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.

Oh wow. Me and my daughters get sick in the EV car too. I thought it was just us.

Pay per mile was always coming in eventually.

Given that even when it does come in you will still be paying way more on your fuel compared to 3p on the mile for an EV, it's a slightly daft reason not to go electric however.

Our main family car has been electric for 7 years now. The original car did my DH daily commute for 5 years and saved a fortune compared to his previous diesel car. It has also done long trips without issue out DC went to uni at the other end of the country.

We still have the original car, I drive it now, mostly as a run around but I also regularly do 70 to 90 mile round trips. In winter the range is only around 160 miles on an 80% charge but that is fine for me. I love the smooth ride, the easy driving and the acceleration.

We liked the first car so much we bought another one. This one easily does 300 miles on a charge.

I’d never go back to a petrol car.

Why does no-one address the ethical issue of cobalt mining, child labour and the environmental damage due to nickel and lithium extraction. It's truly staggering that electric car drivers think they are doing their bit for the environment but are complicit in child abuse and the active damage to the environment they are purporting to preserve

Plus, the damage electric cars are doing to the roads. It's mind boggling

No, I don’t think he’s necessarily lying to you at all, particularly if he admits that he should have planned things better, but even with that I’m still sceptical (unless he literally only had enough charge to get to Tesla at Heathrow). Does he live right next to the terminal? There are other rapid chargers very nearby.

But if I was trying to convince people not to go with an EV, having a story about someone with a Tesla being so badly impacted feels like it might be more cogent than just slagging them off as others have been here.

And neutral lurkers can disbelieve me too
when I say I have driven EVs for 8 years now, and never had any of the problems that seem to afflict others. I have just taken it easy and learned it takes a different approach to journeys so have become very relaxed about how to manage them. I don’t miss having to stand at a fuel pump. I will never go back.

They need to invent one where you can remove a small battery, replace it with a spare, and charge just the battery by itself at the mains in your house. That’s the only way it’s really going to replace petrol properly

if it helps I get very very motion sick in everything. Even a short ride up 2 floors in an elevator has me heaving. DH bought an electric car and I felt very sick in it for the first few months, but I have now got used to it. I found it too smooth, I wanted to feel the bumps! but now I find it ok and don't notice unless he does sudden acceleration. I don't notice it at all if I am driving. We have however, nearly had several of DD's friends go VERY green in the back of it and had some close calls! DD isn't a huge fan and on long journeys will close her eyes and listen to things rather than look out of the window.

Do you know that cobalt is used in petrol refining (to remove sulphur), and that there is zero cobalt in Lithium-iron-phosphate EV batteries (like those used in standard range Tesla Model 3, and other new models).

Also, that CATL are launching Sodium-ion batteries, which will likely take huge segments of the market, since they are essentially made with salt and aluminium.

I trust that you were equally active on social media pointing out that fossil fuel extraction has led to countless wars, death and pollution, and that fossil fuel vehicles have become streadily bigger and heavier long before EVs even appeared. Do you think a Nissan Leaf is heavier than a Range Rover?

I hate being a passenger in my husband's Tesla for the same reason. I don't mind driving it though. Maybe he's just a really bad driver!

Same! I get so incredibly car sick in electric cars. Turning off assisted braking helps a bit but it’s still isn’t great at all.

I do hope you’ve forsaken the use of mobile phones, whose manufacturing involves much of the above. Seems that argument about mining, child labour etc only ever gets waved at EVs.

I would still buy a petrol car, the battery replacements on electric cars are an astronomical cost, I can’t imagine it being in great condition in 10 years time! Side note, I’d not get a diesel car as suggested by another poster if you don’t do a descent amount of mileage per journey, my parents car which only gets driven maybe 5 miles a day has had lots of issues with the DPF, and has cost ££££ to repair.

I've had a fully electric Kia niro for 5 years nearly. I home charge, love that I don't have to stop at a petrol station now, and haven't noticed a drop in range. Or not one that I can't attribute to not bothering to be careful any more anyway.

Range wise at this point, I'd expect a good 250 miles from a charge I think realistically. The longest drive I do regularly is London area to Manchester and I can't get there and back in one go. But I either charge during the weekend there (supermarket, car parks) or else take a break on the way home. I'm indecisive so by the time I've wandered round the service station deciding what I want to drink or eat, gone to the loo etc, I've probably wasted near on half an hour and have plenty to get me home.

I'm not sure as I haven't needed to do it, how long a full charge on a service station charger would be. But they seem to go very fast.

Kia did a battery guarantee, and I believe the battery can be replaced. So I think it's all good! No regrets for me.

That model works brilliantly for two-wheelers in much of the world - Lime bikes have small removable batteries.

But an EV battery weighs a LOT more, so battery swapping is a thing (in China and for HGVs in Australia), but it needs a whole separate infrastructure. Whether that will win out over permanent batteries is one that only the future will tell us.

