Haha, yeah, it's ugly and too tall for my liking. Wouldn't want to drive that next to a lorry during high wind! But the newer 94 Ah one is currently the only affordable car with comfortable enough EV range for my daily 60 miles mostly motorway commute plus a petrol generator to feel less range anxiety and allow me to replace me current fossil burning car. Unlike diesel cars, EV's range drop dramatically the faster you go. I was told by a Nissan Leaf rep that they wouldn't recommend doing my 60 mile motorway commute in their quoted 90 miles car!
My 2 cents: Those numbers 'may' be a little high, but it depends on the car and your style of driving. You also have to factor in the cost of the car, which may be dirt cheap or even free, and the convenience that having a car brings. It'll cost money to run, but you'll have a car! You also have to consider the 'what if something goes wrong' costs. We have two 'cars' in the family, a VW T5 camper we had built from new, and a medium milage cheapo chevy we bought off emigrating friends. The camper cost as about x35 the price of the chevy and costs us more to run due to needing more expensive maintenance, tyres etc and runs at ~35mpg due to me choosing the 174bhp auto option The chevy only does about 5mi a day, with the occasional 20mi day, but has also been nothing but totally reliable and dirt cheap to run. Everything on it is cheap and keeps on ticking. It's the opposite of a 'lemon' We've had cars that have been a nightmare. Cheap to run, but expensive to keep running - if you get my drift. Our T5 has been great from new, but friends bought one used and have done nothing but throw money at it to keep it on the road. Find the 'right' car and the costs could be lower than your dad suggests. Choose the wrong car...
I use an app on my phone called "Road Trip" which tracks and records vehicle expenses, then gives you graphs and tables of daily, weekly, monthly and annual expense totals. My daily is a light commercial vehicle, a 2011 Renault Kangoo van. At the moment it is costing in excess of £8000 per year to run, and this year it will be over £9000. At £50 per corner, each set of tyres is £200, and I'm going through three sets per year. That £600 does not include the winter tyres which I have from my last car and put on the van for a few months per year! It's going to be driven almost 50,000 miles this year (although that was only 40,000 last year) and averages about 40MPG, and at the moment the average diesel cost is £1.089 per litre, so my total fuel cost per year is between £4900-£6200. Take an average of £5500. Insurance for the van and its contents is £1500 per year and road tax for a LCV is £230. Service, parts and repairs over the past 2 years of ownership have averaged about £1000 per year, and there is very little labour cost involved in that because my father and I do 99% of the work ourselves. That figure will drop significantly next year because I've done a lot of work this year which will not need to be re-done for years to come; things like replacing all brake lines with copper which does not corrode like factory steel ones, long life vented brake discs with high performance pads which won't wear out anywhere near as quickly as the standard ones, new suspension bushings and driveshaft boots which will not wear out for years, a new battery and countless cosmetic things tidied up which required expensive factory parts from Renault and shouldn't need to be replaced again any time soon. So, if you're getting away with £6000 or less per year, you're doing just fine. I could have bought a new van twice over for what I've spent running mine over the past 2 years!
Dude, that's ridiculous. Even my Navara didn't cost half of that. Are you really doing 50k a year? Do you feel like your cost per mile is actually about right or not? 50k for some people is 7 years' worth. Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
It seems like I've sparked a debate. I've been busy with uni project work up until now. But I have a brief respite from it and need to figure out how I can reduce my insurance and running costs.
As we said, it depends on your choice of vehicle. You can definitely find a car with lower insurance premiums + tax and if it's getting 60mpg, then your fuel outlay is gonna be cheaper too.
Reducing insurance is basically a case of; smaller engine, diesel engine, non-turbo engine and an un-sporty, un-luxury model with a CAT 1 alarm and a black box. The more you pick the lower it'll be - generally. First year of your own policy will always be big - I spent two years with a PoS 1.4l petrol Mk4 Golf (not all Mk4's are crap, this one was, shop around!) secure in the knowledge that I was never going to make a claim on the car, and did my best to stay out of any positions that may potentially cause any sort of incident for someone to claim on my policy - parking space near the shop looks a little tight? Don't even bother thinking about it, move on to the end of the row. Slow car and only okay places to overtake and a woefully under-powered car? Screw overtaking I'll be five minutes late to work! - that sort of thing. Two years of no claims bonuses and I'm paying about £10 a year more for the insurance on an Impreza STI than I was on the first year with the Golf... and no, it's not a four figure number. Running costs... is much the same, smaller engine, diesel engine (less so these days), non-turbo engine, and an un-sporty, un-luxury model... I'd advise against being tempted by a lot of "eco" models, certainly the Renault ones as Uni says Renault are expensive for parts anyway, but their eco models are even more so, had a little look into the Clio eco when I got the Golf - so many parts unique to it, and unique, always means expensive! So while it's cheaper on fuel, if the gearbox goes that's a huge cost (not cheep for any car really, but this was excessive) a lot of the bodywork was "tweaked" to be more aerodynamic, and again, parts cost 20-50% more to replace than standard Clio parts, including things like wing-mirrors... However, mileage may vary with different manufactures, and something like an eco Polo may work... or just any old Polo... in fact... get a diesel one - if memory serves they weren't one of the naughty engines, but the price will still be down (hopefuly by a decent skelp) due to the stigma attached to VW's slight naughtiness and people not realising that it was only a select few engines/models...
I probably should have added some context to that post; as Byron quite rightly pointed out, I am a self employed IT engineer/infrastructure specialist as well as having a 9-5 as an IT engineer on one site. So I have a daily commute of 35 miles each way Mon-Fri which accounts for approximately 350 miles of my weekly total, and then I spend the rest of my waking hours (which is most of them) driving to and from other sites all over the country. So yes, I really have put 50k on the van this year. I've had it for exactly two years now and the mileage has steadily gone up as my workload has increased. The cost per mile is exactly right, to the penny; that's why I use the app that I mentioned. I base my travel expenses on actual data rather than guessing, so I know that the cost of running the van is always covered. The reasons are plentiful; I drive a van which weighs over 1200kg empty, by the time you put me (another 92ish) and my ~450kg of tools and equipment in the back, you've got a pretty heavy vehicle, and that weight, combined with the slightly softer compound tyres I use for better grip in wet conditions take their toll and increase wear over something like a passenger vehicle. I've also been known to have a heavy right foot.
