Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Electric Cars

I came close to buying an MG EV a couple of weeks ago and then started noticing the effect of stone chips on the bodywork of several cars; rust coming through on the bonnet, alarming amount of paint area lost around impact point, it was like a flashback to yesteryear.

I bought a mini instead, ironic?

IIRC the first (ICE?) MG's imported had a very poor NCAP crash rating

The self-charging hybrids give better fuel economy and better performance than a straight petrol. The smaller battery means less weight to lug around while still giving an instantaneous power boost to improve acceleration.

Ours is a 'supposed' self charging Hybrid but the results are negligible. We relied on petrol and self charge for the first few weeks and averaged about 55mpg, which is what you'd expect from a standard Golf 1.4 petrol engine. On a 100mile run to Worcester we managed to get about 6% charge into the battery which gave us about 1.5 miles worth of electric use.

Now we're charging twice a day, the average mpg is working up - after a total of 3000 miles, it's up to 129mpg which sounds good but doesn't take into account the cost of the charging (about £4.50 per day, but is getting about 60 electric miles out of that, so cheaper than petrol).

Looked at the PHEV version but £10k dearer than self charging hybrid so would never recover the petrol cost of £750pa (only averaging 4500 mile pa)

My son has just bought a 2014 Renault Zoe with 52k miles as a second car. Only £5.5k in VGC, FSH, long MOT, new tyres, etc. Although it is part of the unusual Renault battery lease scheme which costs £49 per month and you never wholly own the battery but in return the battery remains guaranteed.

The spec is remarkable; sat nav, rear camera etc. Range is 85-100 miles.

He has 8kW of solar and is on Octopus Go so can run it very cheaply.

I’m really interested to see how a 9 year old, cheap EV works out.

Do keep us up to date on that.

Certainly getting into the affordable price range for your average punter (who doesn't stray too far from home).

Good idea for two car family - larger petrol for longer journeys and small cheap EV for town/city/supermarket/local.

We may be at cross purposes here. I assume yours is a plug-in hybrid as opposed to a self-charging hybrid i.e. one that can't be charged from an external supply.

Unless you can keep Plug-in hybrids charged up for most of the time they're not really that efficient, as your own experience seems to have shown.

I've owned both types and am currently in the process of buying another self-charging hybrid. I wouldn't hesitate to go for another plug-in type but my current situation and driving pattern doesn't suit.