I have been looking at small cars through the work lease scheme and saw that they would sort a test car out so booked a BMW 13 for a trial. I’ve had it this weekend and am just waiting for it to be collected but don’t want to give it back!

I’ve always been a bit of a petrol head so was not convinced I would like a milk float but it really is a very impressive car. Looks tiny but fit four of us in including child seats easily. Boot isn’t huge but is comparable with other small cars and can fit the dog in at a push. I was concerned about range but it really did seem to give the amount of miles the computer told you and this was without trying to run economically. This means the bigger battery version that I would get will be good for 150 miles per charge which is plenty for us. On top of all that it goes like a rocket ship at any speed below the nsl. The burst of acceleration had the kids giggling all weekend!

If any of you are considering electric I’d recommend having a test as it’s completely turned me. Price wise it’s no more expensive to lease than a Fiesta so I’ll be ordering one this week from work and just hope the waiting time isn’t too long.

 Price wise it’s no more expensive to lease than a Fiesta

Where have you seen it that cheap?

I was looking at one of these recently as it would be perfect for my commuting but the best lease prices I could see were £350+ per month. Fiestas were <£200 per month so quite a difference.

Someone will be along in a minute to tell you that as soon as you buy one you’ll want to spend every weekend towing a boat to India or something and therefore they are rubbish.

I agree with you though. Enjoy your new car!

We have a Zoe which is quite possibly the slowest EV you can buy right now but the instant burst of acceleration you get from flooring it is still ace.

Possibly the very best thing about all EVs though is being able to heat them up and defrost them before you go outside… on a cold winter’s day when it’s blowing a gale, freezing cold, sleeting and dark getting into a car that is already warmed up, windows cleared and ready to go is great. You won’t get that on an otherwise similarly specced petrol or diesel car.

Sounds good, but what if you want to tow your boat to India or something?

Electric cars are ace!

Only for charging.

They’re deece for driving.

I’d get one but you can’t drive them in the rain.

We’ve a new shape Leaf and we concur; ace. My other half hasn’t been to a petrol station since. Lovely to drive, too; as mentioned, the instant acceleration is a bit addictive, made even better by the lack of noise or fuss as it happens. And whilst it’s set to do about 16k a year in our ownership, we’ve only charged it away from home once, and that was just for the novelty of it. Perfect for us.

My other half hasn’t been to a petrol station since.

Where do you get sweeties and machine coffee from then?

Can i charge it for free in a hotel while I buy a pint of coke?

Possibly the very best thing about all EVs though is being able to heat them up and defrost them before you go outside…

I do that with my petrol car in winter. Start it up with temp at 25 degrees and air con on, go back indoors to get ready for work and 10 minutes later the car is warm and ready to go.

Do you also realise that if you drive it in a lightening storm you’ll not be able to stop it going really fast and crashing.

Applauds perchy panther

Start it up with temp at 25 degrees and air con on, go back indoors to get ready for work and 10 minutes later the car is warm and ready to go.

a) you’ve had to go outside
b) it takes longer than an EV, which starts kicking out heat pretty much instantly
c) unless you have a car specifically designed to do this you are greatly increasing the risk of theft

Unless you need to tow a boat to India, of course.

I guess the convenience of getting the car to warm itself up from your phone app may be outweighed by the need to go out and plug it in every night/few nights.
Not that it would put me off, I think/hope my next car will be electric and its good to hear a “real world” review like that. I always think the range anxiety is overplayed…

If range anxiety is a real factor for some people, **** knows how they would manage in my car, it doesn’t even have a range calculator.

Only for charging.

They’re deece for driving.

Dr Seuss to the forum!

I guess the convenience of getting the car to warm itself up from your phone app may be outweighed by the need to go out and plug it in every night/few nights.

Which is outweighed by drivingv to a garage then standing holding a pump every few days.

Which is outweighed by driving to a garage then standing holding a pump every few days.

This is a big problem; we don’t drive our other car much these days, neither of us wants to be the one who has to faff about going to a garage to put fuel in it, so it is often running on fumes before one of us cracks 🙂

Where have you seen it that cheap?

I was looking at one of these recently as it would be perfect for my commuting but the best lease prices I could see were £350+ per month. Fiestas were <£200 per month so quite a difference.

I should qualify that by saying it was a Fiesta Active I was looking at so not the cheapest but the BMW comes fully loaded so is comparable. The lease would be through Salary Sacrifice at work via Zenith.

They must be getting a good deal on the i3 as the only fully electric cars cheaper are the VW Up or Smart four2. The Leaf, Ionic, Zoe etc are all considerably more.

For those looking at a small car and who can charge at home as long as the figures work out I really can’t see why you wouldn’t go electric, it was that good. Just drove the manual diesel Kuga and pined for the i3. Son was also disappointed at the mode of transport back from school.

As for towing a boat to India, the other car can do that!

