Just having a flick through some forums I regularly visit including this one this evening... Too many points I'd like to reply to and not enough time.

So I'll just say that I can easily add several hundred miles range to most LPG vehicles for a few hundred quid by fitting a second LPG tank. Which can make having to drive a bit out of the way to refuel with LPG at decent prices instead of petrol even more worth it.

There will come a time when the only vehicles on the road run on batteries (electric), LPG, CNG or (maybe) hydogen when petrol and diesel are not available. Perhaps too late for most here to care.. But I will be among the last to run a vehicle with an internal combustion engine.

LPG is a product of oil and methane extraction 60% and oil refinery 40%. Oil is needed to produce plastic. While we make plastic or extract natural gas we make LPG. If every forecourt that sells petrol and diesel closes I can still buy bottled LPG. Whilever gas is piped to homes I can run a car on CNG (I can buy or make a compressor and refuel at home). It is possible to make carbon neutral and synthetic LPG, they are available at forecourts already.

I don't mind spending 5 or 10 minutes at forecourts but I would never pretend that a necessary forecourt visit is in any way productive or enjoyable. I would not enjoy spending 30minutes recharging an EV anywhere except at home and a necessary stop for a charge could be no more productive than making a phone call or replying to emails from a layby.

Gilbertd wrote:

I was under the impression that it was all new builds from sometime this year had to have an EV charge point, no idea if it has been pushed back or not. I like new builds with good insulation, I'm installing AC systems in peoples new build houses as it gets too hot in the bedrooms as soon as the sun comes out.....

your right new builds and major renovation projects have to have ev change points built think it was the 15th of this month even some commercial property's have to have them now

Gilbertd wrote:

I was under the impression that it was all new builds from sometime this year had to have an EV charge point, no idea if it has been pushed back or not. I like new builds with good insulation, I'm installing AC systems in peoples new build houses as it gets too hot in the bedrooms as soon as the sun comes out.....

I guess my definition of "Newbuild" is becoming stretched as we've been here for four years now! :)

A lot of this stuff seems shabolically managed at a government level

A colleague moved into a newbuild last year. The developer was "forced" to install a EV charging point (presumably by the local authority as part of the planning permission?) so had fitted a single 13A socket in the garage with a dymo label stuck on it saying "EV Charging". Personally, fitting the charger itself is unneccesary, but what should be mandated is the circuit and cabling be installed and routed from the DB to the front of the house. That way if someone gets an EV, its a simple job to affix the box to the wall and energise the circuit, rather than having to start bashing holes in the house to run cables.

The government seem to have made the big shiney policy announcement banning ICE, but havent actually tackled the proper day to day stuff that needs to happen. They should have been implementing policy changes years ago around ensuring charging points are installed in all new developments, be that residential or commercial. Some LA's have taken it upon themselves to enforce rules on a somewhat adhoc basis, but it really needs a proper joined up view. Motorway charging provision is also a complete mess, because they allowed Ecotricity to sew up the whole MSA network with exclusivity agreements, and then not put any actual effort into expanding the network. Its finally getting better now as Ecotricity sold up to Gridserve (which in hindsight was presumably the plan all along, get everyone locked in, use money from Nissan and the EU to install the first few chargers, and then sit on it until someones going to buy it out for the big bucks) but they're now behind the curve in effect as sales are exploding and the network hasnt changed in about 5 years.

I'd probably be very happy to drive a Tesla and I was interested enough until I priced one up. Eeek. Now I can't see the point. I just don't do enough miles to save any money. Once I start my new job which is 100% WFH then there will be no point at all! If I was one of those people who leases a car and changes every three years because I can't be seen dead in last year's model... then maybe.

I get sent a Parkers email newsletter every so often and I don't know how, or indeed why, people pay the sort of money these deals cost. £400 a month and up unless you are happy to drive something marginally larger than, and about as useful as, a shopping trolley. £400 is about what I'm spending at the moment replacing my gearbox but that is, hopefully, a once in a lifetime expense. If I was to run on petrol and it was £2 a litre, £400 would buy me 200 litres, or 44 gallons. Even at 20mpg, that's still enough for 880 miles. Not that it would matter as most of these deals seem to be capped at 8,000 miles a year. I honestly don't understand it, if I was spending that kind of money every month I'd expect to be able to drive as often and as far as I wanted.

Morat wrote:

I'd probably be very happy to drive a Tesla and I was interested enough until I priced one up. Eeek. Now I can't see the point. I just don't do enough miles to save any money. Once I start my new job which is 100% WFH then there will be no point at all! If I was one of those people who leases a car and changes every three years because I can't be seen dead in last year's model... then maybe.

I mean some people do just finance a car, be it new or nearly new, every few years. And if your already in that cycle, then EV clearly has massive benefits.

I wasnt in that cycle, but got my first EV ~5 years ago when i realised the money i was spending in diesel every month would pay for the car. Total monthly spend went up very slightly, but i went from driving a 11 year old BMW and having to deal with repairs and maintenance myself, to driving a 0 year old Merc with new everything and a warranty.

Gilbertd wrote:

I get sent a Parkers email newsletter every so often and I don't know how, or indeed why, people pay the sort of money these deals cost. £400 a month and up unless you are happy to drive something marginally larger than, and about as useful as, a shopping trolley. £400 is about what I'm spending at the moment replacing my gearbox but that is, hopefully, a once in a lifetime expense. If I was to run on petrol and it was £2 a litre, £400 would buy me 200 litres, or 44 gallons. Even at 20mpg, that's still enough for 880 miles. Not that it would matter as most of these deals seem to be capped at 8,000 miles a year. I honestly don't understand it, if I was spending that kind of money every month I'd expect to be able to drive as often and as far as I wanted.

