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I think it may well cut down my driving, but I don't see it stopping it, and where I live, we can't walk to the shops! I am lucky that we will most likely be able to weather the cost of living storm, although it is hurting us - electricity has shot up, and my last lot of heating oil cost £567 compared to £350 just 3 months previously (and under £300 for the one before that). It's also good timing that my car (Leon Cupra) lease is up this month and I had already agreed to replace it with a Golf ehybrid, so hopefully my petrol consumption will decrease substantially.

We did go on a journey of 150 miles at the weekend and a bit of care saw over 40mpg, so there's scope for driving habits to ease the situation too. I did get the sense also that the M4 was quieter than usual and the average speed of traffic a touch lower, so perhaps it is having an impact on everyone's habits.

Fuel was cheaper in Buckinghamshire than here in South Wales as far as I could see...

 

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Back in 1992 I used to spend £50 a week on fuel to get to and from my place of work (driving over 100 miles a day). I was paid £150 for 5 days a week. I used to fit my car club (Ford Capri) social life around any overtime work at weekends, like going to club meets or the occasional show and then going back in to the office.

Mid 80's and I earned £10 a week from a Saturday job, £5 of which went on petrol in my Beetle and translated to well over half a tank! That got me to school and back every day, plus a bit of other driving around, and to work at the weekend, although it was pretty close some weeks.

 

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Not just you guys. Brexit was/is a shitshow but fuel prices are mental everywhere. I follow a page on Facebook (it's a spin-off from an American band fan page I followed that used to have lots of Republican/Democrat arguments so they created another page to talk politics) and they're having massive fuel price hikes too. I'm lucky that I have a company car and a DCI card (even though I'm taxed through the nose on my salary). 500 litres of heating oil cost me €720 about three weeks ago. That's mental.

That's proper mental oil pricing - what do you normally pay?

 

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As in an earlier post, I now have had my new Golf ehybrid for a couple of weeks, and so far it's working out quite well. However, with the rise in electricity prices, it's not such a clear cut difference now between running it on electric only and petrol - its 13kWh battery costs £5.20ish to fully charge, and on that I can do 35ish miles, which works out at nearly 15p a mile compared to about 17p a mile for petrol, assuming a generous 50mpg.

Did a fairly long journey (over 100 miles) on Tuesday in hybrid mode with a full charge and the overall mpg for that was 67, but the journey back yesterday with no charge saw only high 40s. To be fair I wasn't sparing the horses and it's still better than the Cupra could ever manage, so overall I am pretty pleased with it.

I do wish you could permanently turn off the Lane Assist though, on the narrow roads around here (even those that are 2 way) you have to cross the line a lot and having the steering fighting you all the time is disconcerting.

 

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The corolla hybrid we had for 18 months had lane assist and all the other bells and whistles modern cars had. Don't remember fighting with that on the narrow cumbrian roads.

Maybe fighting isn't the right word, it's just a disconcerting feeling through the steering, and I'd rather be able to turn it off permanently. I could try leaving it on and get used to it, I shall have to see.

I assume you haven't got a home charger? We have a 64kwh Hyundai Kona EV, solely home charging costs us £5.28 to fully charge from empty, and on that it'll do 270 miles at this time of year.

We had an ID3 before the Kona, ID3 is better to drive, but the Kona is definitely more efficient.

I don't have a home charger, am using the supplied lead that plugs into a 13A plug.I am a bit confused though, as a proper home charger would just supply a higher current and charge faster, but as you pay per kWh, you'd still pay the same?

 

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If you have an EV with home charger, you can get special EV electricity rates. I'm on Octopus Go Faster, between 9.30pm and 2.30am it costs 8.25p/kw.

I'll have to look into that - would make a big difference. If I charged every night at that rate, it would cost me just over £1 to "fill up" and would probably cover 99% of my daily mileage. I'd hardly need any petrol!