Question about buying a car

[juanes]

Currently have an 06 Civic. It's been a good servant and tbh if I put about a grand into it would probably go a while longer but it chugs even after a spark plug change and burns oil like mad also everything inside is old and doesn't work properly. A few other things wrong with it also. I'm looking to get a new car and having just bought a house last year we don't have enough savings to buy outright so will have to finance it.

To get something decent petrol you'd have to be spending 8-10k which is 45e a week with the CU. I currently put about 45-50e a week Petrol into the car so have been looking in to getting an electric car. I can get a 2021 Peugeot e-208 for about 17,000 which would cost me 80e a week in the CU. But I wouldn't be spending 50 a week on petrol instead from what I can gather it would be about 8-9e a week on electricity. Plus cheaper tax, insurance maintenance..

Am I an idiot whos just talking himself into a nice car or am I talking sense here?

We earn 67k a year between us, mortgage is 850 a month. No other loans.

 

[tentmaker17]

@juanes We bought an EV 2 months ago and got the wall charger installed at the house exactly a month ago. Currently on energia's EV plan where it costs 8c per unit between 2am and 6am. According to the app here, in that month, we have spent 39 euro charging the car. Before that we spent 150-200 per month on diesel.

So for us it's been fantastic. We also have solar panels and got our most recent bill today, 15th Jan to 15th March, including a month of car charging and the total bill was 149 euro. So less than a month's worth of diesel for 2 months electricity and 1 month car charging. Can't argue with that

 

[sdknujy36]

@tentmaker17 Was that 149 before or after the government €150 credit was applied?

 

[tentmaker17]

@sdknujy36 It was before! We ended up getting 1.40 credited to our account

 

[sdknujy36]

@tentmaker17 Nice!

 

[tentmaker17]

@sdknujy36 Thanks. As someone who is usually quite difficult to please, i am very happy with the setup so far. Long may it continue

 

[resjudicata]

@tentmaker17 How much to install a charger?

 

[juanes]

@resjudicata We got the grant before Christmas when it was still €600 so will cost us approx €5-600

 

[tentmaker17]

@juanes Lucky you, we missed out on the full grant by about a week - didn't realise the rates were being reduced end of Dec

 

[juanes]

@tentmaker17 Yeah I just got lucky that I read an article on it in time. What EV did you buy out of interest?

 

[tentmaker17]

@juanes We only fully decided to get it on a whim really, having read an article on here. The plan was always to get one eventually after we got the solar panels installed and then decided, fuck it, let's move the plan forward a couple of years. So when looking at the grant we realised we pulled the trigger a week too late! Oh well...

We just got the bog standard range MG4 - it's going to be our daily "run around" to bring kids to school, go to the shops etc. Any long journeys and we have the other car to fall back on. As the new car is doing 90% of the driving now, we're already saving a fortune

 

[tentmaker17]

@resjudicata It depends on the charger. There are cheaper ones but as we have solar panels we went with the Zappi, as it integrates with the solar. It was 1,350 up front and then last week we got 300 back via the grant.

It's already saved us loads vs public chargers and way handier being able to plug in at home

 

[lovesredemption]

@tentmaker17 How much was the car?