Recommendations for electric family car that’s cost effective to run and repair

[AnnaK12]

We are looking to upgrade our family car, my husband wants to go from petrol to electric. I’m all for that but I’ve never had an electric car before. I know they are better being electric compared with petrol but what are the running costs, are they more / less? Maintenance, at they more or less? I did read that insurance can be more expensive. One of my concerns is, will it last us, ideally I’d like another trusty car that will go comfortably for another 10-15 years. For me, electric cars that I see tend to be new or new ish so hard to compare how long they will last? Any electric cars owners, let me know your opinions and any recommendations for a family car is even better, thanks :-)

I have a Kia Niro. It is only 4 years old and still under 7 year warranty so I can’t comment on long term reliability but so far it has had nothing wrong with it and is much cheaper to run than my previous car.it is lovely not having to hang around on freezing petrol station forecourts or having to smell diesel fumes. We charge it at home usually but occasionally at a supermarket if I am in a hurry or away from home . I c a n’t imagine going back to petrol now.

We've had an EV for 2 years now. There are pros and cons, but mostly pros for us at least.
First off , if you can't charge from home stop reading now and buy a petrol car.
Still there..ok.
Biggest pro for now at least, is that it is far far cheaper to run than a petrol car. Our car has a range of between 250 and 320 miles (depending on the time of year..more miles in warm weather) and charging at home on an EV tariff will cost less than £5 for that full charge. That same mileage in petrol costs is likely to be 10 times that amount. It really does save thousands a year. Other pros.. EVs are extremely quick. Acceleration is (if you want it to be) astonishing. The cars drive almost silently, so feel very refined, and they are so easy to drive. There is far less to go wrong and no more worrying about gas emissions and exhaust replacement, injectors, fuel pumps, cambelts starter motors the list is endless.
Ok the cons. Well as already mentioned, if you need to rely on public chargers the cost can be eye watering. I very rarely use them, but if going on a long journey you have no choice, and as well as the high price I've found many of the public chargers to be unreliable and at motorway services, usually very busy. It's better than it used to be though and I assume will improve. .other cons, they are expensive when bought new , however we bought ours at 2 years old, still with 3 years manufacturer warranty and at least than half it's new price. There are fewer incentives than there used to be..eg EVs are now subject to road tax, but I think that's fair enough.
If the EV 3p per mile tax happens then that's a bit of a pain, but still way cheaper than. running a petrol or diesel car.
People worry about the batteries failing but they seem to be very reliable and capable of well over 250k miles. My advice would be drive one and see what you think. I drove one for a day as a courtesy car and when I got mine back it felt like driving something out of the Flintstones!
I don't know anyone who has an EV that would go back to driving a petrol car. I certainly won't.

Thanks everyone for the replies :-). We have purchased a 1 year old electric VW, it was £20k off the list price, very nice to drive. We have booked for a Hypervolt charger to be installed at home, hopefully that will be installed in 2 weeks and the car hopefully we get end of this week.

I have a VW id3 and it’s 5 years old. I’ve had no problems and really love it. I haven’t found any cons yet.
Where I work I have to pay for parking and instead of £920 a year I pay £370. I charge overnight and I don’t have a super fast charger just a normal plug. When I need to charge outside of home I know the kind of places which are likely to be good.
I love how quiet it is and the acceleration is incredible.
I also love how if I’m waiting for someone you can have the heating of air con running without a noisy, polluting engine running. After Five years the battery health is just as good as if it was new.

To those of you with them, have any of you done long trips? We regularly drive from sw to Scotland (430 miles to ferry, 28 miles beyond) and dd lives in mainland Europe 1700 miles away, is it doable with an electric with a 350 range without driving you mad? We typically do the Scotland run in under 10 hours including stops for toilets and refuelling before the ferry as it’s cheaper on the mainland and the run to DD’s is 4 days scheduled, we drive for long days. I don’t know how good public chargers are?

I had an enyaq 85 as a company car and it cost about £100 per month in electricity to charge at home. I did about 80 miles a week. It was a great car, fully loaded
with tricks but it’s over the 40k tax which is annoying and they are expensive to buy.