Member-only story
I Cannot Buy an EV
The whole industry is a mess
It has been 7 years of driving our Skoda Octavia 2.0 TDI 4x4. We bought the car almost as new and it has served it’s time very well. No big problems and overall it has been a very good car. Still, we thought that now it could be good time to jump in the electrifying train and buy an EV but it appears to be more difficult than one can imagine.
Starting the search
Our requirements for the car are not too much. Basically we could live with the following features:
- Big enough trunk to fit our dog (500+ liters, not sportback)
- Electronic trunk opening and closing
- Keyless entry and locking
- A towbar
Shouldn’t be too much to ask, right? Well there are couple of options in the market that tick these boxes; Audi e-tron, Audi Q4 e-tron, VW ID.4, Skoda Enyaq, Tesla Model X & Y and that’s about it (if you know more, I am more than interested!).
Unfortunately, as a software developer, I have to take the VW and Skoda out of the list just because of the software problems these cars have. Also the VW feels really plastic but maybe that could be overseen. After all it’s peoples car.
Test drives
After the initial research of the options it was time to get some cars for a spin. Reaching for Tesla for a test drive reveals that you cannot test drive those in a month (just because I live in Northern Finland). So no idea how they are to ride but at least they keep their customers away not having at least one car her for people to test drive.
So only option was to reach for the Audi models for test drive at this point. First we drove the Q4 e-tron 40 version and it felt very unpowerful though otherwise it ticked all the boxes. So we asked for the AWD 50 version for a test drive. Unfortunately there was only one of these cars 300km from the place we live so we had to wait a week for that.
Next we drove the e-tron and it was very nice to drive. Unfortunately it’s quite expensive and also consumes a lot of electricity compared to the other options. Also the towbar is not optimal in this car and the interior is not so nice as in the Q4 in my opinion.
