Anyone Want an EV Golf GTI?

[monkeyhanger]

Good to see you’re still alive MH!

You might just squeeze 43mpg out of an R on a long motorway haul if it was fairly flat, but running around in normal traffic and enjoying it a bit that’ll drop 25% easily unless you drive extremely sedately. And if you drive extremely sedately there are better options such as the 1.5 TSI.
So as an overall monthly average let’s say 33-35mpg, hefty car insurance and £575 a year just to sit it on the King’s highways.
There are a decent few R’s hitting the showrooms right now, unfortunately they’re in 20 Year spec and generally have £0 discount. VW seem to have punted a load of zero optioned 20Y R’s out for dealer stock.

There are also a reasonable amount of Polo GTI’s around in varying specs which would make decent mile munchers and have better MPG around the houses. Just circa £165 to tax too subject to our latest chancellor’s whim midweek.

In an ideal world I'd buy a standard Golf GTI245 with a manual box if available tomorrow. I'm loathed to pay £20k or thereabouts for a 6 year old GTI or £30k for a 3-4 year old one using the current mad used car climate.

It's not so much the cost to fuel the EV (as depreciation costs usually dwarf the pump savings when switching cars), it's the fact that a 3.5 hour ICE journey is often a 5 hour EV journey, thanks to how often find yourself waiting for a charge or hopping from services to services looking for an unoccupied one. It really boiled my pee last week when I stopped at a services to find all chargers occupied, moved on to the next one and some guy beat me to the last one by 30 seconds (saw him backing into the space) - if I hadn't stopped at the other services, I would've had that one!

The 20R doesn't look like it'll be worth the extra, or that people would pay significantly more over a standard R at resale time.

Polo GTI+ is a good call as it is very economical for what's under the bonnet (Budack cycle pays dividends motorway cruising), but I really want a car that'll do occasional long family journeys comfortably as well as the commute, and having had a Polo GTI+ before, it's just nit quite big enough. Likewise, I don't think I want an SUV either.

GTI would (just) avoid the luxury VED, which is literally highway robbery as the threshold hasn't increased since its inception (0.5% of RRP pa would be a far fairer fee, would have the McLaren F1s paying more than a car tgat scrapes over the threshold by £200. There's a lot of GTEs on Autotrader pennies over the luxury VED threshold right now with about £700 off.

Seems my only viable option to go new without a wait right now is to go S3 - 5 new sportbacks on the Audi website £42-43k, but there's a £3k deposit contribution and DTD prices seem just shy of £5k with that deposit contribution, could try my luck to ask them to shave £2k off their margin for cars sitting ready to go.

[Exonian]

Funnily enough we were literally discussing S3’s on here a few days ago with their base price sitting just under the tax threshold and availability slightly better. There are a few year old ones knocking around with lowish mileages that will also duck under the £40k tax which are ok if buying cash.

My thoughts too on the R 20Y as regards to value unless you’re going to keep the car a few years when all the weird enthusiasts will come out of the closet willing to pay more money (as limited run sporty VW’s seem to have this strange cult following). This is what I hate about the enthusiast market as they want certain models and will pay big bucks (same with most marques and the JDM crowd) so long as certain extras are specced. Without these extras the cars are worth quite a bit less but it baffles me why if these guys are going to be such massive fusspots they didn’t buy the bloody things new in the first place and spec them themselves. I get it with Ed40’s as they want the seats but as someone who has crawled around a LOT of cars over the decades I’d take condition over spec every time. You can just imagine in a couple years “does your 20 Years have Akra and DCC mate?”
Personally I’d grab a stock one as I dislike DCC and wouldn’t pay £3.5k for an exhaust as I’m not 21 years old, but I just know the questions when selling a few years down the line…

Most ICE cars will probably feel a bit sluggish now you’re used to EV acceleration at sane real world speeds MH. I wonder if the NVH will seem odd as well now you’re used to silent running. At least you’ll get some exhaust pops with an S3! 😁

[monkeyhanger]

Funnily enough we were literally discussing S3’s on here a few days ago with their base price sitting just under the tax threshold and availability slightly better. There are a few year old ones knocking around with lowish mileages that will also duck under the £40k tax which are ok if buying cash.

My thoughts too on the R 20Y as regards to value unless you’re going to keep the car a few years when all the weird enthusiasts will come out of the closet willing to pay more money (as limited run sporty VW’s seem to have this strange cult following). This is what I hate about the enthusiast market as they want certain models and will pay big bucks (same with most marques and the JDM crowd) so long as certain extras are specced. Without these extras the cars are worth quite a bit less but it baffles me why if these guys are going to be such massive fusspots they didn’t buy the bloody things new in the first place and spec them themselves. I get it with Ed40’s as they want the seats but as someone who has crawled around a LOT of cars over the decades I’d take condition over spec every time. You can just imagine in a couple years “does your 20 Years have Akra and DCC mate?”
Personally I’d grab a stock one as I dislike DCC and wouldn’t pay £3.5k for an exhaust as I’m not 21 years old, but I just know the questions when selling a few years down the line…

Most ICE cars will probably feel a bit sluggish now you’re used to EV acceleration at sane real world speeds MH. I wonder if the NVH will seem odd as well now you’re used to silent running. At least you’ll get some exhaust pops with an S3! 😁

