My starting point is a petrol car built in 2002 and with 106000km on the clock. The age is beginning to show and my overall trust in the car’s reliability is gone. A new car is required and the question is whether to switch or not to switch from a combustion car to an electrical car. With unstable gas prices and increasing taxes the switch seems daunting.

Usage Scenarios

Due to ongoing changes in my housing and work situation, the commute’s frequency and length are subject to change. Two scenarios are the most likely. Either I continue working next to my flat and don’t need a car for commute at all or I need to travel between 50 and 70 km one way to neighboring cities. In the first scenario the need to visit family and friends in the suburbs remains, most of the trips are between 20 to 40km in total length. However, those trips happen infrequently, at most once a week. The commute between cities in scenario two is required twice a week.

More predictable are the long-distance trips ranging from 120km to 220km one-way. These occur once or twice a month and cannot be substituted by train travel, due to the rural destinations. Longer trips above 300km are even rarer and could be replaced by other means of transportation or car pooling. My annual mileage was about 12000km in the previous 2.5 years.

The car is parked on the street and a wall plug is not available.

In the majority of cases I travel alone and seldom with two people. I can count the trips with three or more people on one hand.

Requirements

The car must not be the limiting factor in selecting future employers located in the greater Paderborner area and neighboring cities. Therefore the car must support use case two when it comes to commuting without recharging on the way. Due to the rare nature and lower time pressure on longer trips a recharging break is acceptable in those scenarios.

Next the car must be available on the used car market, because a factory-new car’s loss of value is too steep. The available budget of 15.000€ limits the selection of models further.

In terms of trunk space the car must be able to carry a bicycle.

Comparison

The two different drive technologies will be compared based on the following criteria:

• Purchase price
• Running cost
• Support of Use Cases
• Future proof

For comparison, I will use the 2021 Corsa model from Opel. The car meets the price budget on the used car market and is available as both an electrical and a petrol/diesel variant.

Purchase Price

The best offers from dealers on autoscout24.de for the petrol variant(74kW) as of 2024-10-28 are:

The three best offers on the same site for the Corsa-e variant:

The cheapest electrical cars have significantly lower mileage than the cheapest combustion versions and cost between 2000€ and 3000€ more.

Running Costs

The decline in value will vary highly depending on future demand for cars in general, movements in society to one or the other energy carrier, yearly usage etc. With the lack of more elaborate data the decline in value is based on the values cited by online-rechner.net for both cars. The prices of cars 0 from both tables above are used as the base price after 3 years of usage and the cars are expected to be sold after seven additional years of owning it.

The fuel price is based on the manufacture’s combined WLTP data. For the petrol car, the combined WLTP rating is at 5.4 l/100km and the arithmetic mean price per liter in 2023 was 1.791€. The electric car draws 17.5kWh per 100km including charging losses. Charging at an EnBW charging station costs 0.49€ for every kWh at the medium rate. The availability of a wall box would greatly decrease the price for fueling the electric car.

The expected maintenance costs are based on a study conducted by GCG, CLEPA and wolk. Prices for a fully comprehensive insurance were compared on Check24.

The electric car’s annual running costs are exptected to be 90€ cheaper than the petrol car’s. However there is a great deal of uncertantity regarding future price developments. Accordingly a difference of 90€ is well within the uncertaintity bounds and is not very decisive.

Support of Use Cases

The petrol car can be refueled in minutes and has a range upwards of 800km with a full tank of gas. Therefore all use cases are supported without any problems.

Tests conducted by auto motor sport indicate a range of 150km on highways when using 80% of the battery’s capacity. The 80% threshold is chosen, because recharging to 100% takes disproportional longer and arriving with almost no energy left is a risky move. For driving on country roads the car can drive up to 250km on a complete charge. In this respect the electric car does support both use cases. However depending on the exact distances the car needs to be recharged every other commute. Due to the lack of charging infrastructure at home this adds some 30 minutes to the travel time and reduces the comfort.

Longer trips can be achieved with a single recharging stop. This also matches the acceptance criteria. Nevertheless traveling with an electrical car requires more ahead of time planning in terms of charging stops, because of the lower density in charging infrastructure.

Future Proof

The current political landscape in Germany does not indicate a large-scale ban on petrol cars in cities. Nevertheless the taxes on fuel are going to increase.

Conclusion

On economic grounds alone an electrical car does not provide me with a significant benefit for the time being. This might change once the required use case is settled and the availability of a charging point at my future employer is known. As the ecological benefits do not warrant the reduction in comfort I will not rush to buying an electrical car.