To ask for your experiences of second-hand electric or hybrid cars???

[loveyouradvice]

We are about to buy a second-hand car... our last one died after 10 years....

And the figures for electric cars over 5 years don't look so bad given there are no fuel costs ... and we are trying to be a bit more eco

Bit concerned though we may be ahead of the curve and may regret it... Any thoughts or experiences?

We will only have one car and have noticed people go for electric for their second car.... but less so if they only have one!

We have a leaf (bought 2nd hand last November) and a petrol car. The petrol car is very much the 2nd vehicle being used only for long journeys.

We save about £250pcm on fuel which means that the leaf will have paid for itself in 3 years.

Both BP and Shell have committed to having rapid chargers in every one of their petrol stations by this time next year. Consequently you're not really ahead of the curve, perhaps on it's early incline.

Assuming that you can't afford a Tesla, the current difficulty with only having an electric car is range and lack of charge points (which, given the above, is about to change). If you do regular long journeys (over 50 miles) where you can't charge at the other end then you probably want to put it off a year or so.

To explain why here's an example of a trip we did in January- going from Durham to Manchester via leeds. Fully charged leaving home, charge at scotch corner, charge at wetherby, charge at 1st M62 services, charge at 2nd M62 services, arrive in Manchester. It took 1 1/2 hours longer than usual which was boring but manageable. On the return journey it worked the same till scotch corner where both chargers were out of order. As the next nearest chargers were Durham services we had to be flat bedded home at 11pm with an infant and me 8 months pregnant.

If you're considering a Zoe get one without battery lease, you can now buy the batteries and financially it's worth doing so.

If there's anything else you want to know just ask

Wow!!! UserOne that is so helpful... going to digest and read a bit more and then suspect I will be coming back to you!

And gosh.... January sounded tough.... VERY impressed by you doing it with a huge belly and an infant!

So reassuring that there will be so many more charge points.... My guess (and hope) is that we will do what you have done and then either rent or borrow for longer trips/holidays - which realistically is probably only once a year! Hope that borrowing a Leaf might even prove appealing to mates if we needed to swop cars for a trip....

A phev (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle)is possibly your best bet. The petrol engine in the car is mostly used to generate electricity but will take over if you are doing over 70MPH. The batteries alone will give you 20-30 miles per charge, and then the engine recharges the batteries as you drive, as well as regeneration from braking, driving down hills etc. PHEVs usually have a pretty small petrol tank (like 40ish litres) and sip at fuel, rather than guzzle it. The quoted miles per gallon figure is around 130-140.

My typical driving was £80 per week in a hybrid, and went down to

We have a hybrid Toyota Yaris - bloody marvellous. Couldnt go w a straight electric one because we need it for a long commute and couldnt afford a model that could handle there and back reliably in cold weather (other members of the family have electrics and the miles per charge drops drastically when it's near freezing. Marvellous for round town though).

Range is a issue, DB’s solution was to buy a 2nd hand leaf and a petrol generator. If the charge points are full or out of order. He uses the generator.

Replacement battery packs are expensive.

Beginning to get really excited! Does feel like a breakthrough....though DD has just announced she fancies a convertible as our next car!!!

We've just bought a second hand Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV.

We did quite a bit of research into electric cars and decided to go with the PHEV as generally our trips are short, less than 10/20 miles a day and the PHEV does 30ish on electric. We have only used the petrol engine once when we did a longer trip and our MPG averaged out at 65mpg. Considering we had a 2.4 petrol engine 4x4 before which was giving us a daily mpg of 24 we were over the moon.

We currently charge it through the garage plug but we are having a charge point fitted in the next few weeks. You can get a government grant to reduce the cost of firing one from £500+ to £150 ish.

We are also looking to charge electric provider to get cheaper overnight electric so we can charge it overnight.

Would highly recommend the Mitsubishi Outlander. We've got two kids/dog/buggy and they fit really well but it's cheap to run as my daily run around/commute.

We're a Toyota hybrid household. He got a second hand Prius first and we were both blown away by what a pleasurable drive it was, the fuel economy and lack of road tax. He's now on his second Prius and I've had two Auris. We bloody love them. The only reason we haven't gone totally electric is because we have no off street parking.

I've sold fully electric cars and now sell hybrids. Range is a problem for fully electric unless it's just used as a second car for dotting around. They're definitely the future once the infrastructure is there and the range is increased. Hybrids are the present though. Self charging (under deceleration and braking) so you don't need to plug in anywhere and approx 50% of your urban driving is going to be fully or partially electric, minimising your fuel costs.

Electric was brilliant but a 99 mile range was 80 miles in actuality and I lived 40 miles from work...

Hmmm.... going to go and test drive them... the Hybrid does feel more sensible but do at the moment want to see if there is anyway we can go fully electric, though suspect it may be a stretch too far

We have a leaf and love it.