We have new model leafs at work and they are brilliant. I feel a bit of a dinosaur driving my 2.2lt SUV. I hope and expect my next car to be electric.

I’ve run an i3 for just over 3 years now!

Bought it, ex-demo, for less money that it’s worth today! Almost certainly the best car BMW make…..

(Smug mode) I’ve had an electric cars for just under 3 years now, would never go back to diesel.

Where do you get sweeties and machine coffee from then?

S’allRight, I’ve got a dinojuice burning car that fulfills those needs. As reasonably priced as electric cars are, they still can’t compete with the bangernonics of a £750 fiat panda!

I test drove an i3 a couple of years ago – loved it. Put an order in for the model 3 a few weeks ago, hopefully should be here in a month or two. By all accounts it should be rather good.

We have tried – and liked – an i3 but still worried about 2 bikes and 2 people squeezing in to it so any info from @maxtorque appreciated.

I really really want an electric car but we do 10,000 miles per year of which 9,000 are in trips of 100 miles plus (Lakes, Scotland, Wales, Somerset from Yorkshire) as neither of us drives to work.

Every time we go camping or to an event the conversation in the car is ‘how would we do this in an electric car, where would we charge and when?’. Obviously Tebay figures in these conversations but then there’s charging at destinations (campsites etc don’t have chargers) or friends’ houses (is it cheeky? will the cables blow their fuse box?) to consider – or stopping twice so that you are charged up before you arrive which adds quite a bit of journey time and isn’t great if you’re trying to get to an event and pitch a tent before it gets dark…

We just had the i3 plugged in to the mains via a normal 3 pin plug this weekend. No blown fuses, it didn’t even really heat up. I plan to plug it in at work when I get one.

Bloke who dropped it off said he had just stopped at a recharge point and it had taken 30 mins while he had breakfast. The BMW app apparently tells you where the charge points are too.

As for fitting bikes in I can’t imagine it’ll be any worse than any other similar sized car. Certainly seemed more leg room in the back compared to the Fiesta.

Nice that the bloke who dropped it off could a) find a recharge point and b) wanted breakfast, so handily found one of those rarities next to a (hopefully decent) cafe. That’d get expensive quick tho.

I won’t be towing boats to india any time soon but I second @Clover’s opinions:

200 miles and a 40 minute wait (for best-in-class teslas) make plenty of my weekend dart-from-work-on-friday jaunts totally untenable from a timing perspective. (Not to mention that I live a long way from family, so if there was an emergency I couldn’t rely on things being ready.)

The timing for me is the difference between getting to a destination in time for check-in/pitching the tent and last orders and turning up after midnight. Not to mention I can’t charge an EV in a camping field in the middle of wales.

And a south of france or scotland trip? Even though you budget more time for stops, eff that – I don’t want to be stopping for 45 minutes every three hours, and hunting for charge points that may or may not be on-route.

Coupled with the fact that the infrastructure isn’t there yet (especially in remote destinations) and the lolzrofflez prices of EV’s which would mean I couldn’t afford to go away any more if I owned one means that no, even the best of electric vehicles aren’t good enough for my purposes yet.

3 minutes to fill up 500+ miles at a network of already-existing pumps? I might fill up on a Friday, then on a Tuesday night after a big round trip weekend and a couple of jaunts to work.

I’d love an EV, but until they get the tech right there’s just no point in being an early adopter. *for me*.

As a second car if you only had to go local? Well – doesn’t work for me either. If I have to go somewhere local I go on my bike. 🙂

There’s a lot of people an EV doesn’t make sense for but there’s likely a lot more for who it does – at least from a usage perspective, I certainly agree the financials aren’t clear-cut for a lot of those people.

Anyways the latest Model S is up to 370 mile range now, surely that plus maybe charging at work or a quick 20 minute super-charge boost mid journey is enough for your weekend jaunts (not sure about all chargers but super-chargers charge much faster up to a certain battery percent before throttling back so figures for a full charge vs what you actually need to do in reality can be a fair bit different).

a) you’ve had to go outside
The car is literally 5 metres from my door

b) it takes longer than an EV, which starts kicking out heat pretty much instantly
It takes 10 minutes and I am getting ready in that 10 minutes so not lost time

c) unless you have a car specifically designed to do this you are greatly increasing the risk of theft
Only if somebody forces the lock on my gate in a very quiet village at 7 in the morning

So as I said, I do it in my petrol car so not really a massive benefit of an electric car. I am however for electric cars and as soon as they become a price that is the same as petrol equivalent I am buying one. That is estimated to be around 2024.

Think Kerleys focussing on the wrong issue…

Petrol/ diesel fumes from cars idling in traffic (or whilst “defrosting” )are damaging our kids lungs and contributing to climate change.

More generally

Electric cars make a lot of sense for a load of people who are commuting daily for up to an hour and a half or so. If everyone who was doing this had one I’m sure the air pollution in our village, and outside my kids school would be significantly better. Problem is that they are a luxury choice at the moment as they are more expensive that their petrol equivalent for the most part and for most people.

