Has anyone here recently done lots of research into buying an electric car, given up and bought a petrol one instead?

If so, what were your reasons? And what did you buy instead?

Yes.

1) cost.
2) range.
3) availability of changing stations.

We recently bought a new car to replace two. I really wanted to go EV or at least hybrid, but(1) even a ‘mild hybrid’ adds thousands to the purchase cost. Pound-for-pound if we wanted a fully electric I was looking at something the size of an Up! only from a marque I’d never heard of.

On the face of it we do a lot of short trips so electric is ideal. I work from home (and don’t drive from the bedroom to the office across the landing), my partner’s workplace is a 15-minute drive away. But then, we went to Cornwall for holiday last summer, the journey was like eight hours down and ten back including comfort breaks. Even though that’s a fringe case it renders something with a 200 mile range not fit for purpose(2), we’d be better off with daily taxis and hire cars for longer distances.

Getting to Cornwall I was running on fumes, figured I’d fill up when I got there rather than paying motorway tax. Except… it seems that there’s like three petrol stations in the entire county, I was beyond vapour and powered by thoughts and prayers by the time I found one. What are my chances of(3) finding a power point? Plus, I don’t have a driveway so a home charging point is a non-starter, I’d have to park at Tesco. Which is inconvenient but not a massively long distance away, it’s like a five minute walk, but hands up who’d want to park on a supermarket car park every night from a security perspective.

I think hybrid / EV is the future, but the prices need to come down and the infrastructure needs to be more widespread before it’s for me.

it seems that there’s like three petrol stations in the entire county

Seems that way but supermarkets a short drive off the A30 or A38 are your solution here. Use them like service stations.

Yes for reasons 1 & 3 from above. Range wouldn’t have been an issue, I was looking at long range EVs as I tend to do longer trips for work.

What tipped it for me is that I’d have to do about 15-18k work miles a year for it to make sense financially, currently I do around 10k (this was just prior to petrol prices going mental though). The other major issue was access to charging. Quite a few people at work have non-tesla EVs and frequently they get to a charge point only to find it full and they then have to wait 20-30mins before they can even start.

Ended up ordering a Dacia Jogger on a 4 year deal. We need a decent size car, family, bikes etc so a small EV wasn’t even in the equation. I think once that has finished the EV market will have calmed down somewhat and the next car will be electric.

Yes, because I live in a street with no drive and no charge points. And I don’t drive that often but when I do they are motorway runs of 1.5 hours minimum. Final point is the second hand market isn’t established yet and new is too expensive for me, I bought a 69 plate Honda Civic sport which I’m really pleased with and am getting 52mpg

Yep, although I’m pretty confident this will be our last ICE car, prices need to come down. The electric version of the Mini we bought added £10-£15 grand on top depending on spec and range/power, Like Cougar we’re ideal candidates for electric, in the two years we’ve got the mini we’ve done less than 10K miles, but long distance trips to Scotland and deepest Wakes occasionally, I’m sure it’d get there, but honestly I don’t really want the extra hassle of having to negotiate charging stops. Given the price of electric now, I’m not certain it’d be a more cost effect choice.

It’ll come around, I’m certain.

Went for diesel E class Merc

I used to have a hybrid and saw the positives and negatives of electric

I needed a car to do longish distance journeys comfortably without any hassle

1. Electric pricing
2. Electric availability (the cars and infrastructure)
3. Electric isn’t so green and would prefer to wait for better technologies
4. Electric are rubbish when you put bike racks on etc and do motorway driving
5. EV’s don’t like hills and areas without charging infrastructure

I’ve been thinking for a while that our golf estate would be the last ice car we had. It’s coming up to 10 so been looking around. Mild hybrid is pointless as it’s essential just a sticker (in the vehicles I’ve looked at). Barely anything runs off the heavier battery.

Pure ev there is nothing that would do the long trips the golf is currently used for as well. Plugin hybrid on paper sounded good but it’s a lot more cost of the vehicle, your forced to auto boxes and as we also have a Zoe that does 95% of our town driving completely pointless. That basically leaves ICE via process of elimination.

At the moment I’m stuck between sticking with the golf (only done 44k) or ordering a new petrol that will last 5-10 years until the market settles and we are onto third generation ev designs.

I’ve considered it but the main sticking points for me are:
1) Drive over 20k miles a year often on long journeys ,so charging infrastructure would need to be better
2) I drive my car for work to multiple locations , and can’t guarantee access to charging where I’ll be travelling.
3) I have no driveway and am often unable to park anywhere near my house ruling out home charging.
4) High cost for anything that I actually like.

