petrol-hybrid or plugin or

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
This why Tesla and Tesla Financial services buy a lot of their own cars back, to artificially inflate the residuals. Its also why he keeps banging on about robo taxis, its just another way of keeping the product from depreciating too heavily until the technology moves on. If you consider the first Tesla Roadster was unsupported a few years ago (it was only made between 2008-2012) and parts are no longer made for it it doesn't bode well for the 'electric future'.
Heavy depreciation is the same with any technology that is still developing rapidly. Think back to how much your first PC or laptop cost compared to the much better model that you would buy now. In time, electric cars will be sufficiently good that depreciation from technological improvements will tail off, but that is still a few years away.
 
Be aware that MBs warranty on the hybrid batteries is effectively worthless and they provide no goodwill, especially for cars with frequent short trips which they can identify
Far be it from me to defend MB, as I have a very dim view of their ethics and honesty, but our C350e has done almost exclusively short trips in the 4 years since we bought it, and based on my monitoring, is showing no signs of the battery capacity dropping off.

As far as them refusing to honour the warranty terms due to frequent short trips, unless that stipulation was made absolutely clear both at the time of purchase and in the manual (neither of which are true) then there is no way they'd get away with that.


And FWIW, to answer the original question, I’d go full EV. I’d happily do that for myself now in fact, had I not blown my cash buying the C350e
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Struggling to understand the logic of jumping from running bargain older cars to risking a very large lump of capital on a new, high risk, high tech car.

Isn't your more natural first step to replace the Picasso with a five year old, 30k mile crisp, high spec. Prius Hybrid for £7k that will give you 60mpg all day long ? As a station shuttle, it seems the obvious choice. As you probably know, the country is awash with Japanese one owner Prius imports - they literally fill fields while waiting for second owners.

Personally, I wouldn't give a Prius house room. When I do make the jump to electric, it'll be to a five year old Tesla S that has lost half its original sales price as a result of doing 50k miles, but which justifies its £30k used price by saving £3k a year on petrol and road tax. (But in a normal year I'm touring much greater distances and not using this as a station shuttle.)

033d745b20ca4a1db5a806467862e119.jpg


00fea65ad20847c5a3ce149211b12851.jpg
 
Last edited:
I've been toying with what to replace my Audi A6 with in a couple of years time as it will need to go back once it is 4 years old (it's on a lease). I've ruled out ever having another Audi given how poor this A6 has been.

I have been looking at hybrid / electric options, but have "more or less" concluded that (a) any desirable option is £££££ and (b) it feels like we are on the cusp of solid state batteries coming on in which will make all these lithium ion powered cars the equivalent of owning a Betamax video player in the 80s.

My current thinking is to replace my Audi with a simple, non premium brand petrol-engined vehicle. My current thought is a Mazda CX-5 2.0 petrol. Mazda don't turbo charge their engines so the technology is very simple. Buy one of those, run it for 5-7 years and then - hopefully - jump into a full electric car. Enjoy 5-7 years of simple motoring in a decent car that will do the job before going full EV. I don't see the point of a hybrid. Just seems needlessly complex for the minimal gain in economy.

I would hope that by that point, solid state batteries have come of age and the charging infrastructure will be in place. I can get a 20% discount of a brand new Mazda through work due to working for an affiliated company so a new one *might* make sense. Would buy rather than lease it this time round.

Just a few thoughts from me as I have been looking at options too, albeit in a couple of years time rather than now. Probably not massively helpful. But I guess my point is that sinking serious cash into any kind of EV / hybrid now feels like the wrong time as the technology is going to shift massively in the next 5 years.
 
Struggling to understand the logic of jumping from running bargain older cars to risking a very large lump of capital on a new, high risk, high tech car.

