First car advice for commuting (40mi each way) - Budget £10k

macman

As another poster pointed out, at 20K+ miles pa, you really should be looking at a diesel engine, obviously your budget will determine what you can get that is Euro 6 compatible. (September 2015 or newer.)
400 miles per week in a Yaris? No thank you.

BOWFER

As others have said, a 24KW Leaf won't do 80 miles at M-way speeds without a charge in between.
But a 30KW model should easily enough.
Other electric cars available for £10K with enough range are the Renault Zoe and Kia Soul.
The Soul, being a Kia, will probably still have some years warranty left.
As a very rough calculation, use 3 miles per KW of battery capacity for normal motoring qith everything switched on and you should be covered.
A home charger is dead easy, I have a podpoint.
Used units come up for sale all the time, saving you some more money.

Goudy

I've a colleague that runs the same M40 trip everyday, in and out of London and she swears by her Yaris Hybrid.
Automatic, reversing camera, cruise control and air con.
She bought it new in 2016 and it's just clocked 81,000 miles, apart from the usual servicing, brakes and tyres, it's only needed a pair of rear wheels bearings.
She's averaged 70 mpg over those 81k.
I just asked her if it's comfortable and she said she has no complaints.

fatbelly

While a bit bored recently I had a play around on autotrader to see what I could get for 7k, aiming for   (that was supposed to be less than 3) yrs old, <30k mileage. I was a bit surprised to find I could get a 

Ssangyong Tivoli diesel
Nissan Pulsar
Ford Fiesta
Skoda Fabia tsi
Suzuki Swift Sport!
Suzuki Baleno sz5

[Deleted User]

macman said:

As another poster pointed out, at 20K+ miles pa, you really should be looking at a diesel engine, obviously your budget will determine what you can get that is Euro 6 compatible. (September 2015 or newer.)
400 miles per week in a Yaris? No thank you.

Avoid diesel. Aside from the damage you are doing to your health and everyone else's they might be banned eventually. As more cities move to low emission zones they won't be letting dirt diesels in.

mcpitman

[DELETED USER] said:

Avoid diesel. Aside from the damage you are doing to your health and everyone else's they might be banned eventually. As more cities move to low emission zones they won't be letting dirt diesels in.

Avoid EV's - as said previously they struggle to do 100 miles a day in perfect weather, downhill with a tailwind. That is unless you prefer waiting for the damn thing to charge every day.

Also avoid EV's if you don't want to damage yours and everybody else's health by supporting the mining of horrific chemicals and techniques to create the batteries, then make sure nothing is coal powered or gas powered where you plug it in to charge it, cos that's damaging to your health too.

Back to thread, without Eco digs from the EV supporters....... a small engined petrol or diesel at £5k or far less money would munch up 20k miles a year with no issues, worries or range anxiety.

Ranger8

My pick would be a VW Golf

Grumpy_chap

80 mile daily (400 mile weekly) motorway commute suggests you should aim for diesel or hybrid.  Possibly electric if you can manage the range, but I am not sure that will be possible in the £10k budget.

BUT, I want to throw in a curve ball.  Your biggest cost will be depreciation.  I did (until the end of March) a daily 140 mile commute and use a 2007 Ford Focus Ghia petrol that I purchased in 2016 with 32k miles on and £3k.  It has run perfectly, nothing more than wear-and-tear maintenance and none of the issues with diesel engines (which have been the concern with previous cars I owned).  The car is now on 144k miles and likely to keep going for a good few years yet.

The real win is, at £3k, and with £10k available, you should be able to shop around and find a good car to do you well but, if you are unlucky and get a complete lemon, you can sell it on taking whatever loss you take and still have enough for another 2 or 3 goes to get a good 'un.

Pripr to the current car, I had a Toyota hybrid company car and, for the motorway commute, it was not that fuel efficient.  The Focus I have now is only 2 mpg adrift from the actual mpg that the Toyota achieved.