I can imagine a time when range anxiety was rare. Maybe an elderly couple living on a remote farm in North Wales had an oil-fired Aga – they were called ranges back in the day. Every autumn they would fret about whether the ageing boiler would last the winter.
Nowadays everyone, at least everyone with an electric car, is wondering whether they’ll be able to find a charging point before they run out of juice. Maybe there’s real danger too, if the battery dies does that mean your heating dies too? In cold weather that could be serious.
Neither my wife nor I have an electric car yet. We are still driving a frugal diesel bought when diesel was still seen as the eco-friendly option. Not that we were thinking about the environment particularly when we bought it. We paid around £12,500 for a second-hand Nissan Qashqai+2 which was 5 years old with a full-service history. It has been pretty solid, except for the front seats which are starting to sag.
Buttock-health aware, we recently thought about getting a petrol-electric hybrid – naturally wanting to avoid distance disquietude. But a vehicle of similar size would cost us between £30,000 and £40,000 new. Even second-hand they seem to start at £15,000, and then you’re worrying about the battery life. Am I missing something or are electric car prices as cosmic as the pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope?
Just look at the entry points: the Nissan Leaf, Vauxhaul Corsa-e, and Renault Zoe all start from £28,000+. The cheapest I could find – for the price of a normal car – was the new Citroen Ami at around £7,700. But it’s not really a car. It’s small, only 2 seats. And it’s slow, with a maximum speed of 28mph. To be fair it is considerably faster than most mobility scooters. I say most because apparently the fastest mobility scooter achieved 112mph according to Guinness World Records. That brings us back to range anxiety; the Ami can only go 43 miles before recharging. Seems like shrinkflation to me, what cars and Maltesers have in common.
So no. I’m not buying. Except cushions. Since it’s arguably greener to keep an old car running that’s what I’m going to do. Til death do us part. After all, I am concerned about the environment.