Right. It’s 2025, the bees are vanishing, petrol prices are impersonating champagne, and somewhere, someone is gluing themselves to a road because your V8 exists. So naturally, you're asking: Should I go electric? Or stick with the petrol-powered dinosaur I've known and loved?
Well, buckle up. Because we’re going for a balanced spin through the good, the bad, and the mildly inconvenient of both.
Cost: Wallets at Dawn
Let’s start with money - the great leveller. Electric cars (EVs) look expensive. Because they are. Kind of. The sticker price is generally higher than a petrol equivalent, mostly due to the eye-wateringly pricey battery pack that lies beneath. But - and it's a big but, like SUV-sized - you could save on running costs.
Electricity is (usually) cheaper per mile than petrol. Servicing? Less fiddly bits. No oil changes. Fewer moving parts. Plus, you’ll still save on things like congestion charges and benefit from lower running costs, but as of April 2025, road tax is no longer one of the freebies - even electric cars now get their annual invoice.
Petrol cars, meanwhile, are often cheaper to buy upfront, especially second-hand. Repairs are familiar to most garages, and there’s no waiting list to get a specialist just to change your... flux capacitor or whatever.
Road Tax: How the Government Judges You
If your car runs on fossilised brontosaurus, expect to pay road tax. The more it emits, the more you'll owe. It’s basically guilt, monetised.
Electric cars? They used to pay nothing - a sort of governmental high-five for doing your bit. But as of April 2025, that changed. Now, new EVs pay £10 in the first year and £195 each year after that. Got one over £40k? There’s an extra “posh car” tax too - £425 a year for five years. Even older EVs are being roped in.
So, no more free rides. Just slightly cheaper ones.
Choice: The Automotive Buffet
Petrol cars? Endless options. Convertibles, pickups, saloons, hot hatches, supercars, the lot. From a 2004 Ford Fiesta to a Ferrari 812 that sounds like an angry thunderstorm – it's all there.
Electric cars? The variety’s getting better. We’ve moved past the stage where every EV looked like ‘big fish, little fish, cardboard box’. There’s the sleek (Porsche Taycan), the practical (Tesla Model Y), the "what even is that" (Cybertruck), and more SUVs than a suburban Waitrose car park.
But still, there are gaps. Want a small electric convertible with character and a manual gearbox? Good luck, my friend. You’ll find more personality in a cordless vacuum.
Looks: Beauty and the Battery
Petrol cars, with a century of style behind them, have mastered the art of looking good while doing terrible things to the planet. Just say “Jaguar E-Type” and watch grown men tear up.
EVs? Getting there. Early models looked like something IKEA designed with their eyes closed. But now, we’ve got some stunners. The Audi e-tron GT looks like it punches holes in the time-space continuum. The Kia EV6 looks like it eats lesser hatchbacks for breakfast. So it's not all bad news.
Environment: The Guilt Trip
EVs are, on paper, cleaner. No tailpipe emissions. No NOx. They don’t cough greenhouse gases into your face when idling at the lights. Great.
But - and here’s the twist - making an EV, especially the battery, is energy-intensive. Mining for lithium isn’t exactly a spa day for the Earth. Meanwhile, charging one still often relies on electricity that comes from some kind of fire (unless you have solar).
Petrol cars? They’ve had decades to be naughty. But at least they're honest about it.
Long Journeys: The Range Anxiety Olympics
Petrol cars win here. Hands down. You fill up in five minutes, drive 400 miles, stop for a sausage roll, repeat.
EVs? Better than they used to be. Many now do over 250 miles on a charge. But you’ll still spend too much time on apps looking for chargers, praying they’re working, and then staring at a screen while it juices up at a pace a Victorian steam train would find embarrassing.
Home Charging vs Petrol Pumps: The Lazy vs the Lucky
EVs: if you’ve got a driveway, a garage, and a solid relationship with your electrician, you’re golden. Plug in overnight. Wake up to a “full tank.”
Live in a flat? Park on a street? Suddenly charging becomes a treasure hunt and an argument with a stranger in a Nissan Leaf who’s been hogging the charger since Tuesday.
Petrol cars? There’s a station on every corner. You can find petrol in rural Wales, middle-of-nowhere Scotland, or behind a donkey in Spain. It’s convenience you just can’t beat yet.
Production Time: The Waiting is the Hardest Part
Petrol cars? Plenty in stock. Unless you want something exotic or custom.
EVs? Thanks to global demand, battery shortages, and Elon Musk tweeting about Mars again, lead times can be long. As in, long enough to forget what colour you picked.
Conclusion: Choose Your Weapon
So. Electric or petrol? That depends on your lifestyle, where you live, what you drive, how often you travel, and how much you hate the idea of installing a wall box in your garage.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Yet. For now, the future is electric... but the past is still faster, louder, and easier to fill up at midnight on the M1.
So take your pick. Just don’t glue yourself to the road about it. And if you would like to actually put it to the test, we offer plenty of experiences in both, so check out our Electric Car Driving Experiences, and perhaps Book a Supercar Driving Experience - you might as well drive the best of the best to test.
