re: EV vs Petrol for long-term city usage Quote:
Originally Posted by GoBabyGo Hello Everyone,
I am looking for a second car for my office daily commute (65km per day). The car will always be driven solo (99.9% times) and once in 6 months or a year I may have to drop back one of my colleague, but that is rare. This is my experience over the last 5 years in my current job. My legal retirement is 10 years later and hence I am taking 10 years life of my second car which I am planning to buy. My current monthly expense on fuel is Rs.11000/- and If I buy EV, it will be reduced to around Rs.2500/-.
My existing car is 5 years old Honda City VMT (covered 63000km), which I will continue to use for social gatherings and long distance travel and will keep it for next 10 years too. My budget for new car is 9-12 lacs onroad Delhi / Noida. My requirement is automatic and I am okay with sedan or compact SUV. I am mentally prepared to sell / scrap both my cars after 10 years from now (at the time of my retirement) and will buy whatever suit me at that time.
Over the last 2 months, I have done some reading on EV in India and on the basis my reading in this forum, I found that most of the members are not very comfortable buying EV right now due to lot of uncertainties about longevity of EVs currently on sale and also about charging infrastructure. Beside, currently it is not very clear if current gen of EVs are niggle free in long run e.g. after 2 years from now (after covering 50k km or more).
However, I have done some excel working comparing EVs with almost similar sized & priced Petrol AT cars which confused me more.
If I go basis excel sheet, for strictly city drive buying an EV make sense due to cost I save, if I keep the EV car for longer duration eg. 10 years. The current gen EVs may look outdated after 2 years or so, but that is the case with ICE cars too.
Frankly I am confident about the longevity of the EVs on sale in India right now. I feel that Tiago EV, Nexon EV, MG ZS EV etc. will last 2 lacs km easily without any trouble. Charging at home is available and there is no issue in getting public charging within NCR so charging my EV will never be an issue.
I am currently waiting for Punch EV launch and after discussing my close friend who run a Tata showroom (in some other city), he is not sure if Punch EV will launch so soon (I am expecting July 2023 launch).
Since Team-BHP is read by millions of people, I would like to have BHPians opinion whether people like me who want to buy a second car for home for strictly city run (& within budget of under 12 lacs), should go for Tata EV (Tiago / Punch) or wait for another year or so for more EVs from other manufacturers. Frankly I am not expecting major EVs from other manufacturers before middle of 2025.
Dear Moderator - Please merge this thread with relevant thread, if a fresh thread on this topic is not required
PS - Prices mentioned in attached files are taken from carwale.com and Delhi onroad price as per carwale.com website. |
I just bought the EV Max and it’s amazing how similar your buying predicament is to mine.
Here’s how I went about it. I wanted to buy a car that will last me 10 years. The predicament was whether to buy yet another ICE car or switch to EV. Coming from a Civic automatic it became clear to me that I will not do a downgrade in terms of a) cabin refinement and b) ease of driving. I also wanted the choice to fit within a budget of 20L. I really didn’t put total cost of ownership as a criterion because that always muddies the water.
My choices zeroed down to
1) Nexon EV Max
2) Hyundai Verna Automatic
3) Honda City automatic
I skipped the hybrid bandwagon because all hybrids compromise boot space (hyrider, city…) I also skipped the Skoda Kushaq and Taigun as I did not want to choose from stables that have 1% market share. I’ve had enough with my Matiz and Opel purchases and wanted to play it safe.
Hyundai Verna was very tempting. Definitely an upgrade to my ageing 2007 Civic and still keep me in Sedan category. City seemed like a downgrade from a Civic and quite frankly the Honda story in India is only going south.
That left me with the Nexon EV. Gave me the best of both worlds - a) a proven platform which has done duty in ICE format and continues to sell in droves and b) an EV setup that met my requirement of range, cabin refinement, ease of driving and appealing to my green leanings.
Now, having lived with it for 2 weeks, a lot of my thought process stands validated. The car is super refined ( remember, you have to go a segment or two up to see those refinement levels in the ICE world) it is super easy to drive and certainly most easy to charge and park at home.
After hearing your requirement I have no doubt in recommending the Nexon EV for you. Even if you choose the 30kw version you should be fine. Go for it! |