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Should I buy an EV - real world advice needed.

I have been using a BMW I4 eDrive 35 for a month now as my daily driver (I have done just over 1000 miles) and so far no worries.
Have managed 2 longish journeys with no issues (around 190 miles each). The second time I did this journey I started with 85% battery charge. On the way back the computer reckoned I would get back with 10% left but suggested a charger place about 1/3 of the way.
Charged for 10 minutes and continued with the journey - got home with 17% left.

No agro and no issues - all good so far :)
 
this is looking funky

www.volkswagen.co.uk

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Nearly three decades ago, The Polo Mk3 Harlequin Edition went into production. Its story is one that feels accidental, and its popularity was definitely unexpected.
www.volkswagen.co.uk www.volkswagen.co.uk
 
Love vauxhall but dont ever buy a vauxhall mokka e .tbe reviews are staggeringly bad ranging from parkers to which magazine .many centre on the fact you can only get 80 miles on a full charge . Others that the trade in is appalling and many that the thing is always in the garage !!!

Had 2 niggly faults on my current ice vauxhall in 6 years otherwise utterly reliable so i wont be changing it for a vauxhall EV
 
hifinutt said:
Love vauxhall but dont ever buy a vauxhall mokka e .tbe reviews are staggeringly bad ranging from parkers to which magazine .many centre on the fact you can only get 80 miles on a full charge . Others that the trade in is appalling and many that the thing is always in the garage !!!

Had 2 niggly faults on my current ice vauxhall in 6 years otherwise utterly reliable so i wont be changing it for a vauxhall EV
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Vauxhall are not what they were. I remember the 1990-95 range of Cavalier, Astra, and a Tigra I borrowed for a week from a pal. Bloody brilliant cars, reliable as rain on August Bank Holiday, good on fuel and didn't really rust. They were better than the Ford equivalent models all day (honourable exception, the Ford Puma). Post 95 and the Vectra they weren't as good.
 
My sense is the EV marketing push is a scam. Yes it is important to do green stuff and moving to EV cars in places like London is imperative. For the rest of us it is a nonsense at the moment.
 
EV's have now gotten pretty close to our use case in that there is at least one car (the MG5 Long Range) that ticks most of our boxes i.e.:
  • Reasonably cheap
  • Useable range for our use case (i.e. needs something like a real-world winter/night 200 mile range)
  • Looks like a normal car
  • Big enough for our 2 Labrador sized dogs
I was seriously considering one as a replacement for my current ICE Mercedes estate (which we use as our 2nd car) however I was quite surprised about how against getting an EV my wife is - for 2 main reasons:
  1. That we're both likely to retire in the next year and at that point may no longer need 2 cars
  2. That her experience of trying to use public charging points with her PHEV in the areas we'd need them (mainly up in the wilds of the west coast of Scotland and out to the islands) has not been great (plus the costs have gone up a lot). It didn't help that all 4 charging points in the Highland village where we have our cottage were out of action for a good chunk of last year.
For the moment she's quite happy with her 4x4 PHEV so I expect we'll review the situation again when we do retire. At that point we'll be doing very little town driving (and likely much less mileage overall) so it's possible we might well go to a single ICE 4x4 as our only car or just keep her PHEV for a few more years.
 
PHEV's - hmmmm

I had wondered why Arnold Clark had stopped harassing us over buying/ leasing a new BYD Dolphin, I phoned today having not heard from them in the week I've been back onshore. Apparently our point of contact no longer works for them - bizarre they don't have a system to cope with this. Fortunately our details are still on file and I'm waiting to be referred to a new sales person.

Will be heading in to the paint shop when I do go in to see the new sales person to get a quote for paint repairs and we have a meeting with Specialist (the Renault Zoe dealers) a week on Saturday regarding the lease expiring 30/06/24. They were rattling on about tempting us with another Renault EV - highly unlikely - they're both too big and too expensive.

I really do hope that the EC car manufactures get a serious 'kicking' off the Chinese - maybe then they'll start charging reasonable prices for their products.

Arnold Clark have some Dolphins on the forecourt ready to roll - just not sure what specification.

Regards

Richard
 
Richard Lines said:
They were rattling on about tempting us with another Renault EV - highly unlikely - they're both too big and too expensive.
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When is the new 5 coming? That looks a rather nice thing. I had a Megane as a loaner for a while. I couldn’t recommend it. It had serious behavioural issues. Particularly an immensely temperamental alarm. I loved my Zoe, so much nonsense spoken about them. Their only downside as far as I could see was the rather slow rapid charging. The Fiat 500e that followed on was a massive improvement in that department.
 
I'm lucky in that I get free charging at work so for the last 1500 miles I have used the public chargers twice and my home charger about 5 times.
Total so far is £45 :)
My tariff at home is nothing special (not gone for a smart meter yet to get the cheaper overnight tariff so the cost could have been lower!!
 
I charge at home. In petrol terms, I pay 25c/litre to fuel my car (2.4 kWh ≈ 15 km ≈ 1 litre of petrol), or less if the sun is shining.

Main-dealer service was €119.

Of course there's a bigger capital expenditure up front, but on running costs, an EV is hard to beat. And the surplus of used EVs right now should provide a great opportunity to save some money. Once you realise that depreciation is only half the story, and work out actual lifetime cost, EVs can be very good value.
 
A friend recently bought an approved used Merc EQC. It cost a lot.

He now hates it and is scared of driving it, as the brakes sometimes, during braking, don’t brake. The main dealer has no idea what to do so ignored the problem. The problem is mentioned frequently on the socials. And, of course, nobody wants to take it off his hands.
The interior build quality is shocking, and the mechanical bits n bobs don’t look too good either.

Not for me then. Not yet.
 
It’s a great time to buy a Taycan….

I know someone who bought a Taycan Turbo (how can they call it that?) for £140k but after a year decided he’d prefer a 911. Pork dealers look after their customers so resale values usually hold up. He was offered £70k trade-in. “We have several new ones we can’t sell”.

To be fair this is a very extreme part of the EV market. Actually £70k for that car is almost tempting.
 
clivem2 said:
It’s a great time to buy a Taycan….

I know someone who bought a Taycan Turbo (how can they call it that?) for £140k but after a year decided he’d prefer a 911. Pork dealers look after their customers so resale values usually hold up. He was offered £70k trade-in. “We have several new ones we can’t sell”.

To be fair this is a very extreme part of the EV market. Actually £70k for that car is almost tempting.
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It’s a bonkers world. I had no idea the list price for these fast petrol cars had gone up to this level. And at over two tonnes, an EV might not seem so heavy!

 
Tony Lockhart said:
A friend recently bought an approved used Merc EQC. It cost a lot.

He now hates it and is scared of driving it, as the brakes sometimes, during braking, don’t brake. The main dealer has no idea what to do so ignored the problem. The problem is mentioned frequently on the socials. And, of course, nobody wants to take it off his hands.
The interior build quality is shocking, and the mechanical bits n bobs don’t look too good either.

Not for me then. Not yet.
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Oh dear ..pretty sure my friend is getting one as they have halved in price , perhaps thats the reason
 
I’m not particularly anti-EV as cars (much as I love a v8) but they are a technological dead end. There simply isn’t and will never be sufficient generation capacity to support a full fleet against all of the competing usage for that electricity. Toyota and the German government will ultimately be right on hydrogen and we will all look back on Musk as the cause of some of world’s worst environmental vandalism for the short life of these products.
 
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