this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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That amount will get you into a Renault Zoe or Nissan Leaf without much shopping around. Both would be three years younger, be considerably faster, and have a 40kwh battery so a practical range of about 160 miles between charges. Cheapest Zoes and Leafs are listed at about £5k now (but have the smaller battery)and most will take less than listed to get rid as there is a glut of them due to the second hand market being over valued. Zoes before 2021 will likely come with a battery lease, which starts at £50 a month, Leafs do not.
I actually think the battery lease makes more sense on an older electric car as Renault have to replace the battery for free once the capacity gets under 75% available capacity. Most battery warranties on the other hand expire after a fixed period, which a lot of people will now be butting up aginst if they are purchasing the early examples, and the percentage available capacity for a free replacement is often 60%, much harder to hit.
So it can be done in the UK, and even makes sense assuming you can charge at home as home charging works out considerably cheaper than ICE. It costs 9p a kwh to charge overnight so 160 actual miles of range costs less than £4, good luck finding any ICE car that can match that.
As you can charge overnight then you can charge every night, so your practical daily range is 160 miles. If you are genuinely doing more than 160 miles a day I really question the choice of a 1l car to do that. If you are doing 160 miles in a single journey then charging on route will still work out cheaper when spread out over total cost of ownership.
Buying a car and paying for a full manufacturer warranty for a new for old battery replacement is most definitely a smart decision on an older EV. The battery is the most expensive component on any older EV and being able to get a brand new replacement for something that costs about £10k fitted by a main dealer for what is £50 a month makes a lot of sense as it greatly extends the life of the car and resale value for considerably less than the cost to yourself. If only you could get an actual full manufacturer warranty on an old 1l highly strung turbo, there is a reason they don't offer them and its not lack of demand. And no, third party warranty aren't worth the paper they are printed on for anything expensive once you are past the initial sale period.
You've completely ignored that assuming you can home charge (which roughly two thirds of the UK can do even before we get to on street charging using lampposts and the like) its going to be considerably cheaper to run. Current UK average petrol price is 151p per liter, assuming 60mpg (which is optimistic) that's about £18.28 for 160 miles vs. £3.6 for the electric car. Its far more likely you'll be getting nearer 50 unless hypermiling in optimal conditions, in which case you'd be using Eco mode in the Zoe and doing the same light touch you'd be getting 190 miles for that same £3.6. If you are doing any sort of miles then you are going to be saving thousands over the lifespan of the car, my son is saving enough that the monthly loan cost for his nearly new car (was six months old) works out as zero with the money he saves vs. a cheap petrol car he could have purchased for his £3k deposit and no loan. I know which is the considerably better and more reliable car of the two options.
Are you actually doing a regular commute more than 160 miles? As that's going to be over 3 hours a day in the car, more like 4 with traffic. The amount of people that actually do that are tiny and they aren't usually driving little 1l fiestas to so, they usually have already switched to electric as its a saving of hundreds per month in fuel and probably thousands per year in company car tax as they tend to be company cars due to the excessively high mileage. If you aren't doing over 160 miles a day commute then the range is absolutely enough as you can charge each night if you really have to.
You can tell you've never actually driven an EV if you think your car is faster in real world driving, being faster to 60 from a standing start is pointless as it rapidly becomes about who will drive a higher top speed. Its 0 to 30 and in gear acceleration that is actually useful. No straight ICE can match an EV of the same bracket & price point for those performance stats as an EV has 100% instant full torque and no gear changes to worry about. Besides, I was thinking of the R135, which you can almost squeak into now.
I wouldn't be buying anything other than an EV now, they are just better suited to modern driving. ICE cars and especially hybrids have gotten too complicated to be worthwhile long term purchases in order to meet the latest emissions standards. They are also ticking time bombs (outside high end collectables) for depreciation and costs.
Yet you have highlighted or addressed none of these and have made quite a few of these yourself, such as:
I am old enough to remember the end of cars that only ran on leaded petrol without expensive rework. They were around for ages after the ban date was set and there were plenty of great bargains available as people rushed to get rid, but then the petrol stations that sold leaded stopped, and it became impractical for most people to run leaded so they went as well. I would expect the same for ICE, a complete apocalypse for used pricing by a rapid closure of petrol stations and loads of ICE just then being junked.
Speaking of making baseless claims while ignoring my points:
Firstly I was talking about the R135, but still that's not the worst thing here. You've quoted the BHP of the R110 but quoted the 0-60 for the Q90. I am assuming that's in bad faith.
You also deliberately ignoring that I talk about torque delivery rather than peak torque, and no, the ecoboost does not produce more torque than any EV from 0 to 1750 RPM, its impossible for any pure ICE car to do so. Another intentional bad faith argument.
The £50 is for a full manufacturer warranty on the battery, new for old, its not just some random fee you are paying and in an older EV its value for money.
You have also banged on and on about range yet you spend £25 a month on fuel? Fucking LMAO. Your entire argument about your choices around range and cost are just bunk now. I would estimate your monthly range to be between 150 and 230 miles a month now, careful driving in a Zoe could see you doing that with one charge a month for £3.60 as I outlined above.
You could even spend half of what you spent on your car on a Zoe with a smaller battery and charge every ten days or so for the same £3.60 a month of charging time as you are doing so few miles. So you could have saved thousands of pounds up front.
Youve completely ignored the cost saving for charging vs. fuel, something which is only going to get worse as time goes on as the number of petrol stations in the UK decreases into ever smaller number of owners. We already have effective price fixing by the supermarket forecourts keeping prices high this summer.
Still, I am sure you are enjoying the boundless power, thrilling sound track from your ultra reliable ecoboost?
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/avoid-ford-ecoboost-engine-all-cost/ https://www.carvibz.com/news/ford-ecoboost-1-0-liter-teardown-reveals-most-common-engine-issues/