Got to have a poke at Cerberus here as well. A friend of mine is always poking me at how much he spends on electricity on his Tesla. My car didn’t cost £88k so I could run mine on Absolut vodka and still be better off ![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif)
Oh I think I'm winning. When the time arrived that I started looking at secondhand replacements for my car I discovered that, much to my surprise, there were quite a lot of plug-in hybrids on the market at sane prices. Last time I looked (perhaps a year ago) there was nothing on the secondhand market that I could afford (or at least wanted to pay for). What seems to have happened is that a lot of company car drivers opted for PHEVs because of the relatively mild benefit in kind taxation on PHEVs and those have now filtered onto the second hand market at sane prices.
I got lucky and found a pristine six year old BMW 330e at a local car dealers (within walking distance) at a much better price than I thought possible (<£15k) clearly previously owned by a "one man band" company director. Subsequent enquiries showed that he'd shut up shop last year (voluntary liquidation). It wasn't what I'd set out to look for, not by a long chalk, but after weighing things up I went and took a look and ended up buying it. The 20 odd miles it'll do purely on battery has turned out to be a near perfect fit with the local driving I do, no road tax, no environmental levy on my residents parking permit, surprisingly low service costs from official dealers (and my local lads I've been using for years will better that I'm sure), and 'cause I'm an old git with a good record, about as cheap insurance as it's possible to pay in London (a few hundred fully comp).
Standing costs are going to be a little less than the old car (Say £700 a year). I paid the same price for the old car 22 years ago as I just did for the 'new' one. The old car has cost me <£700 a year in depreciation (if I consider it written off completely), a bit more in standing costs (insurance, servicing, taxation) so perhaps £1700 a year in total, plus fuel. I don't feel that's a bad price for having it available 24/7 just by walking out of the door. The overall costs for the new car will be similar to the old, perhaps less perhaps more, when depreciation is taken into account. I personally would spend significantly more to use zipcar (the ones nearest me ATM are £10/hr or £94/day) plus taxis plus public transport with significantly less convenience. I'd spend more per week just to do the weekly "big shop" by taxi or zipcar. So for me it's a bargain worth making.