After a succession of diesel cars , I bought a petrol Mazda 3 with the Skyactiv X petrol engine and its been great.

No, we have an EV as the primary (and only) vehicle, but this was only possible because we moved house. If we had stayed in town at the apartment, we would have been forced to keep the Petrol/ethanol Passat.

I still think about buying a second car for when my girlfriend is commuting in and I am WFH, but it is not really necessary and will undermine the whole thing about only have an EV.

Thank you for all your replies – interesting reading and good to hear I’m not the only one.

At first sight I’d seem to be an ideal EV candidate – c.18,000 miles per year household split between two cars, living 20 miles from the nearest motorways, working 80% from home and have offroad parking to make charging setup straight forward.
We could sell our ageing diesel, replace with a small-ish EV. Keep the newer, large diesel for long journeys, large loads etc and use the EV by default for most journeys day-to-day.

The most either me or my wife have spent on a car has been ~£17,000 for a 3-year old large premium brand diesel car that we expected to last us at least 8 years.
But EV entry seems to be ~£30,000 either as a new / very nearly new small car or equivalent for leasing approach. And the obsolescence on those feels like a lot less than 8 years at the moment.
After a couple of test drives, a lot of soul-seaching and maths, I grudgingly convinced myself that a work lease scheme was worth doing, only to find that the only cars with a lead time of less than 6 months was Peugeot’s e-208 and e-2008. Might yet go for one of those but for now I’m going to try to eek another year out of my older car – buy it the pair of new tyres it’s going to need, perhaps some brake pads etc.

Six months ago I was looking for a “new” second hand car.

I looked at electric, but for the £10k max that I could spend, you get a ten year old Nissan Leaf which when new had a theoretical max range of 130 miles. Now, in winter with a hilly journey it’s probably less than 80.

I can’t change at home, can’t charge at work, nearest charge point to me is six miles away. So every other evening I’d be driving to a car park six miles away to sit in the car and charge for three hours. In a Scottish winter.

I love the idea of an EV but the reality is I’ll be burning dinosaur juice for a while yet.

I got some overdue repairs done and am now keeping the petrol runabout, vs selling it and trying to find an electric. Does that count?

Has anyone here recently done lots of research into buying an electric car, given up and bought a petrol one instead?

If so, what were your reasons? And what did you buy instead?

Sort of, it was just before Covid so a little while ago.
We had a Petrol C class estate (2011) which we had bought for £23k in 2012. A Demonstrator with 6k on the clock. Loved it and did a fair amount of miles with work. Wanted to renew in 2021 (165k by then) but still doing a few miles with work and felt Electric cars didn’t have the range for me then, or if they did they were hugely expensive. I had a Leaf on a 7 day test drive and loved it but it just wasnt for us then and Mrs Surfer used it for work for a couple of days and had range anxiety despite her round trip being only about 60 miles door to door. Some anxiety unnecessary but some warranted given the Nissan claims versus the tumbling range when using a heater, wipers and lights etc. From full charge (older model) she only had around 25 miles left after the round trip.
Some time after we replaced one of our cars (we each had our own) with a camper van and I was able to use public transport for almost all of my commuting so the van was only used occasionally (T6) we then replaced the C class with another C Class estate (also around £23k with part ex, We like the estate for the dogs) it’s a 1.5 petrol so more economical than the earlier one and the trip computer (I know this is not the most accurate measure) shows 50 mpg+ on a run so reasonably economical.
I am a fan of electric keen to have one and having the van for longer trips means one of the newer (circa 200 mile range) models would be fine for us. We have a driveway so charging would be fine also. Recently the Merc dealership called to make us an offer on our car. The offer was pretty much what we paid for it so I was tempted and thought this would give us the opportunity to change but after doing the numbers (based on the MG5 estate) the payback over 5 years is trivial so I need to rework the numbers to make sure. At the moment I am undecided.

the payback over 5 years is trivial so I need to rework the numbers to make sure

Even with the tax breaks via a company-car scheme I don’t save very much on my Model 3. But it’s much more pleasant to drive than the Volvo V90 it replaced. Instant go from standstill, being able to defrost it from inside the house in the winter, entertainment in traffic jams, minimal servicing, autopilot, and crucially none of the poisonous diesely (or petrolly) fumes when it’s cold.

My dad has the MG EV estate and likes it. Charged from solar over the course of a week between trips usually. Made it from Devon to North Yorkshire without difficulty and a stop to charge on the way.

I bought a knackered all electric Leaf. 10 years old means the theoretical range of 130 miles actually is about 30-35 miles – told you it was knackered. Mechanically it is absolutely fine but the range is rubbish for anything other than the local supermarket and up and down tot he train station when I have to go to London. Fortunately this is exactly what I use it for. I dislike many things about the car but as a 2nd car pickup up for about £3,000 it is fine – as exciting as a microwave oven but also about as useful. I would only do this with a charge point at home or on the street right outside.

