I guess my gripe is down to the price of things these days. I cannot justify looking to buy a new car that costs £20k or £30k at all. If I had that sort of money I would either be paying it all off my mortgage. or buying a decent 2 or 3 year old car and using the rest to pay off my mortgage!!! Hybrids are woefully expensive, and their long term benefits to the customer are not that clear cut. I mean apart from the very high purchase price, what does servicing such cars entail, and what is it likely to cost after a few years?
Although many years ago now, I bought my 9-5 when it was 3 years old for £8500. The new price for that model was around £22k!!! I sold it after I'd had it 3 years for £2500. So in 6 years, that car was approaching only 10% of its original purchase price!!!
It was bad enough losing 6 grand on the car in depreciation, but at least I wasn't the one who could have lost over £19k had I bought it new.
And I couldn't afford it new either!!! It's all very well company car users bleating about this and that, but if you don't get a company car, you have to buy one yourself!!!! And for me, that will always mean buying a good second hand example that is maybe only a couple of years old, significantly cheaper than the equivalent new model, and still with warranty remaining on it.
Last year I invested in a 2 and a half year old Peugeot 107, that, even with lots of town driving turns in 50mpg, and with more A road and sensible motorway driving can turn in 55 - 60mpg. Road tax is 20 quid, and insurance very reasonable. Depreciation is also not as bad as you would think, with models much older than mine seemingly still going for prices not far off what I paid for mine (and main dealer examples of the same vintage as mine going for more than I even paid last year!!).
There are 3 of us in our department at work now who have these as our commuter transport (Aygo/107/C1), and there are even more in the car park belonging to other people.
There are other similar cars out there from Nissan, Kia, Hyundai, VW, Skoda etc, and Ford have announced a 1 litre 3 cylinder turbo engine in a Focus that turns in the performance of a 1.6, but with far superior economy. Vauxhall were doing a 1.4 turbo in the Insignia, and Saab had a 150bhp 1.6 turbo in the new 9-5. And Mazda have just announced they are pushing ahead with looking at more fuel efficient petrol engines.
For the sort of miles we do as a family, even a diesel is a waste of money, but a hybrid probably even more so.
Unleaded or LPG, lads......it's the way forward!!!!!!
