George has moved from a Vauxhall Astra Van 1600cc (LPG) to a BMW i3 60Ah.

Via our survey, ‘Past, Present & Future’, we want to understand peoples’ respective car ownership stories. With the current climate crisis, there’s never been a greater need for emission-free driving yet at the same time, people are facing rising (and record) energy & general living costs.

This could ultimately change what car & fuel type a lot of people choose next. Also, we are very mindful that not everyone is on the road to electric so we wanted to highlight some of the more diverse & interesting feedback we’ve received.

Tell us about your Vauxhall Astra Van

The Vauxhall Astra Van was fine for the time. LPG is a cleaner fossil fuel with less emissions and the performance and cost were OK at the time so there was nothing I disliked about the Vauxhall Astra Van.

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Tell us about your BMW i3

This is without doubt the best electric car in its sector. It’s great to drive, very well engineered and a futuristic design with great safety features. The performance of the early i3 is better in acceleration than some later ones as it is lighter with a smaller battery.

The i3 holds as much as the Vauxhall Astra Van, with better accessibility due to the side opening doors. The flat load area is ideal. In 8 years and over 50,000 miles my total ‘fuel’ cost has been less than £100 because I charge almost exclusively at home from solar with battery storage.

There is nothing I dislike about this car. I love it.

If you had to choose your next car today, what would it realistically be and why?

Well actually we already have a ‘next’ car as we now have a Fiat 500e in the family as my wife wanted a small car & having had a petrol Fiat 500 before. The Fiat 500e is an excellent small EV. It’s nowhere near as sophisticated as the BMWi3 but it seems to be popular.

My next EV would need to be something that could tow a decent weight, say 3,500kg, to replace my existing tow car. There is nothing on the market at present that will do that. The BMW iX is the nearest at 2,500kg but the ones I have my eye on are the Rivian and the Ford F150 pick up; not least because they seem to be embracing the concept of having the vehicle as a power source with 230v sockets etc. We shall see…

Let us know your car ownership story by completing our ‘Past, Present & Future’ survey HERE