With the very frequent but annoyingly short drives dealt with electrically I have ICE cars for enjoyment and longer journeys. I plan to sell my current ‘nice’ cars to buy a very nice car in the next 18 months with the hope that the resale will increase when the 2030 ban comes in and people want big comfortable cars with a range worth bothering with and realise in electric this means around the £80,000-£100,000 mark

hands up who’d want to park on a supermarket car park every night from a security perspective.

You wouldn’t need to do it every night. Possibly just once a week depending on miles.

Also, if you have a terraced house and you can park outside, you are allowed to trail a cable from your house I think if you put a trip strip on the floor, so you could plug the granny charger into a 13A. Not sure how you’d prevent the granny charger being pinched mind. Maybe you could get one with a long enough car-side cable to exit the house via some kind of appropriate arrangement, I dunno. There’s a lot written about this problem though, there are apparently schemes and products to help with it.

What are my chances of(3) finding a power point?

It can take planning. Just posted a real world scenario with a trip breakdown on the other thread here.

1. Electric pricing
2. Electric availability (the cars and infrastructure)
3. Electric isn’t so green and would prefer to wait for better technologies
4. Electric are rubbish when you put bike racks on etc and do motorway driving
5. EV’s don’t like hills and areas without charging infrastructure

1. Agree (assuming you mean the price of cars), we only have one because we had a very cheap deal from the beforetimes
2. Ish
3. Disagree
4. Agree
5. Disagree about the hills – driving hilly routes in mine doesn’t make much difference to the range.

Mild hybrid is pointless as it’s essential just a sticker (in the vehicles I’ve looked at). Barely anything runs off the heavier battery.

Depends what you mean by mild. To me that means things like the Mercedes 48V system which is just a small power boost, no drive belts in the engine, the ability to run the a/c when stopped, and the ability to shut the engine off whilst decelerating. Prius-like systems are smaller but still high voltage batteries, these do give a significant fuel economy boost. Then the plug-in ones give you the ability to do short 15 or so mile trips on electric power only and I think they can be pretty good despite what some people say.

driving hilly routes in mine doesn’t make much difference to the range.

The wonders of regen.

You’re not simply burning extra juice to go up, followed by heating up the brake discs on the way down.

I had a Peugeot 508 hybrid recently. Could do a whole 25 miles on battery only, which was good for food shopping/nipping local.

It was such a pain to try and tie charging in with supermarkets etc. You’d go there and the chargers wouldn’t work.

Obviously I had the engine to run off since I couldn’t charge.

I traded it in for a BMW 640D

I don’t feel like the country is ready for so many leccy cars, the infrastructure isn’t there and is it likely to ever be?

The Mercedes 48V system

Mine uses this in econ mode (which has to be reset each time you start it which is frustrating) but it cuts out when you are rolling to a give way and restarts which can be a bit jerky. Not sure about the restart systems as concerend over time they can cause wear, happy to be told I am wrong. Whe I set it in econ and leave the start stop on I do notice better economy.

Indeed – we drove from Cardiff to Aberystwyth at Easter, which is pretty up and down once you leave the motorway, and we got 4.8 miles/kWh with four people and luggage in the car, which surprised me. That’s what I’d expect on the motorway at 70 at best, so apparently the extra wind resistance of higher speeds is worse than the effect of hills.

the infrastructure isn’t there and is it likely to ever be?

Yes, read the press, there is a lot of effort going into this. Of course it’d be better if the government got its shit together, but it will be forced to soon enough.

Biggest issue for me is the infrastructure just isn’t there yet. Especially on the motorway services.
Just got back from Edinburgh, charging twice. Having 2 chargers per motorway service just isn’t good enough as a few people were waiting to charge.
(gretna green has 6 chargers which is good).
It could easily be sorted by getting all petrol stations across the country to install at least one charger.

Having 2 chargers per motorway service just isn’t good enough as a few people were waiting to charge.

The Tesla chargers being opened up to other cars is a huge plus, it’s probably tripled the available chargers.

@molgrips have Tesla opened all of the site to non Tesla owners?
Last I read they were running a pilot scheme at a few selected sites.
Would be a massive boost to the ev market if they were all open.

bought a second car for the household 6 months ago. Could have used anything with 4 seats, some ability to carry a bike and more than 50 miles range, as the main car (diesel) was going to do all the long journeys.