Long trips, fine, at the moment a diesel is prob best. Especially out in the Countryside or battering down through France full of bikes, pulling trailers etc. I don’t see a lot of people in the queues outside my house every morn8ng pulling trailers or looking like they’re off on a road trip!

I’m picking up an i3 on Friday! Very excited.
2nd hand seem very popular at the moment, especially for the pre-2017 luxury car tax models and prices are pretty static. I’m a bit worried about depreciation with the new EVs coming on the market over the next couple of years. So I’ll either keep it for a couple of years, or drive it into the ground, which is a bit of an unknown with EVs. Hopefully there will be battery replacement options in the future so I can upgrade the range.

At the moment the Tesla is the only one that makes sense for our travel (and has a delivery date this year). I’m still scrabbling down the back of the sofa to find all the spare change though…

I keep looking at REX i3s though as they’re second hand, affordable and *might just* be able to do the stuff we do.

I was riding up the long drag between Keighley and Haworth. It stank of fumes and I just don’t want to be part of that any more.

Think Kerleys focussing on the wrong issue…

Don’t think he is. I didn’t raise it as a benefit of having an electric car, just said the same can be done with petrol so not a big bonus of having an electric car.

There are two big issues with electric cars
Price – same car is about £10k more than petrol equivalent. For small low cost cars (~$15K) that £10K is a massive proportion of price that will never be returned (compared to a petrol car doing 60mpg at 10,000 miles a year)
Range – an issue for some but when typical range gets to around 200 miles the number genuinely impacted is going to be very small

By 2024 when prices should be same as petrol equivalent and range has increased there will be no point in getting a petrol or diesel car for 95% of people.

There’s a lot of people an EV doesn’t make sense

Really? How many? What proportion of the UK drive more than 130 miles a day? That’s getting on for 50,000 miles a year. I suspect a very small percentage of the population are driving those distances regularly based on the fact the average annual mileage is around 8k a year and can get away with an EV the majority of the time…making a full charge last a good couple of days, so not really massively inconvenienced. For big journey’s people are just going to have to accept the fact you may need to stop once or twice for 20 minutes or so, but ultimately technology will progress that will speed this process up or make it unnecessary. But to perpetuate the use of diesel and petrol cars indefinitely is not going to be an option, or it will become a very expensive option. Of course for some people, a minority, who need a car for their jobs and a full EV might not work for them then that’s what hybrids are for. We need to change. The sooner we suck it up and jump on the bandwagon, the sooner prices will come down, technology will improve, convenience will get better and before we know it we’ll have adapted and a lot of these excuses being bandied around wont even be recognised. The transition will take time of course as people will hopefully transition next time they come to change their current cars, but people need to make that leap and accept it will require some minor changes to the way they use their cars and plan longer journeys.

Every generation has its challenges they have to step up to meeting. Previous generations had to fight wars. Ours is saving the planet by changing the kind of car we drive. So complaining about having to stop off for 20 minutes on a camping trip to Scotland is not really going to garner much sympathy.

the same can be done with petrol so not a big bonus of having an electric car.

Only by people who live in a quiet village with secure car parking, which I think is a pretty small proportion of the car driving population. Also, with an EV you could heat and defrost it outside work, the shops or wherever for the journey home too 🙂

I’d love one!

However, I spent £900 on my last car so it will take a while before I can afford an eCar.

But you guys keep buying them and once they get down to a £2k second hand or something, I am in!

My shortest trip to work is 97 miles, the next is 160 – either will mean all but the Tesla are out unless I plan on adding another 30-60mins to the journey for charging.
Very few short trips ever so rips apart the arguments above.
Even the Golf GTE only does “up to 103 miles”.
A hybrid could work but when you have VW (for example) spouting about how good the new Passat GTE is but it only has a 37 mile EV range – whats the point?

Even the Golf GTE only does “up to 103 miles”.
A hybrid could work but when you have VW (for example) spouting about how good the new Passat GTE is but it only has a 37 mile EV range – whats the point?

Golf GTE is a hybrid do you mean E?

Hybrid is funnily enough not just about using electric it’s about using both to maximise mpg, my current long-term is over 80mpg. On long journeys it’ll return about 71mpg.

I kind of disagree on 2 levels –

1) I don’t use mine to commute. I genuinely do use it very frequently (compared to how often I use it at least) for distances that would cause range anxiety if 150 miles was the range.

2) I don’t think they’re the right solution to the problem. Yes, they generally seem to be less polluting, but you’re still carrying round a living room with you just to get from a to b. Cycling/walking/living closer to work are the solution. Maybe not owning a car is the solution (although I can’t see a shared car arrangement that would allow me/bikes/kids to make the mess we do without severe financial consequences).

I’m sure they’re great to drive though, and they’ll form part of the solution – they’re just not there yet. And you need changes to behaviour alongside them.