EV general discussion

The1nonly1 said:
Wife looking for new car, can't see why we wouldn't go EV now for her. Doesn't do many miles a week as works from home 4 days. Looking at Fiat 500e as she's had a Fiat 500 before.
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Why would you if she barely does any miles? What's the saving? What's the advantage? A more expensive car, with larger depreciation to save money on fuel you are not buying anyway.

RetiredGreyFox said:
It's sad that Social Media never stops with the myths imprinting these thoughts on people, we have one above @vectisitch :)

This has all come about because the Govt wants everybody to go that route so rightfully people will fight it and talk b******s about them.
Before the Govt announcement anybody with an ICE didn't give a stuff about EVs including myself - drive your milk float, I don't care.
Now I'm a proud milk float owner and the best car I have ever owned since 1975.
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It's nothing to do with the government, it's people doing the maths on what they want to drive and real world savings. I've ordered a Kona EV with the intention of banging all our miles on it. I commute 16k per year and my wife can put her 2-3k on it as well. Flog it for 3-4 years and hand it back. Even so I doubt very much it's a sound money saving over other options. But I just want one, I want to try one with our lifestyle and see how we get on. The only reason I'm doing it is because of the salary sacrifice scheme at working coming up cheaper than the leasing sites even without putting money down. Other than that there would be as good comparable ICE crossover cars that would be cheaper even with the fuel bought on 16k miles per year over 3-4 years.

Again it's not the government, they wanted us to go diesel and we all did when because it was cheaper, if people could see good savings and lifespan on EV's, something they would genuinely be happy to keep for 6-10 years they would buy one.

Again I have ordered one and will likely order a R5 if we get on with the Kona, but viewing them as disposable cars. I wouldn't want to keep either longer than the lease term. Every ICE car we have owned as a family we have had for 8-10 years. Which even buying fuel will be cheaper than paying the depreciation on a new EV every 3-4 years.
 
vectisitch said:
Of course im not trolling. Im opening debate on why we all feel we should do as we are told by government ministers who probably own expensive classic gas guzzling cars??
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Give over, you were doing no such thing. Parroting the same old drivel pushed out to you via social media personalities isn't "debate". If you'd really wanted a discussion you'd have read through some of the thread to understand why people here drive EVs and asked questions of owners who clearly have more experience of EVs than you do.

vectisitch said:
I'll bow out of this conversation.
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Saw that coming a mile off.
 
MrRockliffe said:
Who on here owns their EV, I.e. isn’t leasing or PCPing it?


I’m looking forward to owning one but also feel nervous about taking on the associated risks of doing so.


But my 435i has taught me that you can end up with huge costs with any car.
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I bought a used Cupra Born 77kWh and it is literally out of its standard 3 year warranty today. I have decided not to purchase an extended warranty because the “affordable” ones didn’t cover things like charge ports etc. The full warranty was going to cost £980 outright, or £660 plus £200 voluntary excess per issue, not per visit. So you couldn’t gang up on little issues to go see them near the end of the period and say “fix all those”.

I must admit I used to think owning an EV was a mugs game because the tech will be outdated due to battery and efficiency advances etc. but after 6 years of various EVs I know this myth of EVs being outdated in a couple of years is pure nonsense.

A Kia EV3 is not that much better than a 5 year old E-Niro for range and efficiency and only really beats it on charging speed. For most of us that never really matters.
 
dannyjo22 said:
It's nothing to do with the government
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100% disagree.
Before the Green announcement everybody went about their business of buying cars and Mr Smith didn't give a toss if Mr Jones bought an EV.
As soon as the announcement was made Social Media blew up with Anti EV posts and still doing it now.
For quite a while I believed all the nonsense until I did my homework and way before me sensible people like yourself had already decided what was best for them, it just took me a while to get through the social media crap.

MrRockliffe said:
Who on here owns their EV, I.e. isn’t leasing or PCPing it?
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Me.
In 2024 I bought a 9 month old MG4 with 12,000 on the clock for £19,000 and got a charger and three services thrown in.
Best car purchase I have ever made since 1975.

HOWEVER, sit down and really work out if it's for you eg do you have your own drive, how many miles a week etc.
 
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MrRockliffe said:
Who on here owns their EV, I.e. isn’t leasing or PCPing it?


I’m looking forward to owning one but also feel nervous about taking on the associated risks of doing so.


But my 435i has taught me that you can end up with huge costs with any car.
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I bought a model Y a couple of days ago. I keep my cars for at the very least 6 years.

Last one was a Leon as I mentioned earlier.
 
vectisitch said:
Seriously though I've always been a non conformist. Im told by government I should buy an over priced electric vehicle that could quite possibly go up in flames or be worthless in 7 years because the batteries need replacing at too high a cost. Then said car has to be scrapped. How is that good for the greenies? Meanwhile could tries around d tge world are burning huge amounts of coal or firing missiles and dropping bombs all over the place. No thanks. I'll continue to drive my combustion engined car and save my money on the huge purchase cost of the electric car. Oh and I also ride my smoke churning 2 stroke engined 1985 classic motorbike.
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So you paid for driving/ riding lessons and passed the government tests for a car &bike. Then paid fuel duty and ved and insurance.

How non conformist of you.
You are such a rebel.;)
 
MrRockliffe said:
Who on here owns their EV, I.e. isn’t leasing or PCPing it?


I’m looking forward to owning one but also feel nervous about taking on the associated risks of doing so.


But my 435i has taught me that you can end up with huge costs with any car.
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I tend to finance a vehicle the way that costs me the least, the previous car started on PCH and we bought it off the finance company at auction pricing so we did own it outright. Current one was a mispriced PCP so we used that option to secure a silly priced deal on a car, but we won't be keeping it at the end, in fact already looking to swap it out but need to wait for new C-Class stock to see what offers I can find.

