To not get an electric car?

[Jamesblema]

I was keen to get one as our second car (small-ish run around mainly for DH to do his 25 min commute every week day - we have a larger family car).

My main reasons were the savings on running costs and the benefit to the environment. I figured we could spend 6-8k on the car and then we would save massively on petrol costs. However, taking to the men at our local garage has put me off- they said that electricity costs are almost as much as petrol and repairs on electric cars require specialist mechanics and can be massively more expensive especially when something goes wrong with the battery. They also said that the estimated remaining mileage is often more than you actually have left and you can easily run out of charge and need to stop for over an hour to charge up. The cost of buying a hybrid is putting me off that option too.

So aibu to keep my petrol car at the cost of the environment? Any positive electric car experiences?

What do you mean detail people are unwilling to provide? 😂

It is conclusive for me. Not conclusive for everyone.

Also I just went to book a train for me and my DD. A 4hr 30 min drive is going to take an hour longer, including 2 changes and triple the cost if I go by train. A bus might be cheaper but would take 9 hours. No way am I going to do either of those.

No thanks. I don't want to plan my journeys around recharging.

Keen to stop feeling guilty about driving a polluting diesel car round our ancient small city that is in a dip and has poor air quality.

If it's a second runaround for his work, buy a tiny second hand 1litre diesel. Reuse etc.
Go vegetarian if worried about the environment.

I assume you mean petrol, which is what I bought.

As for 'misinformation about electric cars' the factor that just about every advocate always fails to account for is the significant extra purchase price. Most people can't or won't just disregard an extra £10/20k in upfront costs which is what you're looking at when comparing like with like.

I worked out it would take about a decade to break even when comparing like for like, ie similar age car in petrol and electric, as the cost of the latter was more than double, so decided that it wasn't justified to me.

They might cost a lot less to run if you can charge at home or otherwise cheaply, eg at work but any time you have to pay commercial rates, which is more likely than with petrol/diesel because the range is so much lower then your cost per mile could easily be more than that for petrol,which puts you on the back foot if you need to justify the higher upfront cost with cheaper running costs.

Don’t buy a diesel for short runs (or long ones, actually.)