Electric or Hybrid or fossil fuel? Too much choice!

[Cheapfluffyrug]

We are looking for a new ( to us) car under 4 years old. We have around 30K to spend.
We will have 1-3 adults in the car mostly, sometimes 4 and rarely 5, but mostly it'll be me driving our dogs around, so we need a decent boot.
We live in London, so it needs to be ULEZ compliant and mostly do short journeys, but somehow drive around 10K a year. We will do a longer journey, 4-6 hours, maybe 6 times a year.
We have our own driveway and can have a charger fitted.
If you have similar requirements, what do you drive?
Also, If you've gone electric, do you regret it?

How long do you ideally intend to keep the car?

If its more like 8-10 years rather than 2-3 years I think I'd stick with Hybrid or Petrol rather than full electric due to battery degredation, cost of replacing a battery, loss of range over long term ownership.

I make 6-10 600 mile round trips a year at the.moment and and i also considered that the infrastructure and long term range on full electric isn't quite there yet to consider fully electric for our main car. When I come to change in 4 or 5 years I'll review this again.

Are you interested in prestige marques with that budget or a workhorse? And how big are the dogs?

Maybe consider a hybrid Toyota, Kia Niro or for a tardis like boot a hybrid skoda octavia. With that amount you could also look at bmw 3 series touring and volvo v60 estate as well.

Both of our cars are fully electric. Mine is 3 years old and my husband’s is 2 years old. I don’t regret it and would never go back.

Having a charger at home is essential imo and I would never have one if I couldn’t.

I think the infrastructure is improving all the time and more and more larger charging stations with many fast chargers and a coffee shop are springing up and they’re the best places to go to.

You just need to plan your long journeys in advance and know where you’re going to charge. Where are you journeys to and from?

With only 6 long journeys a year I would say fully electric would work well for you (but I do agree that if you want to keep it for years and years there could be battery degradation issues). Obviously going for a car with a longer range is going to make those journeys less of a pain - eg only charging once in a trip rather than twice.

It seems like you could get say a BMW iX3 for your budget which was only 1-2 years old.

Personally I wouldn’t get a hybrid as I think the electric range is too short to bother with. With a hybrid just for going around town on electric you would need to charge it every single day just to get about 25 miles out of it and you still need to go to petrol stations sometimes.

With fully electric if you’re just driving around locally you can just charge once or twice a week and never have to go to a petrol station again!

We’re both fully electric too & wouldn’t go back. Home charger is essential (as well as v convenient & v cheap if you get a special EV tariff) & long journeys need a bit more planning but as long as you’ve got a good battery capacity for your needs it should be fine.