Technically the very first EV I bought was owned outright too, but we did that to help out a family member so not really ours.
 
Interesting to see a few people having bought them - to me it evidences the confidence people have in them already, and from people who have actually done it, not just listened to what some bloke says on YouTube.


EV makes huge amounts of sense to me.


Fuel costs, which are currently hugely volatile, would be ~£3-400 a month for me. So the EV effectively pays for itself as I also claim back my work mileage.



It’s why, despite the fact I have always wanted a 530d (a car I’ve always aspired to own), I couldn’t pull the trigger on it as my daily.
 
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MrRockliffe said:
Interesting to see a few people having bought them - to me it evidences the confidence people have in them already, and from people who have actually done it, not just listened to what some bloke says on YouTube.


EV makes huge amounts of sense to me.


Fuel costs, which are currently hugely volatile, would be ~£3-400 a month for me. So the EV effectively pays for itself as I also claim back my work mileage.



It’s why, despite the fact I have always wanted a 530d (a car I’ve always aspired to own), I couldn’t pull the trigger on it as my daily.
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That confidence admittedly took me 4 years to build with 3 different EVs for both my wife and I. I realised batteries are not prone to failures, won’t degrade to nothing and won’t be outdated in 2 years.

I very rarely ever bought extended warranties in the past because my experience in 30 years of driving and owning cars, is that catastrophic failures rarely happen until a car is well used. The only catastrophic failure I had was on a 90,000 mile Audi A3 gearbox.

I know they can happen but for me £980 for a full extended warranty with no excess costs per item, well that’s just daylight robbery in my opinion.
 
I bought my first one outright but went back to leasing for the second.

Not because of confidence but because salary sacrifice if too hard a perk to ignore.

I’ll go back to owning once the BIK goes back up or if the deals are not there from the monopoly provider. It’s all about the £££.
 
Own mine (bank loan) and PCP the wife's.

I worked out something along the lines of I could scrap mine as soon as the loans paid off and I'd be in no worse position than staying on my previous PCP merry go round.

I in no way expect to be in that position so I'll come off better. He says, with this being the only vehicle I've had a triple digit repair bill for since I got my first motorbike 15 years ago :cry:
 
ICDP said:
I bought a used Cupra Born 77kWh and it is literally out of its standard 3 year warranty today. I have decided not to purchase an extended warranty because the “affordable” ones didn’t cover things like charge ports etc. The full warranty was going to cost £980 outright, or £660 plus £200 voluntary excess per issue, not per visit. So you couldn’t gang up on little issues to go see them near the end of the period and say “fix all those”.
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I’d be in the same boat with my original EV if I had still owned it. I’d not have gone for the extended warranty either.

they are ultimately very reliable and if something does go wrong, it’s likely to either be not covered or simple to fix.
 
Typically own all my cars but for the Abarth 600e Comp, it was lease because it was such a cheap lease it was a bit of no brainer for me and my circumstances.

My Volvo XC60 PHEV is a PCP which I pay off in the next month or so, though about handing it back as missus wants something smaller, but not decided on its replacement when we find what that will be, some EV, we'll likely chop the XC60 in for rather than making some rash car switch decision just because PCP is up.

We actually bought the 3yr extended warranty for it as there's quite a few bits on there that are big ticket items even outside of the EV stuff and looks like it is all covered so why not, £1100 for a bit of peace of mind, didn't seem too bad. Worked in the past on prior cars. Could be a waste of money but that is Insurance full stop, always paying hoping never to use.

I don't see EV as more reliable or less of a risk, just different things to go wrong.
 
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RetiredGreyFox said:
As soon as the announcement was made Social Media blew up with Anti EV posts and still doing it now.
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You do realise that "social media" is algorithm based and just delivers content you engage with?

I have no skin in the game, have bigger worries in life than how other people fuel their cars and low and behold, I don't see any anti EV content.
 
We own the Corsa and GT and tbh I have slight concerns when they go out of warranty especially the GT as it has a lot of bespoke expensive parts but that’s to worry about in 4 years time.
 
I bought a second hand Mini EV last year as my old ICE Mini would have cost too much to get through its next MOT. I chose the EV after researching running costs for it versus an equivalent ICE Mini; slightly dearer insurance but lower tax and vastly lower costs per mile. Its only drawback is lack of range but that isn't an issue for me personally. In terms of performance, equipment, refinement and ease of driving it is way better than the old car. I'm not worried about getting a huge repair bill down the road, the Mini EV one of the most reliable cars long term in the Which Survey. I reckon its just as likely you'd need to replace an engine or gearbox in an ICE car as a battery in an EV anyway. Battery degradation is a lot less of an issue than its made out to be.
 
MrRockliffe said:
Interesting to see a few people having bought them - to me it evidences the confidence people have in them already, and from people who have actually done it, not just listened to what some bloke says on YouTube.

EV makes huge amounts of sense to me.

Fuel costs, which are currently hugely volatile, would be ~£3-400 a month for me. So the EV effectively pays for itself as I also claim back my work mileage.

It’s why, despite the fact I have always wanted a 530d (a car I’ve always aspired to own), I couldn’t pull the trigger on it as my daily.
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but money no object, as a polyvalent (enjoyable/practical/daily/family) car you'd be in an ICE like a 530d (540i?, M3 touring) -
glancing at ev drivers enviously on frosty mornings.
 
jpaul said:
but money no object, as a polyvalent (enjoyable/practical/daily/family) car you'd be in an ICE like a 530d (540i?, M3 touring) -
glancing at ev drivers enviously on frosty mornings.
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How envious are you in the winter?
By the time you pull the trigger, any saving incentive will be diminished, ppm even etc
 
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