Hybrid car drivers of Urban - advice please

[Zapp Brannigan]

Re chargers, I got an electrician in to put a weatherproof outdoor socket. My car can happily charge off a normal 13 amp socket. It cost me £100, was done same day, and took only about two hours.

Before spending a lot of money on a special charger check that the car needs one. They can be very expensive to put in.

That's good to know. Had a look and it's about £900 for a 5kw/h, whereas a good friend is a sparky so works for cost and beer

 

[dessiato]

That's good to know. Had a look and it's about £900 for a 5kw/h, whereas a good friend is a sparky so works for cost and beer

Talk to him. A friend of mine with a PHEV was quote about £1k but an electrician put in an outside socket, like mine, but he's got a timer to take advantage of overnight cheap power. Cost about £200

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

Well, test drives done. The Skoda was the lowest mileage and the cheapest, but preferred how it looked and felt compared to the Passat, so an easy winner between the 2. Decided that the Merc was just that little bit too expensive too.

So of course we've done the sensible thing, walking away to give ourselves 24 hours to mull over such a big financial decision... Oh who am I kidding, I just drove home in a lovely Skoda Superb

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

An update, on the off-chance that one day someone looks up this thread as a public info thing.

Charging at the gym is rate limited (by the car) to about 3.5-4kW; about 1.5 hours got half a battery full for the princely sum of £2.30.

Home charging (3 pin) took 4.5-5 hours from empty to full. The smart meter went up by £4.80 in that time (daytime), but there was also washing and cooking happening so best guesstimate would be £3.50ish for a full charge.

Driving on full electric has been a touch disappointing. With it being so cold, that limits range; plus running the heater & other electric gubbins, be lucky to get 20 miles out of a charge.

But, driving in hybrid mode is an absolute revelation. Town driving, every journey in excess of 40mpg. A-road journey to and from the gym, 100mpg. Plus it's really easy to switch between maximum efficiency mode and battery conservation, where only a bit of fuel efficiency is sacrificed for regeneration (which works much better than I expected so far, puts 5-10% on very quickly when doing e.g. 50mph stop-start between roundabouts). All told it should be quite easy to do all our driving on 1-2 charges per week without an over-reliance on the ICE.

It helps that the Superb lives up to its name. Ultra comfy and roomy, and put it in sport mode with max electric and ICE and it's really, really quick.

So far - 9/10, love it. Cheaper to run, cheaper to insure, and a whole lot nicer than my old (tired) Zafira - and it's still vaguely sensible. The 1 point off isn't for the electric range, it's because I parked it next to a Mercedes CLA yesterday and the Merc is just so pretty in comparison!

 

[Silas Loom]

Well, test drives done. The Skoda was the lowest mileage and the cheapest, but preferred how it looked and felt compared to the Passat, so an easy winner between the 2. Decided that the Merc was just that little bit too expensive too.

So of course we've done the sensible thing, walking away to give ourselves 24 hours to mull over such a big financial decision... Oh who am I kidding, I just drove home in a lovely Skoda Superb

Lovely, but I hope you haggled until they started weeping and saying you were taking bread from their children’s mouths.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

Lovely, but I hope you haggled until they started weeping and saying you were taking bread from their children’s mouths.

Haggled my ass off. Got £500 off the sticker price, and significantly more than the "webuyanycar" valuation of the old rustbucket in part ex (despite it being a bit of a state, no way would WBAC have given the full whack once they saw it).

 

[Riklet]

Sounds like a good choice then! I drove a Skoda Fabia DSG in Portugal recently it was really decent. And before that a Skoda Scala which looked like an estate but not sure it was. Both petrol. Both really premium feel and nice to use. Not hybrid though.

For anyone else looking this year, I would buy a 2019 onwards Toyota Corolla hybrid, loads of options whatever your budget. Even as low as 10k. The hybrid technology is the most tried and tested out of any manufacturer and better made than all of the others. You won't regret it.

 

[A380]

We have a 7 plate prius, and my mum has a 17 plate Toyota ( now called Corolla again) estate on a 17 plate. Same drive train . You get a genuine 50 mpg from these self charging hybrids. I’d say you couldn’t go wrong with an Auris/Corola hybrid Estate.

 

[Chz]

Worth saying that the Toyota hybrid system is excellent and works well in the Yaris, Corolla, etc but the Prius is really engineered from the ground up for the maximum possible efficiency. It's a fair bit more frugal than any of their other models. While the Corolla can very easily hit the mid-50s, 80 isn't unheard of for the Prius.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

We have a 7 plate prius, and my mum has a 17 plate Toyota ( now called Corolla again) estate on a 17 plate. Same drive train . You get a genuine 50 mpg from these self charging hybrids. I’d say you couldn’t go wrong with an Auris/Corola hybrid Estate.

There are about 10 Corolla estates for sale for every Passat, Superb or Leon - Toyota have been ahead of the hybrid game for such a long time since the original Prius.

The main reason I didn't consider them is more of a me problem than a Toyota problem - almost every taxi round here is a Corolla, and almost every car I saw for sale had been doing 15-20k+ miles per year. I was comparing 23 plate Toyotas with 21 plate everything else, same mileage; newer is obviously better in most circumstances, but the majority were living hard lives.

 

[Chz]

I have to admit, we ruled out getting a Kia Niro because we didn't want other drivers to think we were a minicab.

 

[A380]

There are about 10 Corolla estates for sale for every Passat, Superb or Leon - Toyota have been ahead of the hybrid game for such a long time since the original Prius.

The main reason I didn't consider them is more of a me problem than a Toyota problem - almost every taxi round here is a Corolla, and almost every car I saw for sale had been doing 15-20k+ miles per year. I was comparing 23 plate Toyotas with 21 plate everything else, same mileage; newer is obviously better in most circumstances, but the majority were living hard lives.

I had a Auris estate before the midlife crisis mobile - some idiot drove in the back of me whilst definitely not on their phone. I brought my mum’s for her. Both came from main dealers and I could check the milage via the mot history. Get a private owned low milage one and have years of boring but cheap comfortable motoring. The estate looks ok too, especially you go for the window tints…

I also have an E330 M Sport plug in hybrid. It really does drive like a 3l ICE and I get about the same MPG as my mum’s Auris but I am a bit anal about always plugging it in to charge. And I can get two matchboxes in the boot if I pack carefully…