EV suggestions, £4k to maybe 8 or 10, tops?

[defblade]

Hi folks,

SWMBO is likely to be changing her Citigo in the near future. She's looking for a slightly bigger car and is drawn to EVs as a lot of her car use is local, with occasional longer trips - for which we'll still have anything up to 3 other petrol cars to choose from within the household! 3 adults (23 year old daughter living at home), one dog.

It'd be nice to be able to get to Cardiff and back on a single charge - about 130 miles altogether for us, almost entirely motorway - but this is not a deal breaker.

Our first thought is a Leaf - 9 battery bar Leafs (Leaves?) with 90+ mile range start somewhere between £3.5 and £4k - and this is fine for the money and most of our driving.

I don't fit in a Zoe (6'4"), of which there are quite a lot advertised around here. They're probably smaller than SWMBO is looking for anyway.

I like the i3 a lot, but haven't sat in one and SWMBO can only just balance the pictures of the nice interior against the... unusual/challenging exterior.

What else could/should we be looking for in single digit thousands?

The budget could be stretched as we may be able to ditch our daughter's (rarely used) car if we buy this - she has an auto only licence, and at the moment, 2 of the other cars are manual and the last one is uninsurable until she's at least 25

[paul_c123]

At that price point, we need to ask......why electric? Its going to get you the bottom end of the electric market, which consists of what I call "compliance" cars - those built very much as a first try by manufacturers, to be able to say they're making electric cars and offer something to offset their petrol/diesel stuff when it came to CAFE regs (Corporate Average Fuel Economy); and the cheapest/highest mileage of what you might loosely call "2nd generation" cars - ie those which actually have a viable use case in 2025.

EV depreciation is harsh, mainly because of the sky-high new price vs what they're generally capable of, and the prices are dropping like a stone. Something at that price is going to continue to drop because in 3-5 years time, we'll have more supply of reasonable used cars so the cheap/old/nasty ones are going to be very much undesirable.

Also, watch out for anything with "battery lease".

Anyway......Ren Zoe, Vaux Corsa, Pug 208, BMW i3 all have a barely reasonable range. VW e-Up, VW e-Golf (Mk7), Nissan Leaf all have terrible range and will be virtually worthless in a few years time.

[defblade]

paul_c123 said:

At that price point, we need to ask......why electric?

'cos that's what SWMBO's thinking about

I ran Leaf insurance including our daughter, and it was not good

There is another plan where SWMBO just sells her car, and takes over my Rapid, but that only works all the time while I'm running my SL and it's not borked - I have every intention to shift that on within the next 12 months and obviously the bork is ever lurking in the meantime.

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

paul_c123 said:

At that price point, we need to ask......why electric? Its going to get you the bottom end of the electric market, which consists of what I call "compliance" cars - those built very much as a first try by manufacturers, to be able to say they're making electric cars and offer something to offset their petrol/diesel stuff when it came to CAFE regs (Corporate Average Fuel Economy); and the cheapest/highest mileage of what you might loosely call "2nd generation" cars - ie those which actually have a viable use case in 2025.

EV depreciation is harsh, mainly because of the sky-high new price vs what they're generally capable of, and the prices are dropping like a stone. Something at that price is going to continue to drop because in 3-5 years time, we'll have more supply of reasonable used cars so the cheap/old/nasty ones are going to be very much undesirable.

Also, watch out for anything with "battery lease".

Anyway......Ren Zoe, Vaux Corsa, Pug 208, BMW i3 all have a barely reasonable range. VW e-Up, VW e-Golf (Mk7), Nissan Leaf all have terrible range and will be virtually worthless in a few years time.

What he said. I don't own one, but would like one and I think anything that has a range nearer 100 miles than 200 miles is largely useless. If it was me I would be looking at one of the following, but you need about £15K

1)Tesla Model 3
2)MG 4 EV long range
3)Hyundai Kona 64KWH / Kia e-Nero 64KWH

They depreciate so hard I actually think they are bargains compared to a similar age ICE car. The only thing that puts me off the Kia/Hyundai is I have seen people changing the reduction gear oil at 25K mileage and the oil is silver. This makes me wonder about the long term life of the reduction gear, especially as most people are not going to change it.

[Rhodrich]

A long range MG5 Estate can now be found at that price range. Very unexciting, but fits 5 people and their luggage in comfort, will do 240 miles in the summer, 200 in the winter on a charge, and minor software niggles aside are proving to be pretty indestructible (see 'James and Kate' on YouTube).

[p4cks]

ID3

[ZX10R NIN]

MG ZS:

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202509126...

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202509146...

MG5:

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202509056...

Long Range:

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202504301...

Corsa elite nav:

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202509025...

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202509126...

40kwh Leaf:

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202503200...

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202509146...

[jimmytheone]

Rhodrich said:

A long range MG5 Estate can now be found at that price range. Very unexciting, but fits 5 people and their luggage in comfort, will do 240 miles in the summer, 200 in the winter on a charge, and minor software niggles aside are proving to be pretty indestructible (see 'James and Kate' on YouTube).

Agree with all of that - we ran an MG5 for a year, decent boot, pretty reasonable turn of pace given its image, only the rare software issue let it down.

We also had an MG4 for 18 months, that was more entertaining to drive and decent enough range, as per MG5, but the boot was limited.

I'm tempted by a i3 but i need to experience the ride first, i've heard they're on the firm side? Later cars have 195 mile range i think, earlier non-rex cars are 100-ish