Motors Help me pick a car

Status Update:

So the original delivery estimate for a "pre-ordered" Ioniq 5 config "April to June" on the day I ordered from Octopus EV but magically became Late august after signing everything! Not a good start. Octopus claimed this was a discrepancy between availability used by the website and that from the dealer. We had been told over the phone that there were "plenty" of Ioniq 5s available on a delivery so April was likely. Not sure if incompetence or intentionally mislead but not off to a great start.

In the interim our second car broke down (somewhat spectacularly) and is stuck at the garage with no obvious fix date.

Stuck hiring a car from Enterprise to tide us over (expensive!) but not a great deal of choice. They, by coincidence, have giving us a Renault Zoe (Electric). This is quite fun to drive being peppy and has enough range for the daily run about. Unfortunately it's still a french car and some design decisions are weird. Notably the rear door handle is very high and a finger trap - not exactly sensible for the seats most likely to be used by children. Also the front drivers seat appears to only go forwards and backwards with no height adjustment. The default position is okay but what a weird choice. An electric equivalent of a Corsa - small and cheap 'n' cheerful.

Octopus reached out today and claim they might have "something" that I can have sooner than August/Sept but not sure if this is an interim car (mentioned by their CEO in a blog post) or just a different model of an Ioniq 5. Half expecting it to be a more expensive trim which might be okay if it is available asap. Watch this space!

 

There is no height adjustment on the Zoe seats, because the battery pack is directly under them. (I had one until last month)

 

You can get a Tesla pretty quick these days (hence the price cuts)

 

Well, Octopus seemed to have pulled a rabbit from the hat. Got a call today and they had both a Premium and Ultimate Trim Ioniq 5 available at UK dealers due to cancelled orders. Both available for delivery (<4 weeks) in the same general model as I wanted (77kWh battery, RWD model, black paint, black interior). Greatly reduced delivery time is a big win but the cherry on top - I got the "Ultimate" for less money than my previous "Premium" order because the dealership want rid of the cancelled order. Nice!

Also decided to scrap my 2nd car which died at the worst possible time which will be replaced with a comparatively cheap and cheerful petrol car this weekend (probably a Fiesta or similar). Did look at shorter range electrics such as 40kWh Nissan Leaf but even the cheapest models are circa £13k which for an occasional car is probably too much.

 

FFS - Spoke too soon apparently those cars had already been reassigned and their internal systems hadn't picked this up so back to square one.

 

Bu**er!

 

Plot Twist! Apparently the car that is/isn't available is actually available and it is their systems that are wrong! Feels like Schrodinger's Ioniq 5.

I will believe it when it actually arrives on my driveway at this point.

 

Your experience does little to inspire confidence in Octopus.

 

If my Dad's experience is anything to go by, it's not an Octopus problem - he ordered an Ioniq 5 Namsan the moment they were announced, given a date of March/April this year, April rolls round and he calls them for an update, "Oh, bear with us"

Turns out they'd "forgotten" to order it, so a new order is August/September, and the price has gone up, but the dealer won't consider covering that as an apology... Terrible.

 

Car buying shouldn't be this messy. How could they not know what cars they have? How could they "forget to order"? And why do I not know if I'm getting the same deal as the next person who walks into the door?

As the saying goes, too many cooks spoil the broth. On top of that, dealership vehicle buying/allocation is a very manual process, prone to human errors. I think it's about time this whole charade is disrupted and automated.

 

A certain internet edgelord & car/rocket manufacturer already thought of that.

 

Well, that's what I'm hinting at. But other manufacturers still seems to prefer the dealership model.

Of course, downside is that buying experience is not personalised. No point of contact for such big purchase. No showroom unveil. Just "your car is over there".... in a sea of similar cars.

I personally would still take similar experience to buying a custom blind or fridge, over paying multiple middleman creating human errors for the chance of a slight personalised "experience".

 

It does seem to be a shocking level of coordination / syncing between Octopus - Dealer - Hyundai. In this day and age of instant databases, APIs and web portals etc the potential to not know exactly how many cars there are available and exactly when they should arrive shouldn't occur.

The idea of cutting out dealers is appealing but they do provide an important function of being the face of the car company, answering questions, allowing test drives and generally being a port of call for issues or questions. I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable ordering a car straight off a website without even if it came with a no quibble money back guarantee for x days after purchase.

 

I would have walked the moment they didn’t deliver, vote with your feet (and money).

 

I would have except for the fact that this is the only option available via my company that benefits from Salary Sacrifice. For me that means a 40% saving on the lease cost so going private with someone else isn't an option unless I want to massively step down on car. For now I am willing to wait but being given false hope is more than a little infuriating. If from day one it had stated August I could have planned accordingly.

 

Ended up buying a 2018 Renault Zoe 40kWh with 22k miles (battery owned) as the 2nd car. Not great range at ~150 miles but enough for use as a run around town and a price similar to age/mileage petrol cars. Hopefully I don't regret it (well except the very manly purple it is)!

 

I'm sure you won't, the 2nd-gen Zoe is very well liked by a couple of people I know who have them. The purple is also a lovely colour, might be worth a bit-tech logo?

 

Might work!

Zoe by Spraduke posted 29 Apr 2023 at 22:17

 

Pic is private

 

That's awesome