First EV - €20k budget, which used car to choose?

Probably no surprise to some forum regulars that I'll be putting a vote in for the Niro. I was in a similar situation to yourself up to last year, having looked at a lot of EVs over several years while my budget rose and fell and I kept old diesels on the road longer than I wanted to. At the time, the Niro I got was the best value EV I'd found in several months of looking and if I had the same budget now, I still think I'd be going for one. I do a lot of long trips, mainly in the autumn and winter, so the combination of decent range plus long warranty and roomy cabin with high equipment levels made it an easy choice for me.

12 months in and I have no regrets. I like the fact that the functions I use on the go are controlled by physical switches and dials, not touchscreen, and the heated seats and steering wheel are phenomenally good, so in cold conditions I can set the cabin temperature at 19 or 20 degrees and be perfectly cosy without a significant loss of range. I'd prefer RWD, but FWD is fine and more importantly I haven't had any of the software glitches that seem to have been a feature of the VW cars. My only occasional gripe would be that the charging speed in low temperatures is slow by today's standards, sometimes less than 50kW speeds even at a charger supposedly capable of delivering 100 or 150 kW - that said, I've also seen 74kW at 5 degrees using an Ionity charger.🤔 Regardless, even on a very long spin I usually only need a 25-minute stop to finish any journey - the few times I've needed more than one have been down either to unavoidable circumstances (no overnight charging) or else one or two occasions when the public charging infrastructure let me down. The car has covered nearly 25000km in my ownership, so I don't think that's too bad. The worst motorway range I've had when temperatures were down to 3 below zero was something like 350km, while most of the year it's closer to 400.

I've driven a 2021 Kona and as a driving experience it's fine, but in the rear it's a lot more cramped than the Niro - plus the warranty is 2 years shorter, and Kia's 7 years provides a fair bit of reassurance about how confident they are in their product. If I was upping my budget a bit today and looking for a similarly spacious car with quicker charging, I'd consider a Megane, possibly an MG4 or an EV6, but for the same sort of budget I think there's still very little out there to match the Niro. An MG5 has lower range, while an MG4 charges fast but has more warranty exceptions (and can be a bit awkward to get out of for people with shorter legs, like my other half).

You can have a read through my posts in the Kia Niro thread for more detailed descriptions of motorway trips over the last year. It's an accurate reflection of my experience. To be clear, I have the 64kWh version.

My point being that if you tell someone with no experience with EVs that they'll get 350km on the motorway at -3° from a car, and they go ahead and buy that car and head off at 120km/hr in freezing conditions expecting 350km…I would wager they would end up disappointed. Or thinking something is wrong with the car.

Bjorn got approx 311 km out of an e Soul in a sub zero range test. 265km is just wrong.

In summer I did northside Dublin to Dunmore East and back, with 16% remaining.

Those figures would make it more efficient than the class leading Model 3. it does seem off.

Model 3, EV2 (soon releasing), EV3

Drive them all would be my recommendation. Also when buying any used car you need to check the condition same as any car.

One thing about the the ID models is that the 2022-2024 currently have an active recall on the batteries due to defective modules that can lead to a fire. They also seem to suffer from many door handle issues that are pretty expensive to sort out post warranty.

Tesla Model 3 have some mainly rear suspension issues but apart from that they suffer from really few defects and software bugs and are also really efficient. And don't have any forced service requirements to keep the battery and drive unit warranty in place. Most of the other makes do require dealer services and while don't offer any extended warranty for the drive unit, just a basic capacity warranty for the battery.

I'm sure you're getting good efficiency from the car. I think the issue might be average speed. As I understand it the EV database is based on constant speeds at the speed limits. In reality this can be a worst case scenario as to maintain your average speed at the speed limit can be difficult to achieve if there is any traffic on the road - in other words you probably have to go above the speed limit for quite a bit to main average speed limit speeds. In my case on motorways I tend to set the cruise at 105kph as running at 120kph really chugs down the juice.

I'm

Really need to go drive them and sit in them. Compare the specs etc

Ioniq 5 might be worth considering again now Hyundai have extended the warranty on the ICCU to 15 years.