Used Electric Cars - Advice & Reccomendations

Gurj247

almillar wrote: »

You're being greedy with the range then, and it'll cost you at purchase time. Any chargers (slow or fast) handy to where you visit for work?

Yes being greedy, sadly no chargers at any work sites, so would have to be charged at Home 99% of the time.


Only other place I know has some is the nearest supermarket (Asda) which has some charge points, but no idea of costs to use etc.

HoofeHearted

Gurj247 wrote: »

Is something I have looked at briefly, but given above and likely use by my mother I want cheap as possible over the long term, but if I cannot find something that gives me what I want then I will look again at something hybrid.

Any recommended hybrid cars?

Toyota have a range of hybrids in various sizes.
I have an Auris Touring Sports hybrid and love it.

silverwhistle

Bear in mind that although it would be a good idea to get a dedicated charger at home you could still charge it at a slower rate with what EVers call a 'granny cable'. Lets face it, you're still going to get a decent charge if you're parked up overnight for around 10-12 hours: more than the battery capacity of an early Leaf, for example.

jeradon

Don't have but I saw good reviews about the i3 REx

Arklight

Remember an EV should be quite a lot cheaper to run than an ICE. Fuel roughly 1/3 of the cost. No oil changes, cambelts to worry about etc. If you do 10,000 miles a year you are probably saving £1000 a year on that.

hollie.weimeraner

HoofeHearted wrote: »

Toyota have a range of hybrids in various sizes.
I have an Auris Touring Sports hybrid and love it.

We have an Auris tourer and a Yaris (both hybrids) and find them great. Local Toyota garage is excellent and have always had excellent customer service from them with regards to servicing and warranty issues with previous Yaris that we've owned.

jk0

Imiev/ C zero/ Peugeot Ion surely? You can get these for around £5k.



Then charge at chademo for longer trips.

almillar

Yes being greedy, sadly no chargers at any work sites, so would have to be charged at Home 99% of the time.

Yes. So it'll cost you much more to buy a high range car - so buy a cheaper, lower range car, and you'll have lots of money to put into public charging - subscribe to or pay for whatever networks are handy to workplaces, or en route, or where you do your shopping. The cheaper, lower range car, pays for lots of public charging. Just a consideration. We'd all rather have the higher range car, I'm sure!

i3 - I've been keeping my eye on these. The REx had engine problems up to 2015, the most common solution being to simply (but expensively!) replace the engine. 2015 onwards seems to be a safer bet for reliability with a few modifications having been made, but I think they would be £15k+.

Arklight

Annoyingly, much of the extra range in higher spec models comes not from the battery and drive train being better than because manufacturers intentionally hobble the "cheap" versions with software downgrades.

It happens in ICE cars too, which is one of the reasons why people have them remapped.

foxy-stoat

Arklight wrote: »

Remember an EV should be quite a lot cheaper to run than an ICE. Fuel roughly 1/3 of the cost. No oil changes, cambelts to worry about etc. If you do 10,000 miles a year you are probably saving £1000 a year on that.

I ran the numbers with a Renault Zoe Vs Corsa 1.3 cdti - price per mile was a few pence dearer with the EV but I would need to spend £3000 more to buy it.

That was based on 13,000 miles with £3K budget for an ICE and £6K for the EV.

Dont buy a EV to save the plant or save money as its likely you will be doing neither - buy one because you want to and it will be the future of motoring.