New Volkswagen e-Up - why would you?
Discussion
Apparently VW have released pricing details for the electric Up!
At £19K OTR (including the government £5K grant) this seems a bit of a pointless exercise to me.
The cheapest petrol Up! costs around £8K OTR, so with the £11K saved in the purchase price, and assuming an average consumption of 45mpg (it's claimed it can do 62mpg though) and a petrol price of £1.30/litre, you'd be able to do around 84,000 miles!
The potential range of the electric version is 93 miles (compared to 345 miles for the petrol version (again, at a pessimistic 45mpg))
So, why would you?
At £19K OTR (including the government £5K grant) this seems a bit of a pointless exercise to me.
The cheapest petrol Up! costs around £8K OTR, so with the £11K saved in the purchase price, and assuming an average consumption of 45mpg (it's claimed it can do 62mpg though) and a petrol price of £1.30/litre, you'd be able to do around 84,000 miles!
The potential range of the electric version is 93 miles (compared to 345 miles for the petrol version (again, at a pessimistic 45mpg))
So, why would you?
mnkiboy said:
Any new electric car will cost way more to buy than you will ever save in fuel, due to the poor range. If you're buying one purely to save money, then the sums just don't add up.
Tesla Model S (£49,000, 5.2s 0-60) or BMW 535d M Sport (£48,080, 5.3s 0-60). You would have to drive about 10000 miles to get back the price difference - about 6 months for me. Thereafter I would be saving about £300 a month.
ETA Scratch that - I would need a 5 series touring to get anywhere near the space of the Tesla and that costs £50405. It also a bit less quick.
Edited by AnotherClarkey on Wednesday 4th December 16:13
Synchromesh said:
If the range was a bit better (say 200 miles 'worst case') I think I would. We're not quite there yet, but it'll only be a couple of years. Let's hope there are enough early adopters for the manufacturers not to loose interest.
Tesla's will do around 250 miles in real world driving. As it was road tests by magazines I suspect rhey were not driving like a granny! Tesla claim 300.The last time I drove that sort of mileage I took an hour break for food, so perfect for a fast charge.
I don't see what's so bad about the range. I commute 5 miles each way to work down country lanes, technically speaking I could get 7-8 days of use before needing to charge. Charging once a week seems fairly reasonable to me.
Obviously I wouldn't buy one myself, I'd see them as pretty dull and I'd rather drive my mx-5 to work
But I can see how electric cars would make good pottering about cars to be used in conjunction with a secondary car for longer journeys.
Obviously I wouldn't buy one myself, I'd see them as pretty dull and I'd rather drive my mx-5 to work
But I can see how electric cars would make good pottering about cars to be used in conjunction with a secondary car for longer journeys.
I can contract hire a BMW i3 for £300 a month, it would save me approx. £200 a month in fuel for the car it would replace, so in real terms I could be in a brand new BMW i3 for £100 a month.
But range is the thing, 100 miles is not enough, 150 miles is where it needs to be for me.
I could do it though, it is 90 miles to London for me, and 75 miles there is a charging point, would take 20 minutes to get it back up to full again, so I could grab a coffee. Then my car park has hundreds of charge points, so getting back with a quick coffee on the way is easy enough.
Oh, and in East Anglia it is £10 for the year and then you can use any charge point for free. Which is pretty impressive.
They will make sense to many.
My neighbour had just done a new build with two car ports, a very modern trendy eco house and he is loving the idea of it, he has a solar panel flat roof as well, so all his electric is now free. Ideal for him.
But back to the VW e-Up.
They make more sense in a more expensive car imho, at the moment it costs maybe £10-15k to add the electric stuff, adding £10k to a £50k car makes more sense than adding it to an £8k car, that is a problem at the moment.
But range is the thing, 100 miles is not enough, 150 miles is where it needs to be for me.
I could do it though, it is 90 miles to London for me, and 75 miles there is a charging point, would take 20 minutes to get it back up to full again, so I could grab a coffee. Then my car park has hundreds of charge points, so getting back with a quick coffee on the way is easy enough.
Oh, and in East Anglia it is £10 for the year and then you can use any charge point for free. Which is pretty impressive.
They will make sense to many.
My neighbour had just done a new build with two car ports, a very modern trendy eco house and he is loving the idea of it, he has a solar panel flat roof as well, so all his electric is now free. Ideal for him.
But back to the VW e-Up.
They make more sense in a more expensive car imho, at the moment it costs maybe £10-15k to add the electric stuff, adding £10k to a £50k car makes more sense than adding it to an £8k car, that is a problem at the moment.
Plenty of people live in outer London suburbs where they can put in a charging point. Many also have somewhere to park inside the CC zone, or if they don't, there's often heavily subsidised electric parking spaces in the public car parks - eg. Q Park Trafalgar Square is £3500pa, but just £700 for electric.
Pay the congestion charge on your 250 working days a year and that's £2500 pa straight off. Save another £2500+ on your parking and that's well over £11k saved over a 3 year term before even considering fuel costs.
Pay the congestion charge on your 250 working days a year and that's £2500 pa straight off. Save another £2500+ on your parking and that's well over £11k saved over a 3 year term before even considering fuel costs.
sjg said:
Plenty of people live in outer London suburbs where they can put in a charging point. Many also have somewhere to park inside the CC zone, or if they don't, there's often heavily subsidised electric parking spaces in the public car parks - eg. Q Park Trafalgar Square is £3500pa, but just £700 for electric.
Pay the congestion charge on your 250 working days a year and that's £2500 pa straight off. Save another £2500+ on your parking and that's well over £11k saved over a 3 year term before even considering fuel costs.
For some the higher price is far outweighed by other savings. Pay the congestion charge on your 250 working days a year and that's £2500 pa straight off. Save another £2500+ on your parking and that's well over £11k saved over a 3 year term before even considering fuel costs.
gazchap said:
Apparently VW have released pricing details for the electric Up!
At £19K OTR (including the government £5K grant) this seems a bit of a pointless exercise to me.
The cheapest petrol Up! costs around £8K OTR, so with the £11K saved in the purchase price, and assuming an average consumption of 45mpg (it's claimed it can do 62mpg though) and a petrol price of £1.30/litre, you'd be able to do around 84,000 miles!
The potential range of the electric version is 93 miles (compared to 345 miles for the petrol version (again, at a pessimistic 45mpg))
So, why would you?
Company car user.At £19K OTR (including the government £5K grant) this seems a bit of a pointless exercise to me.
The cheapest petrol Up! costs around £8K OTR, so with the £11K saved in the purchase price, and assuming an average consumption of 45mpg (it's claimed it can do 62mpg though) and a petrol price of £1.30/litre, you'd be able to do around 84,000 miles!
The potential range of the electric version is 93 miles (compared to 345 miles for the petrol version (again, at a pessimistic 45mpg))
So, why would you?
Why do people buy more expensive variants of the Up! then?
I would like to think the EV has better attributes aswell, the mass will probably help ride comfort to a certain extent and refinement and vibration from the powertrain much better.
Its not really a comparable car.
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