Petrol, diesel or electric? What’s the best bet at the moment

[Bordercollierun]

In need of a new car (hopefully not buying at a stupid time but needs must)

Cant decide what to go for. I drive around 40miles per day with no option to charge at work and travel for work once or twice a month (4 hour trip so 8 hour round trip)

What will be best to buy and run that will last me the next 3 years or so? I see so many electric vehicles but I was concerned about resale and the hassle of charging. Then again with the price of diesel maybe it is the way to go.

thanks!

Same with ours, we're with Octopus and our rate will drop btwn 12.30 - 5.30am
It means DH will fill his car for about £4.00 , compared to my petrol car which has just cost me shy of £55

Anything but diesel.
Knowing everything we do about the harm they do it’s simply not a moral choice. There’s a good reason they’re being discontinued.

We’re with Octopus like @Ilikewinter and they’re reducing their tariffs. It’s going to save us quite a lot of money tbh.

I think it was when petrol prices were close to £2/litre and there had been a big storm bringing a lot of trees down, and I was talking to someone who had a traction engine with a 'colonial' ie wood burning firebox, seems ideal given the direction petrol prices are heading.

Having seen a gang of girls put a Burrell Compound Road Locomotive through its paces they can be surprisingly quick, and being a compound economical as well

So any Compound road locomotives with colonial firebox's for sale anywhere?

I’ve just bought a petrol hybrid, lovely car, drives beautifully and is so economical.

Looking online, you could get a 7 seater Citroën e-Berlingo 2024 for £16.5-17k then put £1k towards a home charger and switch to an EV tariff like Octopus Intelligent Go and you would be running it for very little indeed! A full "tank" (about 200 miles) will only be a couple of pounds. Doing 40 miles a day, you could do 2 charges a week (not even 2 full charges, either). You would only ever need to use a public charger during your occasional long trips and it will still work out cheaper than petrol for those journeys since you can get your first 200 miles for about £2 from charging at home.

I can give you an Octopus referral code (£50 each) if you end up wanting to go with them BTW.

You had better check your home insurance if that is you plan. I’m not sure insurance companies will pay if you have a problem?

We're with Octopus too. We got an email this week to say that the Government's removal of certain obligations for energy companies results in a 3.5p reduction, which is being applied to the unit rate. So for us (fixed until January 2027) it means our night rate is being reduced from 7p/kWh to 3.5p/kWh. People who signed up in February will drop from 8p/kWh to 4.5p/kWh, I think, and those who sign up now will drop from 9p/kWh to 5.5p/kWh.

Slightly off topic but ID Buzz could work (I think…)?

My ex colleague left our workplace to go and drive the trams local to us and we said omg this is the best job for him coz of his personality, he left after a couple of weeks coz it made him travel sick . We found it ridiculous but perhaps it’s a thing ? lol.

So £33000 new, two years old and now only worth half that amount, what is it going to be worth at 4 years old?

Yes that is a concern.

i wonder if the diesel car prices are going to drop through the floor too with the increases?

ID buzz look great but out of budget

Well someone else took the hit so I'd see that as a good thing unless you were planning to sell it again very quickly.

Chatgpt reckons it would be worth £10-12k after another 4 years (so 6 years old). 4 years of use of a pretty new, large car for £5-7k with very minimal running costs (I mean you'd save thousands on petrol in that time) seems decent to me.

Diesel car prices are going up due to less Diesel cars being produced. A five year old e berlingo may be worth £10000 to £12000, but the batteries only have a warranty for 8 years and cost around £5000 to replace.

And electric cars are going to charged at 3p per mile tax to the government from April 2028.

Really? First I've heard of travel sickness being more likely in an electric car. We have had 3 full ev's and never had a problem with any of them. Sounds like the rubbish spouted by the anti ev brigade to me. Husband often suffers from motion sickness in manual cars which lurch if badly driven which is not such a problem with an ev as they are automatics.

Never heard of electric cars and worse travel sickness either

If anything it’s better as it’s so smooth you aren’t having gears changing and lurching or sharp breaking.

It’s absolutely mad that you’re willing to spend up to 20k on an EV but not buy a charger. Are you buying outright or on finance?

Some new cars come with free charger but it sounds like that’s out of budget.

I’d say go electric but you need the charger. Maybe go for hybrid petrol.

But at the moment (I appreciate that we're going to know what prices are in 2028) it's only going to be 3.5p per kWh to charge my EV. That means that even with the car tax, it's only going to be 4-6p per mile, depending on weather.

I would be cautious with plug in hybrids, they will be charged at 1.5p per mile.... but bear in mind your already paying whatever the cost of your petrol is ( isn't is something like 55p per litre is fuel duty?) - so unless you manage to drive overwhelmingly on electric I can't see how a hybrid car makes financial sense.