Where to buy a car?

These crossovers are worse to drive, less fuel efficient, much less spacious inside, and uglier than estate cars.

Get yourself a wagon, Skoda Octavia estate if I were you

Don't want to own a car again, but if I do it'll be electric.

Considering a Renault Zoe (52kWh version) for about £10k (Cargiant has a 2020 with ~30k on the clock for that price). £2k deposit and 48 monthly payments of ~£220.

We're currently using a lot of Zipcars (closing in on £200 a month) as it is mostly ferrying child around for training and matches for both cricket and football. We love public transport but a whole bunch of journeys are just not feasible with public transport or turn a ~30 minute car journey into a 1h30 public transport gamble.

Capacity: Seems fine. There's only 3 of us, and occasionally a large cricket bag. Could also easily give a lift to one or two of her mates to a cricket/football game. If we go away to stay somewhere it should be big enough for a couple of suitcases.

Range: Claims ~190 miles but more like 130 in cold weather. That should be fine as the furthest we realistically have to go is Liphook return (so ~90 miles). The journeys further than that are in-laws (280 miles each way) which we would either do by train or rent an ICE car for.

Charging: We don't have off street parking but luckily on-street parking isn't a problem near us. There's a lamppost next to the parking bay outside the house that we can apply to have converted to a charger. The only people that usually park in the bay are our upstairs and downstairs neighbours, and they'll be good about leaving a spot either side of it free, and there's space for all 4 cars (one upstairs, two downstairs, ours if we get it) in the bay. For a faster charge there's a set of 4 chargers (35kW?) 300 yards up the road that would be easy for us to use as they only usually have one or two in use at any time. 5kW charger would charge the car fully overnight. 35kW charger would be under two hours, easy for me to do whilst I WFH.

Costs:

• Parking permit is £150 for a EV in Wandsworth.
  
• Insurance should be relatively cheap. We used to pay <£250/year for our last car (1.1L Saxo) fully comp
  
  

(We'll see about whether daughter gets to learn to drive in it in 3 years' time.)

Don't really give a shit about the drive. It's a run around. Don't care about Sat Nav, Climate Control, etc. Our last car was a 2001 Saxo where the height of its functionality was electric windows.

Given we're spending ~£200 a month on Zipcars it makes sense to me to just go for a cheap EV instead. As I said, I really don't want to own another ICE if I can avoid it.

Basically the Zoe is the cheapest EV on cargiant and it seems to fit 99% of our requirements without costing ££££.

You can get a Nissan e-nv200 5-seat version, 40kwh battery (same range roughly) for that price which is considerably more practical. I drive the van version and love it.

Insurance should be relatively cheap. We used to pay <£250/year for our last car (1.1L Saxo) fully comp

It'll probably be twice that now or more, depending when that was. Would double check.

With the Zipcars I assume you were signed up to the 'Plus' membership scheme for the best frequent user rates?

You probably want to check the insurance. Despite me having another year of No Claims each year (starting from zero) and no change of circumstances my insurance has pretty much doubled in the past 4 years.

If you're very low mileage then there is a mileage point at which the higher emissions in manufacturing an EV aren't offset by the usage emissions (and the increased weight means they are a bit worse for other emissions) but that probably is less of an issue for second hand.

With the Zipcars I assume you were signed up to the 'Plus' membership scheme for the best frequent user rates?

Yep, £22.50/mo for a joint membership and that appears as a driving credit each month. Most of the cars we get are just £6/h.

Good points about the insurance I'd do a speculative quote before we actually bought anything. Being old has its benefits. Last car insurance was only 2 years ago...

@l_fignon completely agree with @lemonade here, SUVs are god awful cars, externally massive but with surprisingly little space inside. Fuel consumption levels and emissions are real bad, too, on average, worse than other "big" cars like a 7 seater, which would actually have tons of space. Was never keen on SUVs, but as I started my own search for a more spacious car I had a look at them as they are everywhere and ended up even more puzzled as per why people keep buying them. Or maybe not, Freud had that one sussed out over 100 years ago. Estate or MPV are the way to go for space.

@Greenbank Kia Soul is another cheaper electric model and has good interior space and boot. Less popular than the Zoe but if you find one you can get quite a bit more car for your money. Again, range is pretty bad, but not dissimilar to the Zoe; if you're used to having to pick up Zipcars etc I can see how the regular on-street charging palava wouldn't necessarily be any worse.

Kia Soul

Thanks, but I know I said Don't really give a shit about the drive. It's a run around. but I couldn't see myself in a Kia Soul. Looks too much like the Renault Kangoo my dad drives. Same for that Nissan e-nv200. I want something that looks like a normal compact/small car (which also rules out the pseudo-SUV things like the MG ZS*).

* Although I've got a feeling that Mrs GB is going to say she prefers something like the MG ZS over a Zoe...

Crunched the numbers on the last three months of recent Zipcar usage. We're currently running around £200 a month, which is less than car costs would be (~£300) so we're sticking with Zipcar at the moment.

What does £200 look like in number of trips?
Our use would, at best/worst amount of having to use zip car, 7 trips a week.
Which is starting to look like (even if we use a business account) a fucking lot of money.

A typical month could be something like:
Mon: 4h (5pm-9pm) = £30 every two weeks
Thu: 2h (7pm to 9pm) = £12 every week
Sat: 5h (11am to 4pm) = £50 plus a bit more for fuel as likely to be >60 miles, once a month
Sun: 5h (8am to 1pm) = £50 every two weeks

(Note the weekend prices are more per hour than midweek. Also some trips I'm happy with the cheaper £6/hr car rather than a £7.50/hr car that is better for a longer trip.)

We went for the Zipcar Plus membership (first member pays £15/month and second pays £7.50/month, and you get that as credit to use each month.)

If all went well ours might be
Mon 2 hours
Wed 4 hours
Thurs 2 hours
Fri 4 hours
Sun 2 hours

OK, so that's about £110 a week. (12 * £7.5 + 2 * £10). You could get it ~£18 cheaper if you used a £6/hour car (depending on your area) during the week.

That's ouch inducing.

Is autotrader/rac/aa best places to sell a car? Have had mine on auto trader (no bites) and facebook (scammers everywhere) for a couple of weeks and so seeing where else best to advertise (live in Shropshire otherwise would put on here instead)

What is it? I visit that way fairly often.

VW polo 1.2, 2014 but 55k mileage. Cat N as the bonnet had to be replaced but never had any issues.

I can dm the ad link as don’t want to breach the forum rules.

I always list on Gumtree alongside eBay/AA and actually sold our last two vehicles there. It's also free to list, and lots of Cat N / Cat S listed.

I’d forgotten about gumtree, will try that too, thanks!

For context, my car is probably in the region of £2-2.5k a year (£10k purchase price over 10 years {although hopefully it will last longer than that} plus insurance, MOT, occasional trip to garage, etc) plus about 10p a mile petrol.

Yeah I’ve got about £2k in savings, so trying to find something where that buys outright or makes the finance affordable.
Petrol, estate,ulez. Pref auto

So, I'm off to go look at a car this weekend.
I've checked out the MOT history. If there are advisories, which there, for a prior MOT if they don't appear in the latest MOT do I assume they've been fixed or not?
eg
nov 23 - parking brake efficiency only just met

but doesn't show up in nov 24

Yes

Perfect. Thanks.