How many people are prepared to jack up their car and change a brake pad, never mind a gearbox? For most people, a car is essentially an appliance. They want to get in, drive to where they're going with minimal faff. If it breaks, its an expensive trip to the garage, so you want to avoid that (typically by purchasing one new enough, from a main dealer, with a warranty). The mileage cap is almost always adjustable, it just costs more. You are essentially paying the cost of depreciation, and a higher mileage vehicle is worth less at the end of the term and thus costs more over the term. The advertisements want to paint things in the best light possible so clearly pick a lower figure (i've seen many showing 5k!). That said, 8000miles a year is apparently about average in the UK.

If you cant afford a newish car on finance, you buy something old/cheap, but then get absolutely reamed on repair costs. I've known quite a few folk who have run older cars, got hit by a £1000 "MOT" and then went and sold it and leased something new. Costs are fixed and predictable etc etc.

The middle ground is even worse. you buy a 6-8 year old used car for 15 or 20 grand. Its now worth enough that you cant readily bin it if it goes wrong, but its old enough that it inevitably will go wrong, often in an expensive manner.

I think you're both right, but the audience here really isn't at the Appliance end of the market. I'm happy to perform minor generic tasks like oil, brakes, filters etc. The bravest I've got on my own was doing the front universal joints on the axles on my Jeep (easy, if time consuming).

Depreciation is the absolute killer, though. Spending £15k in a year on depreciation just strikes me as vanity. For the amount of miles I do it'd probably be cheaper just to use Uber!

I get the argument but it's just the monthly costs that seem ridiculous to me, particularly for a lease deal where you spend the best part of £5k a year and don't even own it at the end. OK, so with an EV you aren't paying road tax (I think) but you still need to pay the electricity bill and insurance on top of the payments.

As a comparison, my fixed costs are £25 a month road tax and £74 insurance (admittedly for a trade policy that covers me for an unlimited number of vehicles so probably more than most pay), so call it £100 a month or £1200 a year. That means I would need to spend £3,800 on repairs before it's costing me more than leasing a new car. If I didn't do any of the work myself, I still think I would be quids in paying someone else to do it. I suppose the main difference to the way I think in that I have never bought a car on finance, I reserve that option for property. I've got 2 buy to let houses and the mortgage on each of them is around the same as leasing or doing a finance deal on a new car and instead of having nothing at the end of it, there's the best part of £200k, and rising, equity in them when I choose to sell them.

It depends on your disposable income I guess...

I've bought old cars that are knackered and repaired them, I've bought old cars that work for very little, I've financed middle aged cars (3 or 4 years old) and I've bought brand new cars.

Old cars that are broken I buy as a project because I enjoy tinkering, I've bought cars that not many people want that are old but working as I've fancied them.

4 years ago I bought a 4 year old Jaguar XFR on finance despite being able to pay it off at point of purchase. Several reasons for that were considered that made low interest finance appealing:

1. What would be the market for a 7-8 year old 5.0 Supercharged Petrol.
2. We were having extensive renovations done on the house at the time and I didn't want to spend all my cash.
3. It's quite nice to know that should the arse fall out of the used car market, you've got the option to walk away from the car at the end of the agreement.

Turns out that my car did well on its residuals and at the end of the finance term I paid it off.

I've also bought brand new cars on finance. I was working full time in an office and didn't have time for tinkering with cars at the time. Having a brand new car that was something a bit out of the ordinary and was covered by a full manufacturers warranty was a comfort.

These days we tend to keep my wife's car fairly new (currently 5 years old but likely to be changed next year) as she uses it daily. My L322 is now 14 years old but has just undergone extensive restoration, my XFR is 8 years old and my other cars are all over 20 years old.

My folks have recently bought a new Jaguar I-Pace. They weren't going down the finance route but the day they placed their order Jaguar had introduced a 0% finance offer which made financing it a no brainer as it's free money.

They've recently completed a journey of nearly 800 miles in the I-Pace. In the 4.4 TDV8 L322 that would be been 2 tanks of fuel. 2 x 105 litre tanks at nearly £2 a litre would have probably been in the region of £360. Granted they could have taken the P38 on LPG which is still 70p a litre around here but you can't always rely on being able to get LPG and I also don't particularly enjoy long trips in the P38, I find the L322 a far more enjoyable place to spend the time. In the I-Pace this round trip cost them around £84 on electricity via public chargers which are akin to buying fuel at motorway services. At home the cost to charge is around £11 to do 250 miles. A 30 minute coffee stop on a rapid charger is enough to get it back up to 90% charge and carry on your journey too. It's taken them a bit of adjusting to as they used to do a journey all in one go, however, it's a civilised way of driving and forces people to take a break - a bit like a taco does for HGV's I guess. I wasn't 100% convinced when they bought it but having spent a fair bit of time with it if I started doing long trips I'd have one in a heart beat.

When I bought my XFR from Jaguar in Mayfair the salesman told me that he gets people buying cars whose salaries read like telephone numbers on their finance applications. Some of them a brand new Jaguar XJ was significantly under 25% of their annual income but they were financing them. Some people prefer to have the money earning them money rather then being tied up in a depreciating asset and I can understand that.

So... from the point of view of someone who has and does own cars at all ends of the spectrum, it's about finding out what works for you and what you're comfortable with I guess.

David.