To ask if you'd buy an electric or petrol car in these circumstances?

[minniecoop]

I'm looking to buy a 2 to 5-year-old old car. I work from home, and the car will mainly be used for short local journeys on the weekend. Maybe once or twice a year I will travel 100 miles to see family, but I'm more than happy to stop off to charge the car and have some lunch, etc. I have a driveway and so I can charge the car at home.

I'm really not sure whether to go for electric or petrol. Petrol is obviously more familiar as it's all I've known, and as I drive so little I've never really noticed or been bothered by fuel costs. I would fill my car up with a tank of petrol and it would last me weeks. I'm looking at MINI Coopers specifically.

Would you go with an electric car or buy a petrol car for (probably) the last time before they're no longer made?

Oh the humanity 😱

We have a self charging hybrid (Toyota) which we love. We didn’t go full electric because of the ranges - we use it for travelling in Europe so do large distances. Battery has 15 year warranty and it has a 10 year warranty provided it’s serviced at a main dealer each year. Although it’s a 2.5 engine running costs are low because the EV is used so often.

My friend had driven to Switzerland in his Zoë. It’s doable with planning.

I live in Scotland. I've been driving an electric for 8 years. No issues. The only time I found it a bit harder to get to a charging point was when holidaying in the lake district (and even then it was a matter of a few miles).

My next door neighbour has an electric mini and loves it
Her H also has an electric car
In fact in our cul de sac of 5 houses 2 are fully electric carwise and 1 has 1 electric car and one ICE. I think of of the others has a Hybrid.

We survived, watched Netflix

We hired an electric car 6 years ago and decided the infrastructure wasn't quite there. We own one now because we feel the infrastructure has massively improved. We have had no issues charging it. It was definitely anticipation anxiety. Once you've done it you'll never go back.

Seeing as you can charge your car at home and are doing mostly small local journeys, definitely electric.

Electric.

Agree with this. The Ukraine war is about these minerals

We have an electric car and it's brilliant for the shorter journeys (of which there are many, with two teens at school in two towns and elderly mum). But we don't use it for longer journeys, we also have a diesel estate. To be honest I'd find only being able to do 100 miles or less before having to stop a nuisance! We're actually considering going to one car as we're retired, and we're looking at the Volvo hybrids while we were waiting to ect our car from the garage recently.

100% petrol especially if you are driving infrequently including longer journeys.

Mine does 300 miles, probably more if I wanted to push it

We live very rurally and have an EV. I love it. It can do nearly 300 miles and there’s no where in the uk that far from a charger! We have solar and charge on the drive.

I'm very low mileage and had a new hybrid. It has 3 new batteries in a year and I ended up getting rid. I think that you need to do a bit of driving to keep the battery charged. I don't think that my experience is unique. I'm sticking to petrol.

Seriously? I used to spend £80 per week on diesel. I now spend £25 per month on electricity. Most suppliers have a low cost ev tariff

The minerals in ev batteries are mainly mined in Australia and Chile. Not only is there a plentiful supply, but 97% of the lithium in a battery can be extracted and recycled

That’s interesting to read. Many colleagues are using the lease scheme and go electric for 3 years then go back to petrol. Those I know with electric have a second car that’s petrol, with one exception being my retired neighbours and my retired in laws.

Definitely wouldnt be buying a second hand EV. Battery life is 10 years? Nah

Battery life is not 10 years. That’s usually the warranty (which by the way exceeds pretty much every single warranty for engine life). There are EV taxis with 300k miles on the clock still going, which is more than double the lifespan of the average ICE car. Bear in mind also that maintenance and service costs are also much reduced over the lifespan of the car v an ICE model, because there are much fewer moving parts and therefore points of failure. Newer data suggests 20+ years before any significant degradation of battery life.

The amount of regurgitated myths on EV threads is really something, but if it keeps the energy tariffs low so I can keep saving a fortune then maybe I shouldn’t challenge them

Love all these comments about lack of infrastructure for electric cars from... people who don't actually own an electric car.

I charge at home, can count on one hand the number of times I've had to charge 'on the road' and would never go back.

Especially when the OP is the absolute perfect use case for an EV! The infrastructure doesn’t really matter for her because she will be charging almost exclusively at home with a cheap overnight tariff, she’s doing short, local journeys with an occasional longer one that’s still easily within EV range.

I’ve had my EV since 2023 and have charged once at a public charger while waiting for our home charger to be installed. I pay 6.7p a unit, so get 200 miles for £3. Even better is my husband’s work pay full mileage if you own your own EV, so he gets 45p a mile or whatever it is when he uses it for work!

It’s never from EV owners who say that they have got really stuck somewhere, only ICE owners who haven’t really thought about it. Once you look for chargers there are more about than you think.

You have to rethink the way you fuel your car. Rather than trying to think about it as petrol, think about it like charging your phone. Usually you charge your phone at home overnight or another time that suits you. But occasionally you will be in an extreme situation, like a long journey. In that case you make sure you take a power bank with you and charge through the day or you charge it when you stop for lunch or a coffee.

Exactly, I generally find that all the negativity about EV comes from people who don't have one.
To be fair I didn't want one but DH did so we leased for 6 months to try it and I was completely converted.
I have no idea if its lack of the correct info, fear of the unknown, affordability or what but there are a LOT of anti EV people out there who don't know what they are talking about.
We get it a lot
"Oh I would never buy an electric car"
Why?
No chargers - there are
Catch fire - no more than other cars
Battery life - not an issue
Heavy - not really
Parts expensive - no and there are fewer parts to replace anyway
Not as environmentally friendly as they claim - no worse than diesel/petrol

Something like the Toyota Yaris Hybrid might work well for you @minniecoop - in short city journeys it's basically an electric car most of the time, burning very little fuel. On longer journeys the electric motor assists the petrol engine so you use a lot less fuel, but the petrol engine is doing most of the work.