Couldn’t find anything remotely interesting in the EV market that has 4 seats, so bought a gt86 instead. There’s plenty of time for driving EVs in the future so I’m not in a big rush, and for the ~3,000 miles a year the second car does, fuel costs are fairly irrelevent. I just didn’t see the need for two dull cars in the household

I’ve looked at leasing (through work) and buying new or use EVs.

It’s primarily 1, cost that’s killing the idea for us. We don’t need huge range, I’d probably keep the current dirty diesel for longer runs. But the upfront costs are pretty damaging to the EV market now.

The desirability that Tesla managed to stir up has now worked against EVs, because now every manufacturer is slapping a premium on their EV offerings.

Hybrid to 640D? Damn, that’s a big change. In terms of overall fuel economy figures, how has the recent fuel increase hit you? I know that one of our recent trips up north would have cost us a minimum of two tanks of ethanol at about 20kr a litre compared to two fast hits of about 300kr a piece and two overnight trickle charges for a week’s trip.

That alone made the trip slower, but cheaper.

@molgrips have Tesla opened all of the site to non Tesla owners?
Last I read they were running a pilot scheme at a few selected sites.

It’s a pilot, but there some useful sites.

That said, I just looked again and it seems many of them are not on the motorways:

https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/tesla-opens-its-supercharger-network-to-other-car-brands-a0hnQ0w9vgAB

The desirability that Tesla managed to stir up has now worked against EVs, because now every manufacturer is slapping a premium on their EV offerings.

I think that it’s because there is more profit margin in a more premium car. It’s easier to stick £10k of batteries in a £50k car than it is a £15k car. And you can make a car into a premium one fairly cheaply by adding a load of gadgets and some sound insulation.

Cost will be the problem for us when the lease car goes back. We want a tow car, so we’d have to pony up for £45ks worth of Hyundai which is just too much (haha just noticed the pun).

The new MG might be of interest – starts at £26k for the 218 mile range model, £28,500 for the long range 281 mile model

https://www.mg.co.uk/new-cars/mg4-ev

@molgrips have Tesla opened all of the site to non Tesla owners?

Not yet

But living in rural ish Scotland and travelling up and down to the NE / NW of England as well as all over Scotland, I’m not convinced by the argument that the infrastructure isn’t there yet. I’d say it was just keeping pace with the numbers of cars. I’ve certainly not had any real issues with the availability of chargers.

And charging speed is more relevant than range (beyond about 150 miles) anyway.

If so, what were your reasons? And what did you buy instead?

Yup. We do two sorts of driving, 80% is driving up and down our hill to go shopping and ferry kids around, the other is long journeys to visit family, weekends away or holidays (we try to avoid flying) in Europe. The best solution for that would be a small EV for the shopping and an economical petrol saloon for the bigger trips. Trouble is even small EVs are ridiculously expensive, so my budget doesn’t come close to one of those and something else. The only EV that comes close to meeting both is a Tesla, and I’m a long way from affording one of those, and have serious issues with them in any case. So in the end I bought a 3 year old 1.4 petrol VW Golf. Does everything I need for 15k (still way too much but used car prices are crazy). Electric cars and infrastructure have a long way to go before they become mainstream.

The new MG might be of interest – starts at £26k for the 218 mile range model, £28,500 for the long range 281 mile model

https://www.mg.co.uk/new-cars/mg4-ev

That’s better*, but at those prices still well beyond what I (personally) spend on a vehicle.  Excluding our Transit we bought new for £22k 5 years ago, the most expensive car I’ve bought was £12k 3.5 years ago. I’m perhaps not a typical car buyer, but it’s going to be a while before a viable EV is within my price bracket.

* although being STW, e-Berlingo at £31k for 173-mile range is what floats my boat at the moment.

Back to original question, it’s cost for me. I don’t drive for work at all and cover 3-6k miles pa all leisure/kids/holidays, so the ‘payback’ of EV over more expensive petrol would take a long time due to my low usage. Petrol still makes the most sense financially for me at the moment.

Yes. I was willing to suck up the extra cost of initial purchase and we have a driveway (and indeed an old charging station), but
a) lack of charging infrastructure, related to
b) range
as well as
c) a feeling that technology is moving forward and I don’t want to commit to buying a car now, when in reality it won’t be delivered for ages at which point it will be out-of-date.

* although being STW, e-Berlingo at £31k for 173-mile range is what floats my boat at the moment.

If they could make that range closer to 300 I would have gone for one of these over the Dacia. Coming from a diesel Berlingo with a range of 400-450 miles on a tank the e-Berlingo was never an option. Also, there’s still a few new 1.2 petrol ones about for £7-8k less than the EV with lightly used ones coming in at around £5k below that.

