Audi A3 PHEV and love it! I can plug it in at home and at work - haven't braved the public electric charging stations yet. I travel to work (15 miles) on a charge then charge at work and get home before charging again. On a hot day and with very sensible driving I can get to work and home again on a single charge. I recently got 2000 miles from a single tank of fuel - rather unusually haven't been out much recently so used less than half a tank of fuel in over 2 months. If I'm driving a long distance the mpg isn't great but its very nippy if you put it in sports mode! Don't have the confidence or time to risk a fully electric car due to my long distance driving but would have another plug in hybrid anyday.

You don’t say what your budget is, and whether you’d be looking at used or new.

But setting that aside, in order to be ULEZ-compliant you just need a petrol made after 2005, a diesel made after 2015, or an EV.

Well, budget was about 15k but I'm not getting too much on that in terms of hybrids. Electric seems cheaper. We do have a drive.

Ulez compliancy is apparently changing in 2025 to Euro 5 emissions so we don't want to get a Euro 4. We could definitely get a petrol car cheaper but we usually have our cars for a long time (at least 7-8 years), so it may even be Euro 6 before we hope to get rid of it. I was hoping an electric would last in terms of compliancy but also be environmentally friendly and cheaper to run.

Forgot, I drive to work daily and it's just me in the car. Then at weekends or holidays it's usually 5 of us (all adult sized now!) in the car.

We have a Toyota Prius+ hybrid and are very pleased with it. It takes 5 adults comfortably, and the third row of seats is fine for two smaller adults.

I'm not sure whether the Prius+ is still made, but there is far more choice now than when we bought it. 5y ago it was the only hybrid MPV.

Being hybrid it is perfect for city driving as it tends to switch to electric only mode, and also for faster/rural driving in petrol mode with electric boost. The electric boost saves on petrol. The car charges itself, no need to plug in or find a charger. I like the idea that it uses the energy generated by braking, that would otherwise be wasted.

I have a plug in hybrid Cupra Formentor and it’s very cost effective to run. I can get 30 miles from a charge which does the school run and to work, then I charge during the day and do the same on the way home then charge in the evening. I can get around 2000 miles on a tank of fuel but it’s nice to know that when we do a longer journey I don’t have to worry about where to charge. We recently went away for the weekend and there was no charger where we were staying so I just used fuel that weekend.
I would like a full electric but I’m nervous of doing that until the infrastructure is there. We do a longer journey 1-2 times per month to see family and I just have read so many horror stories about finding charging places. I’ll go electric for my next car once there are a LOT more places to charge.
Like a PP said above, chargers in public places are few and far between and often aren’t working or charge at an absolute snails pace.

I have an electric Audi which would fit five adults, it’s great for most of my lifestyle and saves me over £300 per month. It is a bit if a pain if/when I go on a longer trip.

Thank you everyone. This is really helpful.

I have an Audi Q8 E-tron, which I love. The size would be excellent for the number of adults you have. It's a lovely, powerful car.

To add, the car is fully electric, and I have a home charger installed. Its range is about 280 miles, and I can speed recharge in about 30 minutes, so really quick.

I have a rav4 self charging hybrid, which seats 5 adults just fine, with great boot space and good fuel (petrol) economy.

We have a Skoda Superb estate (hybrid) since last October. We used the petrol once as most our trips in winter/early spring are short ones only.

We filled the tank in November. On energy we had so far £120, we charge at home overnight on a cheaper tarif. Charging at the stations is a lot more expensive so it all depends how you can charge.

Electric does have a problem with cold weather, the range they quote is summer based, you loose aroudn 20% at least in winter.

But I wouldn't go back to pure petrol.

You can find a vehicle which has seven seats using the search engine on this place, and there's a little bit of fat but you will get what you're looking for from as little as 4,000 pounds. Freed=&fuelid=69&seatcapacity=6&transmissionid=&drive=&mileagefrom=&mileageto=&pricefrom=&priceto=&ccfrom=&ccto=&wheeldrive=&colorid=&stockcountry=&search_keyword=&SA=make&desksearch=desksearch&mobsearch=mobsearch&sort=&seq=