Which power source? Petrol? Diesel? Hybrid? Electric

[RIDA76]

Interesting comments on the thread about £20 Diesel emission charge which lead me to wonder about the lack of information around the various power plants cars have an which suits people best. I use petrol fro my car as my preference is only available in petrol but the family wagon could be anything. Is there any guidance or just PH expertise about the best option for circumstances? Mrs does School and shopping runs which are 1 and 5 mile round trips respectively which i guess is no good for Diesel, town trips are 15 - 20 round trip and MIL is 60 mile round trip so not too bad, also gets used for trip to parents once a quarter of about 500 miles round trip and twice to France in a year covering about 1,200 miles each time. Ideally only want one car, but living in the sticks it would benefit from being and SUV due to 4x4 and also wading depth as rivers flood every year. Current car is a 2014 Tourag R Line Oils Burner, but feel like i have Polar Bear blood on my hands... Thanks!

[BoRED S2upid]

A Diesel family barge for long runs and a small engined efficient petrol for the shorter town runs the best of both worlds for the average family IMO. Then ofcourse some toys tucked away for rainy days and weekend blasts

[AnotherClarkey]

Sounds like you need to scoot down to your local Mitsubishi dealer sharpish and arrange an extended test drive of an Outlander PHEV.

[Fastdruid]

1-10 miles / day - Electric all the way.
<40 miles / day - Petrol
40-60miles / day - Petrol or Diesel
>60miles / day - Diesel
Long motorway runs: - Diesel

Of course it depends on the exact route, how much power you want and how much you can tolerate a nasty rattly diesel.

Also Hybrids are ideal if for example you do half your journey in stop/start slow traffic and the rest on the motorway with some quite staggering real world economy out of them.

Lots and lots of people also don't consider getting an electric car because despite only doing 2 miles a day they "might" want one day to do 100miles, stay over night without power and drive back in the morning. Just hire a car for a few days if you want to do that!

[Horse Pop]

In theory at least, it sounds like you'd be doing well on fuel with a hybrid (or indeed an economical petrol)?

Stop-start around town is where those do well.

[LP670]

AnotherClarkey said:

Sounds like you need to scoot down to your local Mitsubishi dealer sharpish and arrange an extended test drive of an Outlander PHEV.

^This.