Mine uses this in econ mode (which has to be reset each time you start it which is frustrating)

Has to be done this way round to meet (antiquated) legislation. I spent about two years arguing with the EU/US authorities for a change. Should be reviewed again “soon” in the EU.

but it cuts out when you are rolling to a give way and restarts which can be a bit jerky. Not sure about the restart systems as concerend over time they can cause wear, happy to be told I am wrong. Whe I set it in econ and leave the start stop on I do notice better economy.

Depending on the exact design of the system, all the parts should be sized to deal with the number of starts/stops, the injection and ignition strategy will be altered for rolling starts and stops. Cooling and lubrication systems will either be designed to cope with the multiple stops or will continue running after an engine stop (Electric oil and water pumps for example).

FWIW, when i started in automotive, starter systems were sized to do something like 50000 starts before you’d need a new starter. Most now are sized to do a couple of million and are (effectively) fit for life. Might need a new belt and tensioner at some point though (no ring gear to fail now either!).

I was seriously looking at a Zoe for work commuting as we’ve free and ample charging at work, and my car is horrendous on city driving (25 mpg). Then covid hit.

I’m now 2 days a week, possibly 3 days at most. Those day’s I’m in, I started cycle commuting (had 6 years off as broke back cycling to work).

So, the car basically does what an ICE is best for – long journeys with bikes on the roof. We also go to Wales a fair bit to our caravan, sometimes in two cars if one is staying longer, and at the time, charging infrastructure was non-existant. There are now 3 charge points in Prestatyn. Can’t charge off the caravan supply.

Also don’t want to commit to either the lease costs or the cost of an EV. Sticking with the older cars until/if they get unreliable.

I was toying with getting an electric car. Changed jobs 2 years ago giving up a company car. Ended up with a “free” golf that was to be a stop gap.

Journey was 15miles each way so ideal for electric, but looking at costs compared to a car that had no issues despite being 13 years old. Tax, MOT, insurance & servicing was less than c3 months of loan/ rental of something new. I’d be spending several £k to save a few pennies on fuel.

Actually started to go the other way- just after Xmas I was looking at some old V8s (Lexus LS460/ A8) in a “get them while I can” but the fuel price rises have put it on hold.

Start a new job c20 mile commute each way 3 days a week so the Golf may be here for a bit longer!

Depending on the exact design of the system, all the parts should be sized to deal with the number of starts/stops, the injection and ignition strategy will be altered for rolling starts and stops. Cooling and lubrication systems will either be designed to cope with the multiple stops or will continue running after an engine stop (Electric oil and water pumps for example).

Mercedes’ single timing chain has had issues, but as always the people whose cars failed shout the loudest. There are huge numbers of that particular engine (OM651) on the road so failure rates are still low. Expensive fix though.

a) lack of charging infrastructure, related to
b) range

Meh. My issues are related to the lack of chargers in Mid Wales, because I ‘only’ have 180 miles of range. In a 300 mile range car it’d be a non-issue. Same for my Scotland trip – with a long range car I’d only have to stop once, and I’d almost certainly stop at least twice just for a break for myself.

If they could make that range closer to 300 I would have gone for one of these over the Dacia. Coming from a diesel Berlingo with a range of 400-450 miles on a tank the e-Berlingo was never an option.

I guess the brick-like aerodynamics of something Berlingo-shaped (or my Transit Custom) somewhat bugger up range. Plenty of space onboard a vehicle like this for a larger battery, but fundamentally they’ll be less efficient than a ‘normal’ vehicle. Mrs a11y’s use is more suitable for an EV so we’re keeping the e-Berlingo on our shortlist for future.

Actually started to go the other way- just after Xmas I was looking at some old V8s (Lexus LS460/ A8) in a “get them while I can” but the fuel price rises have put it on hold.

Do it now – the circumstances to own a thirsty V8 aren’t ideal but they’re never going to improve. I drive an evil/Bogan V8 that does 20mpg average. Petrol was £1.169/ltr when I bought it, meaning the 3,000miles p.a. I do cost £800 vs £485 in my previous MINI that did 33mpg. However, at the current £1.899/ltr that’s now £1,300 vs £785…

I don’t feel like the country is ready for so many leccy cars, the infrastructure isn’t there and is it likely to ever be?

I honestly don’t think it will either. For a start, I used to live in a victorian terrace and there’s zero chance of everyone being able to charge their car(s) down one of those streets or indeed the office I commute to a few times a week. EV is a short term solution, granted it’s a firm step in the right direction but it won’t be around in the relative long term. Freight and logistics with determine synthetic fuel or hydrogen will take over once the cost comes down and tech catches up – soon I hope.