Looking on Autotrader, there's many more cars just outside budget rather than just inside it, so waiting a year or so would bring up more options including a lot of cars with far more usable ranges. If the OP is planning to keep it long term, a car with a 300 mile range that detiorates to 200 miles over time as the battery degrades is a much better proposition than one with a 120 mile range that only does 80 miles on a good day as it gets older.

The Fabia won't be worth much, so if it still works why not hold onto the Fabia for another couple of years to get a much wider choice (or if the Fabia is really on its way out, buy something slightly newer as a stop-gap)?

Don't forget to budget for at least one replacement battery pack, possibly two if you are going to keep it for ten years.

Where have you got that statistic from?

EV battery failure rate is less than expectations, probably about the same as engine failure rate in IC cars.

Thanks. Hadn’t heard anything bad about the i3 yet but I’ll look deeper. The one I linked to, 2017 94ah would probably be about the best I could do from used approved. I am 6’ 2" so dunno if I’ll fit in an Auris. I don’t fit in a Prius.

"Prius batteries eventually fail."

I'm sure I've said this before, but my trusted indie says most Prius battery "failures" are not complete failures - just the failure of one or two cells, which apparently can be swapped out - presumably at a cost of less than £1200.

But no doubt there comes a point where a lot of cells start to fail together.

Edited by FP on 05/11/2020 at 23:24

I do not understand why EVs, e.g. Nissan Leaf, are still so much more expensive than ICE vehicles. Electric motors are not expensive and the cost of batteries should be dropping exponentially like solar panels did. The Leaf has been around for ten years now, yet the price is much the same as when it was first invented, well over £10K more than an equivalent nonEV. In 1910 the Model T Ford was $900 but by 1920 the price had fallen to less than $400 (Wikipedia). Admittedly much of this was increased production efficiency, but even so....

Like all things to do with cars, and many other products, pricing is dependent on customer demand not cost of production - EV advocates claim that the total cost of running an EV is lower than an IC car because the fuel/power cost is less, so the manufacturers can increase the purchase price.

I do not understand why EVs, e.g. Nissan Leaf, are still so much more expensive than ICE vehicles. Electric motors are not expensive and the cost of batteries should be dropping exponentially like solar panels did. The Leaf has been around for ten years now, yet the price is much the same as when it was first invented, well over £10K more than an equivalent nonEV. In 1910 the Model T Ford was $900 but by 1920 the price had fallen to less than $400 (Wikipedia). Admittedly much of this was increased production efficiency, but even so....

Simple, if people will pay X amount of money for a Leaf, Nissan are not going to reduce the price due to it actually being cheaper to make them now. Why would they?, that would mean less profit!. As for rivals, pretty much the same, they look at how much money Nissan can get away with charging, that folk will pay, and charge a similar amount.

If what you say is correct, probably the only way to get manufacturers to bring the price down inline with what they cost to make would be some highly publicised report documenting how much profit is being made (relative to an ICE car). Even then, not sure that would make much difference given how few people choose to actually buy a car, rather than ‘renting’ one for two or three years at huge cost. I’m thinking of the recent post regarding someone looking for a replacement for a double cab pickup, someone apparently willing to pay up to £600 per month, plus VAT (£720).