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Jun 2020
5:04pm, 21 Jun 2020
11,318 posts
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larkim
Good choice, Panda, Gobi. 140,000 miles on my current one in 10 years, it’s been a very solid commuting workhorse. No frills driving (on the one I’ve got).
Expanding on the “a car is just a car”, there’s 20% of me that doesn’t think like that. And then I think about the cash that disappears just because it would be “nice” to have those alloys, that head unit, that colour, that performance etc etc and I realise that most of my driving will simply be on the way to work with a podcast playing.
That being said I am excited a) about playing with electric and b) about finally having a car which has air con and some gadgets.
Didn’t get round to a test drive; always surprises me how dealers aren’t just set up ready for lots of test drives, especially from “warm” customers. But it will drive fine, I’m not paying for a performance car or buying on the 2nd hand market where those annoying clunks or noises on the car you get you have to live with (or repair).
So I hope it brings a big smile to my face each morning on the commute (like my old car did - a gorgeous Fiat Barchetta, LHD 2 seater, that rusted to bits and resulted in my 1.1l Panda acquisition (very rapidly, when the 2 page long list of MOT fails came through!).
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Jun 2020
5:56pm, 21 Jun 2020
70,359 posts
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Gobi
I have a Skoda Yeti - this is the next major life choice vehicle, 3 years old so do I go electric is my next big question. We have a 4 year old so the lady largely uses this.
1997 vw transporter camper - 2.4 old school dirty diesel, my day/race van
The Panda- my run to work car.
2003 Kawasaki z1000 - the reason I can have a crap car.
I have owned various boosted Minis (proper not that shitty German beemer fraudster) this was my 20s passion so spent 000s.
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Jun 2020
5:57pm, 21 Jun 2020
1,056 posts
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RunnyBunny
We've had a BMW i3 for 2 years and are really happy with it. Mr RB has done a lot of longer distance driving in it without any major issues. You need to plan ahead a bit for longer journeys, and the i3 has the advantage of a range extender (small petrol engine for emergencies, although it's only been needed a couple of times) which I think BMW have stopped doing. The electric range is around 150 miles in summer, 110 in winter. We've got a charger on the wall of our house, and it costs around 2p a mile to run. Quite often, you'll find charging points when you're out and about are broken in a way that you can still charge up but it's free. Also you can often find free slow charging points e.g. at Asda. We're sticking with electric when we buy our next car (replacement for my elderly Fiesta), hopefully a Niro or Kona with more range. We're intending to keep the i3 long-term.
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Jun 2020
6:13pm, 21 Jun 2020
695 posts
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MH
I love the eco credentials of the i3 !
The later ones with the larger battery do around 175 miles. I'm glad they are still making it (they were previously planning on stopping production)
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Jul 2020
10:47am, 1 Jul 2020
35,403 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
Any more chattage about electric cars?
Back on the question of whether it's greener to get a new electric or to run your old petrol or diesel into the ground for 20 years, can someone give me some stats on that? I get the principle that rampant consumerism of getting a new car every 3 years is prob not very eco.
But if I want to move to an eletric car, they are quite expensive, so I
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Jul 2020
10:49am, 1 Jul 2020
35,404 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
...ooops
... so I am likely to want to lease. That means at end of 3 years I either have to buy it outright or swap to another lease. Do we need the "buying" mechanism to change, so taht we make best use of older cars?  G
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Jul 2020
10:54am, 1 Jul 2020
6 posts
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dobbers
There is a movement to convert older classic cars to electric but so far this has been a small scale operation which results in fairly high costs. None of the major manufacturers have any plans to convert older models to electric - they seem intent on selling us more and more metal.
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Jul 2020
10:56am, 1 Jul 2020
70,577 posts
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Gobi
Now if my tatty old T4 could be converted that would be quite cool
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Jul 2020
11:14am, 1 Jul 2020
11,385 posts
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larkim
Going in today to sign up to paperwork and hopefully get an indication of due date.
I'll ping my sister an email to see if she's got any data on HG's question - she's a professor in this sort of stuff. It must "cost" a lot to build a new car / scrap an old one but I'd have thought that moving a car 40-50,000 miles over three years from point A to point B consumes more "energy" than that consumed by building a new one. That's clearly not the whole story though - use of precious minerals, cost of production of the electricity being used for the EV, recycling (or not) of old cars / materials etc etc.
I've seen some interesting chat elsewhere about ways to keep the electricity costs of charging the car down. Tariffs where in some circumstances you're being paid to use electricity through the night (Octopus Agile with a SMETS2 smart meter), or at the very least accessing very cheap "economy 7" style surplus power. Something to investigate once I'm up and running. Will be interesting too to see how efficient I'm encouraged to drive by the various gadgets / displays. I get the impression that EVs don't like powering along at 70+ on the motorway (in terms of efficiency), which I will admit is my tendency on the way to / from work for the short period when I'm on those roads. But I do like to play games with these sorts of things, so optimising energy cost on the commute might just add to my interest level!
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Jul 2020
1:24pm, 1 Jul 2020
3,961 posts
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Fizz :-)
I’ve just taken delivery of my new company car. A Tesla. there’s no way I could justify the cost if I was buying it myself though.
No charging point yet, so it took 24 hours on the garage socket
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