New Small/Medium Car - Most economical for medium journeys?

tahrey

Hear hear on that last post... we have such "smart lights" at work and mostly what they do - except the ones in the corridors and toilets, which give the security guards one less job at the end of the day - is nark people off and cause problems when someone wants to use a projector because you can't turn off just the lights at the front of the room instead. It would have been much better to just pursue an aggressive strategy of convincing people to just turn the normal lights off when they leave the bleedin' room instead (in fact, the lights and projectors both, as the latter use about as much energy and their bulbs are damned expensive and full of mercury... but they get left running all the bloody time, and their own automatic activity detection & shutdown routines only work correctly in about 10% of cases)

Anyway, back to the task in hand...

Assuming you're serious about being ecological and economic and aren't just - like we were with the smart lights - angling for some kind of bronze/silver/gold eco friendliness award (I can't remember the actual name of the silly thing) which confers some kind of additional grant or tax break or whatever... buying a new car is bananas. Let someone else do that and run it in for you, then pick it up at three years old when they get shot of it. I'm driving a six year old car at the moment, it's the newest and most expensive one I've ever had (replacing a 10 year old ancestor of the same type that was killed by a faulty replacement turbo that lunched the mechanicals when it let go), and it's just fine. Not quite as economic (by a few %) as its predecessor, and a little too bloated in comparison, but otherwise A-OK.

Even so, its market value is about four grand (I was blessed enough to be more or less given it as a gift - I could never have afforded it off my own back, the old one itself was almost crippling at £2500, and was supposed to be an investment). That pays for a LOT of fuel AND a lot of carbon offsetting schemes.

This (...these?) incidentally, are a couple of 1.5 litre Renault Clio diesels. £20 and £30 per year tax bands for the older and newer ones. Regularly pull in mid-high/low-mid 50s economy despite one being sickly through much of its time with me, and the other being porky, and not being mollycoddled or hypermiled in any particular way. The preceding petrol car, driven in the same manner, managed mid 30s instead. I'm getting about 1.5x as many miles to the quid even after considering the higher fuel price.

With your stated 9000ish mile a year estimate, that's about 163 vs 257 gallons, or 741 vs 1168 litres, £1015 vs £1553 on fuel alone...

OK, the servicing costs end up a bit higher due to added bits like turbos and high pressure fuel rails, but petrol cars are increasingly getting those as well now, and whilst diesels can suffer runaway, petrols can suffer melted pistons when things go wrong, and can suffer overpressure if the dump valve seizes whilst the diesel just doesn't care. Swings and roundabouts.

As for whether a modern 1-litre would be any good for your intended uses... heh. Unless your route is very vertiginous, or you intend seriously exceeding those speed limits, a 1-litre from 30 years ago would be sufficient, never mind a modern one, or anything a little larger. 90+ mph top speed and acceptable hill climbing is guaranteed, and some of the non-turbo ones can nudge past the ton. The newer turbos (Ecoboost, TCe et al) are little rocketships. And then there's also Hyundai's deplorably ignored 1.1 litre turbodiesel that's still capable of low triple figures...

What's probably more important is the gearbox... a lot of small (and even some large) capacity petrols get saddled with stupidly short, buzzy gearing intended to improve in-gear responsiveness even in top, at the expense of high speed economy - and comfort. But a typical well tuned 1.0 could still cope with the longer gearing in my diesel box without being overly strained on a motorway cruise, and seem much more refined and use less fuel, even if a quick burst of acceleration then needed you to drop a gear instead of doing the Harley Davidson thing and only downshifting when pulling up to a red light. Do the research amongst the marques that actually publish such information to joe public, and find which ones have eco style gearing as well as engines. Mind that it may not confer much advantage to them in official tests, as relatively little time is spent at sustained high speed on the euro fuel consumption tests, but there is a decent amount of acceleration that's best done at slightly higher rpm instead of labouring at very low engine speed.