Isn't your more natural first step to replace the Picasso with a five year old, 30k mile crisp, high spec. Prius Hybrid for £7k that will give you 60mpg all day long ? As a station shuttle, it seems the obvious choice. As you probably know, the country is awash with Japanese one owner Prius imports - they literally fill fields while waiting for second owners.
i think we are on the same page here. I am keeping the r129 and losing the Picasso but rather drive something nice for my station trip. Sorry if that was not clear from my op.
 
i think we are on the same page here. I am keeping the r129 and losing the Picasso but rather drive something nice for my station trip. .....

Well, sir, can we put you into a nice five year old Tesla S 85D for £30k ?

Top tech design, build quality on a par with a Ford Mondeo, and powered purely from your home mains socket.

But.... what do you reckon to the giant Ipad on the dashboard?

100d-131.jpg




.
 
I've been toying with what to replace my Audi A6 with in a couple of years time as it will need to go back once it is 4 years old (it's on a lease). I've ruled out ever having another Audi given how poor this A6 has been.

I have been looking at hybrid / electric options, but have "more or less" concluded that (a) any desirable option is £££££ and (b) it feels like we are on the cusp of solid state batteries coming on in which will make all these lithium ion powered cars the equivalent of owning a Betamax video player in the 80s.

My current thinking is to replace my Audi with a simple, non premium brand petrol-engined vehicle. My current thought is a Mazda CX-5 2.0 petrol. Mazda don't turbo charge their engines so the technology is very simple. Buy one of those, run it for 5-7 years and then - hopefully - jump into a full electric car. Enjoy 5-7 years of simple motoring in a decent car that will do the job before going full EV. I don't see the point of a hybrid. Just seems needlessly complex for the minimal gain in economy.

I would hope that by that point, solid state batteries have come of age and the charging infrastructure will be in place. I can get a 20% discount of a brand new Mazda through work due to working for an affiliated company so a new one *might* make sense. Would buy rather than lease it this time round.

Just a few thoughts from me as I have been looking at options too, albeit in a couple of years time rather than now. Probably not massively helpful. But I guess my point is that sinking serious cash into any kind of EV / hybrid now feels like the wrong time as the technology is going to shift massively in the next 5 years.
@Eddy77 The technology is going to be shifting even more massively in 5 years time, as more players get involved with zero emission motoring. Development of solid state batteries isn't going to stagnate simply because a few cars get launched with the battery tech around the middle of the decade. You're still going to be facing the same risk in 5 years time that technology powering cars is evolving rapidly.

Regarding hybrids (or even plug in hybrids), depends upon your driving style and your daily routes. Plenty of gain in economy, whether it's a Toyota hybrid or a Passat PHEV.
 
That does make sense....which kind of begs the question as to how many people will want to actually BUY an EV in the future if the issue is the thing will be so out of date in a few years. Does that mean leasing or similar is the way forward in the future? But if that’s the case, leases will be expensive as the residual values will have to be priced accordingly low to reflect lack of desirability after five years.

We seem to be entering a new paradigm where cars will become more expensive due to battery tech but be redundant much sooner due to technological advancement. I think a lot of Mercedes owners have - historically at least - felt comfortable spending more on a merc as it would last and they’d get the value out of it. It feels like a £90k Porsche taycan will be pretty much worthless and pretty much redundant after 5 to 7 years. That’s a lot to swallow. Or am I missing the point? Anyway we have veered off topic...probably one for the EV forum!
 
Well the op wants rid of the Peugeot ,that I can understand,for me I would not buy a Mercedes electric car be it hybrid or plug in,my advice for the money thats available for a car is to buy a Mitsubishi Outlander Phev go for the 4 it has everything you want,as many will know Mitsubishi have pulled out of this country,this has effected second hand prices,you can buy a 2017 for around 16 grand,I have not heard of any horror stories about these cars and a friend swears by his and has had no problems to date.
 
To the OP, I went through this process earlier this year looking for a city runabout. Budget was less @ £7k and distances shorter but I just couldn't make the case for EV's or hybrids stack up and went for a tried and trusted petrol Fiat 500.

For your budget you could get a decent Up/Polo/Golf TSI or GTI.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom