Help me with this car decision, have nobody to talk it through with

[CARCARCARCARCARCAR]

My car is not safe, passed it’s MOT but does not reliably start and various light on dash intermittently, it’s a miracle it passed.
Test drove two cars this week, one electric and one petrol.
I really want the electric one and it will be so much cheaper to run.
I have two kids learning to drive at the moment. They are learning ina manual car and electric cars are automatic.
so far they have not practiced in my car but I hoped they could. I can’t keep the one I have as I think it is not safe and doesn’t always start.
I usually buy a five year old car and keep it for ten years. Should I buy the petrol one just so the kids can practice for a few months? Or get the one I think will be better in the longer run?

Appreciate any suggestions, feel I might be missing something

Well if you are looking for a car to keep for 10 years Toyota and lexus do a warranty for 10 years or 100k miles so If you buy a 3 year old one it will be under warranty for 7 years.

Their electric cars are uninspiring.

You could

1. buy a petrol for the next 7 to 10 years then get an electric next time
2. Get a hybrid
3. get an electric albeits Toyota electric offering is uninspiring apparently and other warranties last 7 years ( 8 for the actual battery)
4. lease a petrol for 3 years then get an electric a

As for manual Vs automatic electric will become dominant in the next 20 years so driving manuals may be useful but less important than it used to be

In the long run you will save enough money to pay for them to have a few more lessons in a manual car for fluency with gears.

They can still do some practice in your car for road sense and confidence once they are good at gears.

I have an EV and I love it. It’s an absolute game changer. If it was just for you I’d say go for it. However, in your shoes I’d get a manual one just for a few years and then change it after they’ve passed their tests. My reasoning is that even if they choose to drive automatics in the future they’ll have a licence that allows them to drive both - so they can drive hire cars, other people’s cars, that classic Porsche they always wanted, etc. They will pass more quickly and cheaply if they have a car to practice in. The second reason is that in a few years second hand EVs will be a lot more common and therefore cheaper - we’re close to the tipping point but we’re not there yet.

I think kids should learn In Manual so it won't restrict choices for renting cars later in Life

As for EV or ICE if your journeys are mostly local an EV is the way to go if you need to commute decent distances regularly ICE

Used or new if it is a EV I would go along the PCP route, tech is changing too quick to keep a 3 yr old EV for 10 years how many 10 year old Teslas do you see on the road?

We didn’t let DS use our car for practice, he had lessons only another friend did this with both her children and they all passed quickly.

Check the cost of insuring both cars with learner drivers on. My insurance was going to cost a lot more and that covered the lessons easily.

There is also what your kids are like I was pretty confident that DS would pass easily and he did. DH let him drive down the drive to a house his family owned from the age of 12, it was half a mile long. We also paid for him to have a go at driving round a private track in a high performance car when he was 15 and he was like a duck to water. His friend had driven loads round his families land as it was private land, he had about 7 lessons and passed.

I would get them to learn in a manual car, whilst more cars are now automatic it limits them. Do you think when they buy their first car they will be able to charge it easily? I doubt a young person will be able to charge an electric car with such ease if they end up in a flat or anywhere without a drive.

I’m now on my third electric car. Love them and the money we have saved on fuel as it costs around £12/month to run.
however both DCs have recently learned to drive. My insurance company wouldn’t insure them till 21 in an electric car - I don’t know if this is standard for all companies. But tbh the way you put the foot on the accelerator and it just goes, I wouldn’t have wanted them to drive it anyway (& still wouldn’t now that they have passed).
We were fortunate that we could afford to get them a little manual petrol car which they share and practised in that. Is that an option ?

This is all so useful thank you. I’m taking it all in but still confused!

The only reason to still learn in a manual is it is cheaper and easier to buy and insure ICE cars for new drivers still. The future is automatic, my DD has a manual licence and car, but all the work pool cars are automatic.

I have driven a EV for nearly 7 years (the same one) it is still fine. It only has a range of around 200 miles but has regularly done London to the south coast and longer journeys to the north. Charging is not an issue. The car was not cheap but the savings in running costs are huge.

We liked it so much we swapped the second car for an EV just over a year ago

As a parent with 2 DC that learnt to drive, never practiced in my car then left for uni I’d say buy the car that works for you.

This

Electric batteries won’t last. If you want it to last 10 years get the petrol.

I can’t see a plus point to you getting the electric one other than it’s good for the environment

The reason I’m not going EV, one of the things I learnt recently is they are much more likely to make you travel sick and I already get motion sickness.

Sorry didn't mean to quote you!

Think about the insurance. I believe that EV might be prohibitively expensive for teens to go on the insurance.
it’s ok while they are learning, it’s when they are new drivers that you get stung.
I have a 15 year old Nissan (petrol) and it’s thousands to put DD on it.

how many 10 year old Teslas do you see on the road?

