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

Really never hurd that one, both DH and DD get travel sick.and have never found our electric car any different to our ICE car.

It'll be too much to readjust. When you e got years of experience it'll not matter as much.

Both our cars are automatic, one is electric and one a diesel estate. But we insisted on manual lessons for DS1 (and later DS2). It would be very confusing for him to be practicing in both manual and automatic so we bought him a manual car, small for the insurance. It's about 12 years old but the mileage is low. If we all had to share one car I would go with a manual run around with one careful owner, maybe older but low mileage. Then save for a newer electric car in a year or two.

Research has been done on this, and apparently the EV motion sickness that some people experience is caused by how silent it is as they expect noise and movement together. I believe the solution is to make new EVs a bit noiser.

The car is quite yes but you still get road noise, so that is also odd.

@MigGirlyes, it’s recognised as an issue. This article gives a good description of the possible causes/potential solutions.

EVs and car motion sickness

I’m no expert on electric cars, but the batteries generally have a 10 year guarantee, the car you looked at is three years old so good for another 7, electric cars obviously do improve all the time id3 is Volkswagen so it’s generally a pretty reliable make, I wouldn’t be put off buying it. As to learning to drive, as others have said the vast majority of cars will be automatic anyway before too many years have passed but I’d stick to letting them learn with the instructor rather than confusing them

Honestly if you have kids learning to drive and they go straight to automatic it’ll probably be a relief - it was for me 😆 less to faff with mentally
im a hybrid auto fan though.

I’m also team EV. I have had one for nearly three years and would never go back. But to reiterate what pp have said, you may want to find out the situation with insurance by going onto confused.com or similar and putting some different scenarios in, e.g. yourself and a newly passed driver. I think you might struggle to get insurance on an electric car for a young, new driver…or at least be shocked at the price. I couldn’t insure my DS on my car for the first couple of years. Now he’s 21 I can, but at a hefty price.

@TheCurious0rangevery few electric cars have leased batteries.

I have an electric car. I’ve had it for 5 years and I love it. It’s saved me a packet in fuel.

10 years ago, I would have felt exactly the same; but you have to look which way the wind is blowing and think what life will be like for younger generations and not necessarily for ours.

I wouldn't have dreamed of restricting myself to an auto-only licence (and I was physically, cognitively and neurotypically privileged enough that it was a free choice for me) when I learned... but that was 30 years ago.

Just as I have no intention of bothering to teach my DS how to change a typewriter ribbon or how to get a camera film processed once you've taken 24/36 photos, I realise that the near future of motoring is going to be almost exclusively auto.

There was a news article the other week saying that 26% of new driving tests now are for auto licences, whereas it was something like 6% only a decade ago.

I'm not a fan of electric cars and would prefer to drive an ICE car for as long as practically possible; but on the auto vs manual front, I think manual vehicles - even vans - are going to be in a minority before very long.

Actually, I think that, before long, the idea of an individual person actually driving the car will seem quaint and old-fashioned. Never mind the question about manual vs auto driving licences; driving licences themselves will probably be virtually obsolete save in a few specific professions. The automatic cars of the not-too-far-off future won't just not need a gear stick; they also won't need a meatbag to control them!!

One thing I'd humbly suggest about EVs before then, though, is not to be too optimistic about the cost advantages remaining as they are indefinitely. They've already started to remove the zero-VED charges from EVs, now that they're getting so widespread and are no longer seen as a pioneering choice, and I could well see electricity charges being hiked massively once there's no alternative and the grid supply and infrastructure has to increase massively to accommodate millions more of them being charged every night.

Love a hybrid- best of both worlds

Would you not buy a hybrid @CARCARCARCARCARCAR ?

All this “the infrastructure isn’t there and you can’t do long journeys in an EV” is absolute rubbish. I live in South Yorkshire, DS2 lives in Norfolk. I can get to his house on less than one charge in my EV. There’s plenty of places to charge it on the way if I should need to. When we’re there we use the Tesla garage just down the road from his house, because it’s the cheapest, but there’s charges here there and everywhere in supermarkets, fast food restaurant car parks, council car parks and filling stations. More and more chargers are popping up all the time.

Both my kids learnt in manual cars, we all did, yet none of us drive a manual car. When we go on holiday we specifically request an automatic hire car too. Last time we didn’t, they asked DH if he could drive an automatic and gave us a hybrid.

I drove manual for 20 years, last year bought automatic. I can no longer drive manual despite my driving licence is for both. DH is annoyed cos I can no longer drive his. Probably it’s me, but I m now confused when my feet are presented with 3 pedals but not two.

They are out of my price league unfortunately

Ask the garage how much to fix the existing car

Have your existing car serviced

Bought a new car earlier this year. We considered electric but where we live and travel to on holiday regularly just does not have the infrastructure to support this. The thought of being stranded with no charge fills me with dread. We went down the self charging hybrid route. Don't regret it.

We have a nine year old electric car that still has 9/10 battery health. Many people who don’t drive an EV have a pessimistic view of how long batteries last!

If you want an EV, as long as the mileage range meets your lifestyle and you can charge at home, there are few downsides.

As with any car check the insurance group before you buy!

Oh, that's a nightmare. I am very fortunate to have an engineer for a husband, so he knows if they're talking BS, but if you're not technically-minded, you don't know who to believe.

Some jobs still ask for a manual driving licence. Even if I didn't drive a manual after I passed I wouldn't want to limit myself.

We have automatics but bought a manual for the DC to learn to drive and then keep. This gives them the choice of what they want in future and EVs are as good as impossible to insure for them at a young age.

DH was like that when we test drove a car. We kangarood off down the road much to my amusement whereas I surprised myself and drove it as though I'd been driving for years. It made me realise how much I miss driving a manual.

The vast majority of cars these days are automatic (including rentals) and that proportion will only increase. Soon the only manuals will be elderly ICE cars. So I don't think auto vs manual is a useful debate (I say that as someone who has mostly owned and prefers manuals). But EV vs ICE is important. It seems that battery degradation isn't as drastic as assumed it would be. Plenty of older EVs still have 80-90% of their capacity. And the charging network is getting back every year so occasional longer journeys are not a problem. In the OP's shoes I'd be looking at leasing a small new EV like the Renault 5 on 0% finance. Then switching to a newer EV in a couple of years since the technology is moving so quickly.