To buy a petrol car

[Goldenbpineapple]

Buying a new car, we do not normally lease or pcp.
I can spend up to £40k but we will not be able to replace the car for at least 10 years, preferably longer.

Would i be stupid to buy a petrol car?

I think fully electric would be silly to buy outright as the range will be so much better in 4 or 5 years time, and an older electric battery will loose a lot of value.

Up to you of course but I wouldn’t spend 40k on a car. I purchased a 3 year old VW T-Roc last year for half that and planning on keeping it for years (my last car I got it to 19 years old)
Spend half your budget and invest the other half

As you want to keep it a decade or more I’d definitely stick to petrol. Too many concerns re longevity of batteries and plummeting future values. Only way to have an electric car is to lease it, if you can get it at a good price, madness otherwise

Yanbu. But yabvu to spend £40k on a car. Buy a banger. A reliable one.

I love my EV but it sounds like you might prefer a plug in hybrid - the new type called Range Extender Hybrid sound like a great option but there's not a lot of choice in that market just yet.

We spent around 20k on a 2 year old EV which has a range of 280 miles (only slightly affected by heating/air con).
Charging at home costs about £3-5 from 20-80%. The charger itself cost about 1k. Charging on the road much more expensive but still worked out cheaper than the petrol on my recent long journeys (driven all over the country doing uni open days)

With a decent range you only need to charge en route if you're driving more than 3-4 hours, in which case you're bound to want to stop for toilet/food so just charge then. On a fast charger it's going to be 30-40 mins. Almost every motorway services now has chargers and if you find one where they're full or out if order it's not far to the next one. You just have to be sensible and don't wait til it's really low to charge.

We drove all across Europe in ours and found there were even more chargers everywhere over there.

There's a lot of anti-EV nonsense out there (google EVs catching fire as an example) but most EV owners are really happy with them and the infrastructure is constantly improving.

I don't think I've spent £40k on all the cars I've owned in total. My current diesel I get 900+ miles out of a tank, plenty of time to find the cheapest place to refuel, 10 minutes max to fill and pay. Find me a EV less than £10k that will get me to Glasgow and back without needing to be charged and I might consider it. Electric is fine if you make regular short journeys so you can charge at home and somebody else is paying the capital cost of the car, I really don't want to be sat at a motorway services, in the middle of the night, waiting to get enough charge to get home, or to have to leave home early so I can recharge on the way.

Love my electric car. Wouldn't go back to petrol or diesel. A lot more reliable, cheaper to run, and charge mostly at home.

Only problem for me is the lack of options for servicing but am now finding more garages offer it.

Do what you like. You're not unreasonable to want a car that suits you.

I will always try to avoid ever getting an ev.

My daughter suffers the same in electric cars.

I am buying petrol cars for as long as I can. I am looking for one now, petrol, will look to change in 3 years or so, for petrol

How about considering a self-charging hybrid. My husband and I have both bought one of these and really like the fuel economy we get from them. I haveva Renault and he has a Kia.

Mild hybrids are different to self-charging hybrids and are not true hybrids.

What the US mean in "batteries US"? Is it simply that they were made in the USA? Are you saying that's why it couldn't be fixed/replaced? Sorry to sound dense.

I have a 2018 petrol Mercedes which I bought outright. I have no intention of replacing it in a hurry. Also I hate PCP and hire purchase and such ilks.
Dh has a fully electric KIA through his work, that will get changed after 4 years.

I've got a petrol car. I had a hybrid but the battery kept giving out, apparently I didn't do enough mileage. I'll keep petrol for as long as you can get the fuel. I think that you should be ok with your new car.

It depends on your lifestyle really doesn't it? An EV wouldn't be for me. I regularly have drives of 250-300 miles and couldn't be doing with having to stop and charge up. All of our company cars are now electric. I opted for the car payment but my colleagues who went for the car now have to get the train when travelling somewhere more than a couple of hours away.

I don't have a drive so couldn't charge at home and I've driven a few hybrids and didn't rate any of them. I like a petrol car.

Have you driven an EV at all? That’s the first thing you should do. I know at least two people who were sceptical but bought one as soon as they tried one with an open mind. Both were secondhand and they’ve had an excellent experience.

First thing you will notice is that they are quiet, smooth and accelerate very powerfully from standstill.

I think that’s the reason some people report feeling sick as a passenger in them, particularly if the driver is taking advantage of how amazing they are to drive.