The Model 3 only came to the UK six years ago. Before that, Teslas (Models S and X) were v expensive and fairly rare. It was the Model 3 that changed everything and went mainstream, because it was designed to be (relatively) affordable.

You see plenty of those first generation six year old Model 3s on the road. Mine is one of them and is like new, despite us driving it all over Europe, including all the way up to Norway and back. We won’t be replacing it for the foreseeable - absolutely no reason to. No discernible battery degradation and the technology is completely up to date. Never needs any maintenance.

Would I let my kids practise in it? No, because like a pp said, it goes like shit off a shovel.

I have a small automatic. Both my kids learnt in an automatic (I paid for all the lessons) and they practised regularly in my car. They both passed very quickly. In the future, if they want to learn a manual, that’s for them to pay for/ invest in. Is it really difficult to imagine some circumstances where a family may need an automatic fgs? Some people live in extremely hilly cities in the UK and manual is not a good fit for learning to drive. In your case OP get what you want but don’t have your children swapping between learning in a manual and practising in your automatic. It might be better to buy a tiny old banger manual £1/£2k, for them to practise with you alongside buying the ID3. You can insure it you as the main driver and just do Veygo for hourly learner insurance when you’re taking them out for driving practise.

Why wouldnt I be able to drive in certain situations, what situations would they be?

All cars will be auto soon. Most cars in America are auto.

This is the review for the ID3 and looks like the 5year old one isn't the one to buy.

This is Volkswagen's mainstream electric family hatch. First deliveries of the ID.3 only started in late 2020, but even so it was given an early facelift at the beginning of 2023. Which... it rather needed.
Why? Well, firstly because having arrived among the vanguard of hatches this size, it inevitably found itself surrounded by newer rivals stealing some of its thunder. And second, because the original ID.3 just wasn't quite Volkswagen enough. It didn't have the necessary feeling of interior quality. Plus, it was in many ways quirky or just plain irritating. The facelift was supposedly the fix.

https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/id3

I regularly drive eight hour journeys and so drive an ICE car, but will consider a Toyota hybrid. When I switch to only driving locally, then I'll go electric - probably something Chinese, Japanese or South Korean, as they are leading in battery technology.

We're currently looking for a small electric as a second car so I'm not averse to them I just wouldn't expect to keep it for ten years. Petrol cars I do the same as you buy 3-5 years old and drive for as long as it's economically viable to repair them which is usually at its limit by 9/10 years

i agree @soupyspoon. I haven’t driven a manual for years and can’t imagine any time where I’d need to. I say that as someone who travels a lot and rents cars all over the world.

And yet my EV is 9 years old and the battery is absolutely fine and many are at this age. Just like any petrol car you can get dud ones but they can now replace the individual cells so it's not always the case the whole battery would need changing.

OP I love my electric car and wouldn't change if for anything but I will caution you on electric for new drivers only because I could of insured DD while learning to drive but it would have been Very expensive. And I couldn't have got her insured on.my car once she passed as they just wouldn't insure her. Mainly because electric cars are very fast, I hope going forward that will change but just a heads up if your looking to let them drive it.

I might be stating the obvious here but a new battery won't cost you a fortune, you can google the warning lights you see and find out if any actually are "not safe" then book it into a local garage and get it fixed.

If you think it's genuinely it's "not safe" then you shouldn't be driving it at all.

I’ve just changed my diesel for a petrol hybrid. With an electric I’d be concerned about the battery life and long journeys whether the infrastructure can deal with them. We have changed to electric vehicles at work and it’s an hour for charging. The guys who have electric cars are on lease only don’t have the worry of the maintenance etc but they say that when they have the heating on in winter the charge drops.
I’d be worried about whether the thing was charged enough !

There's several countries I've been to where it wouldn't have been possible to hire an automatic. People on MN often seem surprised that there are countries that exist outside of North America and Western Europe... My teen has a manual license (and car) and is massively interested in exploring the world, so it would have been restrictive for him to have only got a manual license.

I drive an auto but travel all over the world with work using hire cars and they are mostly manual.

I also need to move some sofas this weekend and am borrowing a family friends van, happens to be a manual.

Last year I needed to drive my grandad's car back from a national trust walk after he fell and hurt his leg.

I know that's only 3 examples but I'm sure there are a lot more. I'd have been fairly useless in the above situations, not to mention I would not have the job I have so I think there's only positives to having a manual license

Back to say that I spent six months test driving EV and hybrid cars before I eventually bought my current ICE car.

https://www.whatcar.com/best/small-electric-suvs/n27422

Haven’t read the full thread but learning to drive is about 10% being able to change gears and 90% being able to get around safely IMO.
Your kids will be building up their road sense in your car and it won’t really matter that it is an automatic. Also as a PP said, automatics are the future. They are far more fuel efficient than humans.