Does a bare bones S3 with free paint dip under the luxury threshold? I was under the impression that the "list price" used for consideration included all OTR charges. If that's the case then the basic S3 doesn't slip under the threshold. Basic Ibis White S3 Sportback is £39045 before OTR costs and £40705 after. Can't seem to find 100% clarity on this point I just keep seeing "list price" on all websites with VED band info. There were 5 u allocated S3s yesterday and 4 today. 2 are in Belfast, so not keen on going to collect one of those! I used to average 35mpg in my 2015 Manual R, and do about 40mpg doing 80 on the motorway. Assuming 7th cog on the DSG would help a little on the cruising? There's about 1/3s delay on the Born sprinting off from mashing the accelerator, then its 100% torque, but pretty linear in delivery. Our 231ps "E-Boost" Borns run out of puff a fair bit later than our 204ps ID3s did. Great car to have if you have a home charger and never drive beyond the car's range, but Rapid charging is sh!te and expensive

[Exonian]

For the VED you take list price including add-ons minus first year road tax to calculate. There will probably be £800-900 first year road tax included in the OTR costs. I’m pretty sure it *just* scrapes under with white paint. Better check Audi haven’t hiked up another rise before signing on the dotted line.

This time last year I was very nearly about to be in a Born myself. Then things went completely tits up here and by the time it had settled down a bit it was no longer an attractive proposition (price hikes, electric hikes and so on). 

[monkeyhanger]

For the VED you take list price including add-ons minus first year road tax to calculate. There will probably be £800-900 first year road tax included in the OTR costs. I’m pretty sure it *just* scrapes under with white paint. Better check Audi haven’t hiked up another rise before signing on the dotted line.

This time last year I was very nearly about to be in a Born myself. Then things went completely tits up here and by the time it had settled down a bit it was no longer an attractive proposition (price hikes, electric hikes and so on).

Looks like the 1st year VED for S3 would be £945, plus £55 first reg fee = £1000. £40705 OTR, minus that grand, and it slips under £40k. Born is great as a car that doesn't go beyond its range, so we'd be keeping one of them.

[Exonian]

That sounds about right for the VED.
As for the fuel economy as compared to your old R, these newer EA888’s can be quite frugal, the AWD won’t help but they do freewheel quite often which is handy for extending range a bit on very long journeys.

At least with a lease the VED band is less relevant.


Of the 4 new ones currently up for grabs it looks like it’s only the Coventry car that’ll be sub £40k VED

[monkeyhanger]

That sounds about right for the VED.
As for the fuel economy as compared to your old R, these newer EA888’s can be quite frugal, the AWD won’t help but they do freewheel quite often which is handy for extending range a bit on very long journeys.

At least with a lease the VED band is less relevant.


Of the 4 new ones currently up for grabs it looks like it’s only the Coventry car that’ll be sub £40k VED

I'm going to phone around all 4 today. Given that the current PCP deposit contribution is £3k and the DTD price is around £4900 discount including the £3k, I'll ask them all about matching DTD with finance. If one of the dearer ones match the DTD price and the white Coventry one doesn't, I'd probably swallow the extra VED. On paper, without the extra VED I'd probably go with the Turbo blue one at Tamworth. I expect I have a better chance of getting full DTD discount on one of the Belfast ones as they have 2 in one branch.

Lease prices at the moment are a bit more than I was expecting - buying cash usually does pay dividends unless you believe all those HUKD "millionaires" who claim to be making 20%+ from the money they would've spent on a car had they not leased. 

I have a very economical driving style - not afraid of hammering the accelerator to get up to speed, but once there I preserve my momentum with good anticipation of the road ahead. Ave 35mpg in the old manual R and 40mpg sat at 80 onthe motorway DSG's 7th cog should improve on that.

[fredgroves]

Interesting experience notes there MH.

I'm not quite sure how EV gets out of that rut. It seems the uptake of EV is far faster than the infra can cope and its not even those peak events like first day of school holidays or Christmas.

I guess its faster for a factory to turn out thousands of EV's and sell them than it is to install dozens of megawatt power supplies to a motorway services. Its also a bit chicken and egg...

I'm still in the market for a BEV but only to replace Mrs G's current Mini - we only use that for short runs and it does make sense for that.

My business trips... less sense.

While I keep reading about amazing new breakthroughs in battery tech it doesn't seem to be coming soon enough.

[Ceefeesh]

Hi MH.  FYI Belfast Audi is part of the Sytner Group. The dealership is a couple of miles from Belfast City Airport and about the same from the ferry terminal. I have travelled by ferry from Belfast to Cairnryan, on to Durham and return, easily in the same day.

[monkeyhanger]

Hi MH.  FYI Belfast Audi is part of the Sytner Group. The dealership is a couple of miles from Belfast City Airport and about the same from the ferry terminal. I have travelled by ferry from Belfast to Cairnryan, on to Durham and return, easily in the same day.

That's good to know, thanks. The 2 they have are probably least popular of my pick of the 4, being the most expensive (19" wheels. Red calipers, Comfort and sound pack, metallic paint as extras), but maybe with 2 in stock, there may be some better price reductions. I'll be trying my luck with all 4 shortly to see how the land lies.