(Amazingly I even once had an old 1.0 Polo upgraded from a 4-speed to a 5-speed box with ratios that were overall longer than a 1.6 Megane that followed on from it a couple generations later ... for all of that car's refinements, with a 16 valve head, multipoint injection, sophisticated engine control and much more slippery aero etc, the combination of larger capacity and buzzy gearing meant it could do no better than matching or only very slightly beating the old stoneage relic when cruising at general motorway speeds, and was markedly less economic at lower speeds)

Problem with the small turbo petrols is that it seems very difficult to achieve the stated economy - you have to drive very carefully. Petrols, much more so than diesels for some reason, become drastically less efficient when on boost (I've thrashed the newer DCi six ways to sunday around Wales with my foot hard down much of the time and it's still stayed above 36mpg, but e.g. a Panda TwinAir will happily dip into the low 30s without much provocation at all). You have to drive very gently and only use the turbo power where strictly needed in order to reap the benefits of a small capacity engine running in off-boost mode. And I'm not even sure steady running at 70mph counts as that - the turbine would probably be spinning quite a bit even at 70.00 in a reasonably high gear. You probably won't see the most benefit until you drop below 50.


Moving on, I'd shy away from the i3. It just won't have the range for what you want to do, unless you also buy the optional (petrol burning, not especially high MPG, boot space compromising) range extender pack.

Certainly it wouldn't withstand the round trip if you could only recharge at one end of it, and in winter each one-way leg might be a bit hairy, with very little spare capacity left when you pull up. The official figures may suggest it would be fine, but that's with a perfect charge, on a brand new battery pack, in good conditions, and at more limited speed - they won't have spent a third of the distance doing 70mph, for example. A sustained 55 or 60 is as much as you should assume... without any braking and accelerating, or steep hills (and most particularly, hills that mean your start and destination are at significantly different altitudes). The thing only offers about 20kWh of capacity. That's 200Wh/mile for a round trip, which is rather good going for your average electric car; in other words, it's not quite enough to support a solid hour of cruising at a steady 70mph...
(70mph needs a little over 26hp to sustain on the flat in a typical car, sometimes closer to 30hp; 20kW is approx... well, 26hp. And 20kW for one hour... yeah. And that's without considering the potentially multi kW drain of heating or cooling systems, plus a couple hundred watts at least for lights)

There's also the little matter that, whilst pretty cheap for an electric, it's not what you'd call cheap in motoring terms. It'd take many a year to claw back the difference in running costs alone.


So my smart money is on a lightly used TD of some kind, say a 59 plated 1.5 DCi-86, 1.4 HDi-92 or 1.3 JTD-75 (the hp ratings are strangely significant for diesels, as they're really very tuneable in ways that aren't strictly tied to the capacity), unless you can get a really good deal on a non turbo 1.0 or 1.2 petrol that has economy within 75% of the closest oil burning rival. When driven gently at legal speeds, the potential is there to turn in astonishing mileage figures. I can still see 50mpg at 80mph (just about), if that's my cruise speed rather than something I'm continually fighting my way up to. Lower speeds make for gradually better economy; it's 65+ at 56mph, and just gets steadily better down to about 35mph before dropping away again. But the mid-50s figures quoted above include quite a lot of urban commuting and errand running, rather than motorway cruising, so even that isn't so punishing. When my dad was running a Panda JTD (itself an excellent choice for your kind of intended use, btw), he was able to turn in 65mpg averages without even really trying, and nudged on for 70 sometimes - this whilst working about 30 miles away from home, in the middle of Leicester, taking a route that was a mix of country lanes, motorway (cruising somewhere in the 60s), and urban streets. The newer Clio, having had a charmed life before I took ownership, was showing a lifetime average in the mid 60s before I reset the trip computer and set about thrashing the wheelnuts off.