£40k buys a lot of EV now that models are available for around £30k which easily do more than 250 miles on a charge. But I would consider a secondhand model to take advantage of the fact that all cars depreciate heavily as soon as they are driven out of the dealer car park - it’s a myth that it’s an EV issue.

It’s also a myth that EVs are more likely to catch fire than petrol or diesel cars. The Norwegians have excellent statistics on this and EVs are around 10 times less likely to suffer from a fire - the most dangerous are hybrids; the mixture of flammable fuel and electricity does not end well in a lot of cases.

I bought a secondhand Nissan Leaf in 2018 that is still going strong, but it’s only charged at home and does low mileage journeys. For longer journeys we own a Polestar 2 which easily does 300 miles, so we have managed 1,500 mile road trips with no issues to speak of.

I will never go back to the noise, smell, poor acceleration, unreliability and pollution of a petrol or diesel car.

I think that is most likely because your husband is taking advantage of how fast EVs can accelerate. I have driven 1,000s of miles in EVs and only once have passengers felt ill.

And that was on the exact same road where I was over-enthusiastically driving a new (petrol) car some 30 years ago and my passenger was actually sick.

EVs are fantastic to drive, and I will never go back to a petrol car - but you need to be aware that the superb driving dynamics need to be handled with sensitivity if you have passengers.

Do you not stop to have a break?

250-300 miles is around four hours of driving even if you can sustain the legal limit, which is well over the time you should be driving without a stop.

I am overjoyed with never having to stand next to my car waiting for it to fill with fuel, and never having to drive to a separate location to do so. We park, plug-in and go do something else.

I will never go back to a petrol car

I stop for as long as it takes me to go and use the toilet and grab a bottle of water. If I don't need to go to the toilet I don't stop. I don't wish to add big chunks of time onto an already long drive. I drive quite a bit and I'm quite au fait with recognising when I need to stop. There's no rule on how long you can drive without a break either. But even commercial HGV drivers can drive 4 hours.

It takes me about 90 seconds to refuel my car. It'd take me longer to go and park up, connect a charger and set up payment.

I posted this separately, but we have driven 1,000s of miles in EVs (Tesla, Polestar 2) and a lot less miles, but for more years, in a Nissan Leaf, and only once had someone feel sick in one. And that extends to the other 6 people who own EVs that I know.

That one time was on a twisty road in the Lake District where I had a passenger actually be sick, because I was driving too quickly.

EVs have incredible acceleration from standstill, and it’s easy to abuse that if you’re not careful. But it’s also an absolute joy.

but you need to be aware that the superb driving dynamics

Why do pretty much all motoring journalists say that, despite the rapid acceleration, EVs are essentially sluggish, dull and not much fun to drive. They weigh 2+ tons after all and go round corners often like a bag of sugar…

Ever driven a Civic type R?

It doesn’t take 90 seconds to fill a car with fuel, and the fact you claim it does undermines everything you write.

Maybe you stand by the pump for 90 seconds (although I’m sceptical), but driving to and parking by the pump, getting out, putting the nozzle in and out, walking to pay, probably queuing, walking back and getting back en route takes you at least 10 minutes or I haven’t been driving for over 40 years.

The peace, quiet, smooth acceleration and “eating up the miles” quality of an EV is why I will never go back. I haven’t missed filling a car with fuel - I’m not alone in finding petrol stations some of the most depressing places on Earth.

Its never in all my life taken 10 minutes to fuel my car. I pay at the pump or it just charges me through proximity if I go to a shell garage.

But granted, it may well take me an additional 30 seconds to pull up to the pump, get out and unscrew the filler cap. I drive past petrol stations multiple times daily so there's no getting back en route involved.

I find EVs dull as fuck to drive. But even worse is the weird as fuck evangelical shite you're posting. Its great that you like them and that you can avoid the apparent hell on earth of a petrol station in favour of our glorious motorway service stations.

I am not a “motoring journalist”, but I have driven many different cars in the mountains of Scotland, Wales and France. I don’t race, or even attempt to drive particularly quickly, so I’m not interested in that.

What I value is a car that confidently handles twisty narrow roads and gives me the sense that it won’t end up in a ditch or against a tree, and the EV I currently own does that in a way that pleases me.

But I made the same mistake on the same road that caused my passenger to be sick in my petrol car some 30 years ago, and at least one passenger felt ill. I don’t think it’s an EV issue but a “new EV driver” one.