Advice for a new ev buyer

cheerios said:

Hi all.

Hope you can help / direct us. My partner and I are looking for a new car. Considering an EV. We have a budget of about £8-10,000. We have two kids (8 and 6 yo), so need a car with enough space for them to grow.

We've been suggested an.mg zs. We can't afford a new one so looking for something used. Is there a checklist anywhere for what to look for. Based on the small amount of research I think that price would get us a 2020 plate, which is pre the change to electronic display behind the wheel.

Anyone here speak about the pros and cons. Worth noting we are coming from a c4 picasso 08 plate, so this will be quite a shift in technology. Kids are very excited about electronic passenger windows.

Thanks for any help and further obvious questions.

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Good idea to ask on here and check out the forum.

Our car was a big update from our old Seat Ibiza.

Don't know much about the ZS, but the EV database is very useful to give you an idea of real world range and DC charging speed.

Have you looked at this?

In terms of battery life, there aren't guarantees once it is out of warranty.

However, as a rule of thumb an NMC battery should be good for 1,000 - 2,000 cycles.

If the car does 135 per cycle on average then the battery should be good for at least 135,000 miles at least, quite possibly double that.

If you've got the option of home charging then an EV can save you a lot of money as well as being much more pleasant to drive (and much better for the local and global environment).

cheerios said:

Hi all.

Hope you can help / direct us. My partner and I are looking for a new car. Considering an EV. We have a budget of about £8-10,000. We have two kids (8 and 6 yo), so need a car with enough space for them to grow.

We've been suggested an.mg zs. We can't afford a new one so looking for something used. Is there a checklist anywhere for what to look for. Based on the small amount of research I think that price would get us a 2020 plate, which is pre the change to electronic display behind the wheel.

Anyone here speak about the pros and cons. Worth noting we are coming from a c4 picasso 08 plate, so this will be quite a shift in technology. Kids are very excited about electronic passenger windows.

Thanks for any help and further obvious questions.

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You might find a few MG5's about that price too.

Alb said:

Have you looked at this?

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Thanks for this. Our other consideration was a Kona. So I will look at the reviews for both... I don't think our budget will stretch to a Kona though.

Jomarkh said:

You might find a few MG5's about that price too.

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Is that the estate? Sorry. Obvious question. I think that might be a bit too big for us.

Yep, the estate.

We have a ZS identical to the one in the Utube shown above.
It is an excellent car and I would recommend it.
The later up date is uglier and more expensive!

Tim Green said:

We have a ZS identical to the one in the Utube shown above.
It is an excellent car and I would recommend it.
The later up date is uglier and more expensive!

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Thanks @Tim Green. Is yours a pre 2022 model I.e. before the face-lift?

Yes, bought January 2020, now about 25,000 miles, goes for 5th MOT on 27 Jan.
No issues so far. (Fingers crossed).

Hi cheerios, welcome to the forum.

If you use the search function, you can usually find a thread on something you want to know.

I found this one for you on the MG4 forum, but the checklist works for the ZS as well.

cheerios said:

Hi all.

Hope you can help / direct us. My partner and I are looking for a new car. Considering an EV. We have a budget of about £8-10,000. We have two kids (8 and 6 yo), so need a car with enough space for them to grow.

We've been suggested an.mg zs. We can't afford a new one so looking for something used. Is there a checklist anywhere for what to look for. Based on the small amount of research I think that price would get us a 2020 plate, which is pre the change to electronic display behind the wheel.

Anyone here speak about the pros and cons. Worth noting we are coming from a c4 picasso 08 plate, so this will be quite a shift in technology. Kids are very excited about electronic passenger windows.

Thanks for any help and further obvious questions.

Click to expand...

For that money I would buy a Ioniq 38kwh. Much more capable car in every aspect.

@DB Go Rex - we test drove the ioniq. We weren't keen on the driving position. Think going from a c4 picasso I think a higher driving position suits us better. But good to know we are checking off some of the recommendations as they are raised.

cheerios said:

Is that the estate? Sorry. Obvious question. I think that might be a bit too big for us.

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It is a bit smaller than our Octavia, but similar to my daughters Fabia. Worth a look

Most important thing to consider is...

The 2020-2021 first gen has a rather small battery, so the most important question is.

Is the range enough for you and can you charge at home. (Small battery = Need to charge more frequently, making it a hazzle if you need to use public chargers, not located very close to your home)

Don't look at the official range, especially in winter the range takes quite a big hit, mainly due to the car, not having a heatpump so solely relying on a "toaster" heating element.

Here is the "real world range" estimates for this car, in different scenarios


Was going to put something here about making sure the Kona was 3 phase, as a lot of them are not, but i don't really think that would matter in the UK, i seem to remember you only have one phase, at 32A, so 7.2 KW of charging (Here in Scandinavia a 1-phase car is all but unsellable as we have 3 phase 16A circuits and a 1-phase will only do 3.6KW on a home charger)

In all other aspects i bet this car will feel like a massive upgrade from your 17 year old french car, only the range is something you need to look into.

I will even say, you should look into, if 70% of the stated real world range is enough, because you should neither go above 80% state of charge or below 10% on a daily basis as this will not be very good for the battery. 80-100% is mostly for an occational longer trip, not daily commute.

Worst case scanario is, if the car is going to do motorway trips to work, daily in winter, you will only have about 70 miles roundtrip (10%-80%)

cheerios said:

@DB Go Rex - we test drove the ioniq. We weren't keen on the driving position. Think going from a c4 picasso I think a higher driving position suits us better. But good to know we are checking off some of the recommendations as they are raised.

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That’s a lot of compromises for a driving position that is only a bit higher


Better summer Efficiency
Much better Winter efficiency
Better real world range
Infotainment that works and is well designed
Stable android auto
Safety systems that work well
Heated steering wheel
Better driving experience
Quieter ride
Better app

DB Go Rex said:

That’s a lot of compromises for a driving position that is only a bit higher


Better summer Efficiency
Much better Winter efficiency
Better real world range
Infotainment that works and is well designed
Stable android auto
Safety systems that work well
Heated steering wheel
Better driving experience
Quieter ride
Better app

Click to expand...

Living near someone that has a Kia (Same as Hyundai) i can tell you that i feel, the only reason anyone should buy one of these is if they absolutely hate their neighbors.

The Kia owner, that by the way lives 3 houses down and around a corner, backs out of his driveway every day at about 5.30, which is about 45 minutes before i wake up. In summer we have the windows on tilt to keep the temperature below 40C and every morning, without failure that loud and obnoxious airplane bong bong sound, wakes us up. (Imagine how loud that is for his next door neighbors)

I was told, the reason it is so loud is, because even though it is meant to warn people that the car is reversing, they put the speaker in the front so it has to be loud in front to be heard in the back.

I even tried googling how to turn the sound down, would have popped the instructions in his mailbox, but it's just not possible to turn it down at all.

Far from the only one that was annoyed, i saw people had made "manuals" on how to remove the bumper, stick a screwdriver in the speaker for the bong bong unit and reassemble. Could not simply unplug it, as the car would then show an error message that the speaker was disconnected.

You don't mention how many miles a year you plan to do and how long you plan to keep the car.

£10,000 over 5 years (60 months) is £166/month, you might be able to find a good finance deal that falls in budget and means you can spread the outlay over time rather than stumping up the £10,000 up front.

We do an embarrassing small amount of mileage. Between 3-4000