So I can't speak directly for turbo petrols, but the oft claimed figures for TDs ARE achievable. In fact, if you're committed, you might even be able to get 74+ mpg out of one that claims it; I've managed runs in the old Clio that clocked in at 80+, and that's distinctly MORE than what it's rated for. No hypermiling other than accelerating/hill climbing in a moderate fashion within the torque band (neither over- nor under-revving), then shifting up to 5th a little over 30mph and cruising at that pace for the rest of the journey (luckily mostly within town limits). No drafting, no engine-off coasting, no pulse-and-glide or the like. Just being careful over pulling away and then cruising at 1200rpm or so, without even really holding up traffic.

OK, that's all a bit longwinded, but I hope it gives you some kind of info to go work on...

CKhalvashi

I'd go for a 6 month old Focus/Astra/Octavia in this situation.

The Octavia's just changed models, so the old ones are going extremely cheap at the moment.

As recommended, petrol is probably best for you, and the Octavia has just changed model, so there can be £7000 of the price of a 6 month old one. Arnold Clark had about 4 at £9500 last week!

CK

knightsy

Thanks for all the replys so far - I should clarify, I'll be owning the car but as the sole employee of my business when it needs to be used a green one is important to my clients.

The prius for me is expensive for what it is. I looked at both the leaf and zoe but without a larger mileage in the cold of winter 54 miles is going to be pushing those once the battery goes a bit. The i3 (with range extender) is more of an option because if required those last couple of miles could be crept home on petrol, BMW also offer a £200 add on to heat the batteries in the morning to help in winter.

I'm going to go look at the 107 and Aygo, simply because if I end up hating them for the long journeys then my other half may have her own for the 6 mile journeys anyway.

I will consider nearly new cars when I look around. I do understand the point on the carbon costs of creating new cars, but someone needs to buy them, and I'd rather be putting the most fuel efficient ones on the road.

fivetide

Just since you said medium cars and to offer something diferent, Mazda 3?

It's essentially a Focus underneath so reliable and decent to drive. You can get it is 1.6 TD form which only attracts £30 tax for the year and should be pretty frugal.

DKLS

knightsy wrote: »

The other option I am considering is the bmw i3. That comes out at £465 a month for 3 years personal lease, so alot a month, but zero petrol cost as I would have recharging available in Sudbury.

That much! for an I3 lease, for not much more you could have an M5, I realise they are at the opposite ends of the spectrum, but shows that with leasing you need to go for the deal and not the specific car.

On a more serious note, I did have a Fiat Panda on hire for a couple of weeks, and it would do 65mpg with normal driving and 50mpg if I drove it like a small Italian car should it handled far better than I thought it would.

gc_bus

Loving our new Aygo (bought for my daughter) and yes, at 70MPH on the motorway it cruises just fine. If anything quieter than my Yaris Hybrid!

oliverr

How about that new Fiesta with the 1.0 Eco boost engine? I think it has more power than the old 1.25 but that might be a bit much for your budget.

The Dacia Sandero has the same 0.9 tce engine that the Clio has only that it's much cheaper, though I'm not sure how nice it is to be in for a 108 mile journey.

Firetastic

What about a Hyundai i10? I've recently got a Hyundai i10 and I really like it. It's comfortable, nippy and small. Very good MPG as well. Costs about £35 to fill the tank right up.

OddballJamie

Firetastic wrote: »

What about a Hyundai i10? I've recently got a Hyundai i10 and I really like it. It's comfortable, nippy and small. Very good MPG as well. Costs about £35 to fill the tank right up.

The i10 has a 35 litre tank. Where are you getting fuel for £1 a litre?

Guinness-Cat

knightsy wrote: »

The prius for me is expensive for what it is. I looked at both the leaf and zoe but without a larger mileage in the cold of winter 54 miles is going to be pushing those once the battery goes a bit.

I have a year old ex demo leaf and it's easily does my 55 mile commute only charging to 80% (with a claimed 15 miles left when I get home). OK - in the winter I'll need to 100% but it should be fine.