The main thing you need to think about is how far you will need to travel. We have an older 24kw and can get about 70 miles on a normal run around (it's hilly here) but only really around 50 miles on motorway type driving.

If we go on a very long trip up country then we tend to hire a car, but can afford it with the savings.

One thing to watch for in second hand electrics are the Renault Zoe's. There are lots which have battery leases do the car is cheaper but you pay £60 a month rent for the battery which will probably cut out most of your saving.

If you do lots of long journeys you may find a plug in hybrid is better for you until the mileage is there on electrics (it is for the new ones but the range is a lot less on the older ones).

Once you go electric you won't want to go back!

DH just got a 2nd hand Mitsubishi Outlander. I have only driven it once but it's great so far. I definitely needed the petrol to kick in on a longer journey while I was on the motorway. Would rather go full electric, but we need a large family car that can do longish journeys.

We have a 2014 Prius hybrid and we love it. No road tax, £6 for annual street parking, and for us, as we do a lot of city driving, the running costs are very low. It’s also a pleasure to drive long distances. I can not recommend it enough. We don’t have off street parking and need longer ranges for on occasion so a full electric or Plug in hybrid don’t work for us.

I'd research the average lifespan of the battery and replacement cost if it's knackered before I seriously considered a 2nd hand electric car.

My mate has a hybrid Yaris and he loves it. His fuel bill has gone down from £120+ month to £17. He's not fussed about maintenance costs though because his is leased through Motability.

We are on our way to becoming a ‘fully electric’ car family-we already have a 7 seater electric family car, a little 65 mile range fully electric Citroen for popping around town, which we love. We also have a Outlander Phev which we are shortly selling and that will be replaced by the new all electric Hyundai Kona with a 350 mile range.
My husband is a massive electric convert-he loves his Tesla and we have taken it across to Belgium/Netherlands and up north with no problems.
I’m hoping my new car will be similar. In terms of charging, I don’t envisage a problem at all as generally I will charge it at night/when I’m at home during the day as needed...and for longer journeys, as mentioned, it’s just a case of planning the route so you have options. We have never found it a problem to stop and charger the car as the children always need to stretch their legs.
The infastracture and number of different electric car charging companies is a pain-but that is coming into line finally also. The electric vehicle choice is also improving.
I do love the smooth and quiet ride that you get with an electric car and I’m excited about the Hyundai as you get a lot of car for your money comparatively. We looked at the Renault Zoe recently which was nice, just the battery issue which is now sorted in terms of rental/buy out.

Thanks so much for this thread OP. I'm in a similar position. We only have one car too. I'm a bit put off by all electrics being automatic gears though. Feel like I'll be de-skilling myself. It was such a struggle to 'get' gear changing when I was learning!

Hyundai hybrid - Ionic. Brilliant, really nice car.

I absolutely love love the automatic driving style -I would never go back to manual....it make the cars feel like go-karts!!😂😂

Honestly, don't worry about that, it's such a relief not to have to think about it and the gearboxes on ours are so smooth you don't register the change. Manuals are so 20th century!

I've just bought a new Zoë which I absolutely adore. Was looking at second hand but the range wasn't quite enough.

There's a fab forum called speakev where I asked a million questions and got loads of answers. Really friendlyand only a few vipers .

Worth looking at if your journeys suit and are unlikely to change in the time you expect to keep the car.

We looked at them and concluded unless using the huge tax advantages if taking the via a company it didn't stack up. We use a twenty year old disco and a small petrol hatchback to cover our motoring needs and the monthly cost came out favourably to anything we could make add up with a hybrid.

RNW - I am completely jealous. I would love to get the new Hyundai Kona but can't really afford it yet so will stick with my little Leaf for now.

I would hate to drive manual now. You get used to having no gears very quickly.

EVs are so easy to drive and they are so smooth and quiet. I hate traveling in ICE cars now. The engine noise is just so loud and I forget how difficult it is to hold a conversation in one.

We have a hybrid Yaris, it's the newest car we've ever owned - was about 1 yr old when we bought it a couple of yrs ago.

DH drives it mostly for work (local journey), but we are just about to load it up, with roof box, for a weekend camping. It's been very reliable.

We're on our second Renault Zoe. I love it.
The first one had a range of 60-80 miles. We upgraded after 2.5 years and the new one has a range of 150-200 miles which is quite an improvement.

We lease ours through dh's work. Company cars are generally quite expensive tax-wise nowadays but zero emissions vehicles are taxed differently so it works out quite cheap for us.

I wouldn't buy second hand electric right now I don't think. The technology moves on so fast, even if you bought our 2 yr old Zoe you would be buying outdated technology. Unless you bought it cheap enough that you didn't care. That's another reason why we decided to lease, so we weren't stuck trying to sell a second hand car that was past it's sell-by already.

I love electric though, so easy, great to drive, never had any problems charging when out and about.