Should you buy a Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid or Electric (EV) Car?

If you are looking to get a new car, should you be looking for a petrol, diesel, hybrid or full EV? Let’s walk you through why you might want one of these over the others, but first if you have any thoughts on which you’d prefer and why, let me know in the comments below! And while you are there, hit that subscribe button and bell notification icon too. Right, let’s get started..

Petrol

Generally speaking, petrol cars are the most sporty, most performance based. Want a top end M, RS or AMG car? Petrol. Want a sporty 2 door you can take to the track, MX-5 or GT86, still petrol. Honda’s VTEC engines are all petrol. It’s hard to beat revving out a petrol motor, even a non-sporty one, getting the most power up at the top end. Basically, they are pretty fun and sporty.

They are often found in the cheapest cars too. If you want a cheap first car, odds are most of your options are petrol. Sure you can buy 150K mile diesel BMW’s for £1500 (ask my friend Dan how that turned out…), but for the ‘normal’ folk, your first car will probably be petrol. And happily, they are reasonably economical, depending on the engine. A 5L Mustang is gonna drink like a champ, but most modern 1-2L engines can get pretty decent power and economy.

Diesel

Diesel cars are very much work-horses, they aren’t normally as much fun, but they get great fuel economy, can make rather good power and often can be remapped easily to get significant gains. If you want a car that’ll take you from one end of the country to the other on one tank of fuel, and be able to run for a couple hundred thousand miles before breaking a sweat, a diesel is what you need. They are daily drivers to many, for good reason.

The worry with diesels is mostly government legislation, with talk of new diesel cars being taken off sale in the not-too-distant future, and the worry that there will be a strong push to get existing cars off the road too. While it’s unlikely to be a problem if you are buying a used car now, if you are looking to buy new it might be something to consider.

Hybrid

I should make it clear I have a personal dislike for hybrid vehicles as a concept, the idea you should be carrying batteries, fuel and at least 2 engines, one ICE and one electric, just seems painfully complicated and inefficient, but clearly I’m wrong as there is quite the market to choose from. You will almost certainly be looking at new vehicles though, as there aren’t all that many older models that have been in production long enough for people to be selling them on, and battery wear can be a big concern for some too. If you can afford them, they are normally great daily drivers with decent fuel economy.

They are generally heavier, and sometimes with less actual range than non-hybrid counterparts, but do use a good bit less fuel. They often also benefit from the instant torque of their electric motors, so can be pretty quick off the line in town too.

Electric (EV)

For me, full (battery) EV’s are the future. There are other technologies I think will have their use cases, but I see battery EV’s as the mass-market option that most if not all automakers are either already adopting, or soon will. These cars are normally incredibly fast in a straight line, although thanks to the extra weight of the batteries are normally more of a barge going round corners. They can be sporty if you try hard, but the feel isn’t as good as a high performance petrol – at least for now.

We can’t talk EV without talking Tesla, as right now there isn’t many other options quite as advanced. They offer a complete package, a car (that’ll soon drive itself), charging and a load of extra features. VW are probably the closest competitor although they are coming at it from the other end of the market, bottom up with their eUP, ID 3 and ID 4 cars, rather than Tesla’s top down approach.

EV’s have a load of added benefits too, like acting as a solar battery bank for your house, lower running cost including next to no servicing costs as you don’t need to do oil changes or often even brake discs or pads as you just use the regen braking instead. They almost always have a much higher upfront cost though, which while that is coming down, is still a premium.

If you can’t charge an EV at home, you might want to get a hybrid for the time being. Range isn’t really a concern for most, but knowing where to charge can be.