I doubt a modern EV battery will ever need replacing. They have very long warranties, and the manufacturers only give those on the assumption that very few people will claim on them. Simple maths on their capacities and known lifecycle suggest that 200-500k miles will be fine, and there are already EVs on the road that have done 1 million miles. They are not like mobile phone batteries, because they have far more sophisticated thermal and charging management systems.

Your point about diesel is well made though. I bought a diesel 16 years ago thinking it would be as solid a car as the petrol one that (ultimately) survived for 18 years. The diesel managed barely 10 because it wasn’t being driven enough.

Nice.

me, my family and at least 6 others I know that have bought (secondhand) EVs and love them are all mugs.

Funny that last I checked all of them a) are intelligent humans and b) are not mugs 😀

Why do you think so many car companies are reversing their plans to go full EV?

There is not enough infrastructure for EVs to stop sales of petrol cars by 2030. I doubt it will even happen by 2035.

I still feel like EV have a way to go. It’s a bit like buying an iPhone 4, they were good but needed placing in 2 years, whereas by the time I got to an iPhone 11 it lasted me 5.

I bought a diesel for cash 6 years ago and intend to keep it 10-12 total. Similar then I figured EV had too far to go technologically and I was glad I was right then.

With a low mileage you’re going to hold its value too. Have you looked at ex demo cars 6 months old the dealerships often have those with all the extras included like heated seats. This time of year is good as 6 months since September release.

They are not “reversing their plans”. That is a myth. They are realising that the competition they are up against with EVs is way more serious than they first imagined.

So some of them (Renault, BMW, Volvo/Polestar) are ahead of the game, whereas other brands are further behind, and they are desperately trying to persuade people that plug-in hybrids are “better”, to buy them time.

Ford, for example, is investing in entirely new manufacturing technology to better replicate how the Chinese can produce cheaper EVs - Jim Farley, the Ford CEO, has been in China a lot and has been personally driving a Xiomi EV to understand why they are so much better.

I suspect people who sold horses thought that the Model T was for mugs too.

I owned a petrol hybrid until last year, was 9 years old and the battery started intermittently failing, which also caused the petrol engine to cut out and you couldn’t turn back on without fiddling around with it. Needed new battery - 10k + so we scrapped it!! Absolute waste of money!
Have also owned a fully electric Nissan for 4 years which then the battery started to depreciate so we got rid of it. Nissan wouldn’t even take it back to sell as a used car, and it was only 4 years old!!
Now have a fully electric car on lease - don’t mind about the battery depreciation as it’ll be going back in 3 years.
I would NEVER buy an electric or hybrid outright again as we were bitten twice.

I think that you are right that outside London there just isn’t enough cheap public charging for people who don’t have the ability to charge at home. But that is changing fast - the progress in just 3 years has been astonishing.

In London, lamppost charging is a game changer for those like us that do not have a driveway. When we’re just doing local journeys a single overnight charge lasts weeks, so one lamppost can serve many EVs.

On longer trips we have found no issues with the rapid charging network, and I believe that is being expanded ahead of demand. I expect there will be some consolidation, but we used a brand new Tesla public charging site the other day with 20 chargers, and it was busy but not full.

So halting the sale of pure petrol/diesel vehicles by 2030 and allowing plug-in hybrids until 2035 feels very doable to me.

For me it is the charging. Everyone needs to power their cars either by electric or petrol.

No matter which way you look at it someone one the charging point infront of you will take 30-40 mins. Someone at the petrol pump in front of you will take three minutes.

Now times that by 2 people in front of you, or three....

Inagine pulling up at a petrol pump and waiting nearly an hour before you can pop you petrol cap open.

Not for me.

I love my EV, bought second hand and at 6 years old the battery is fine. If you want a petrol car get one… but don’t be put off EVs by some of the nonsense you see spouted about them (including on this thread).

That feels like you are wishing that EV charging works the same as petrol, so you can decide it’s “not for you”, when the truth is very different.

A petrol station has a limited number of pumps, typically 4-10, since fuelling a car takes just a few minutes and people sometimes have to wait in line for the car in front to finish before they can use the pump.

But EV charging hubs can have dozens of chargers - the big ones have 48 or more, and some locations have more than one set of chargers from different networks.

It’s true that an EV might sit charging for 10-30 minutes while their owner is taking a break, grabbing a coffee and visiting the loo etc. but in 8 years of diving an EV I have never had to queue. At all. Only once have I found all the chargers of one network busy and have had to use the ones from a different network immediately opposite, but that was a personal choice. Had I waited, a charger came free in the time it took me to plug in.

Granted, I have taken the time to learn how best to make long journeys, but that’s no different from learning how to manage a petrol car. As long as you want to squeeze EVs into your mental model as “not petrol, and I’m used to petrol” they will not be for you. And that’s fine. I’m not going back.