Eight years ago James and I sold our first car and bought a people carrier, which I lovingly named The Tank, in order to accommodate our growing family and all the baggage that goes along with having two young children. I was pregnant at the time so I got hilariously emotional about saying goodbye to the car that had seen our first five years of becoming a family.
This month, James sold our very battered Citroen Grand C4 Picasso and came home in a fully electric MG ZS EV. I’ve spent the last few weeks getting weirded out by how silent it is, and the fact we now have to plug our car in instead of visiting a petrol station.
James basically spent lockdown obsessively researching electric vehicles, and preparing our front garden to be able to have one. We had the bottom half of the garden converted into a lovely block paving drive (Aspire Drives did a great job, we were delighted with their service!) , and are currently waiting for the council to install a dropped kerb. Once that is done, we are having a charger fitted so that we can charge the car on the drive without trailing a cable through the living room window and letting all the heat out!
The car itself is lovely. The colour is really nice, it has a good sized boot, and it is comfortable for us all (including the dog!) to travel in. These were my considerations when looking at cars! James looked at factors like the range, reliability, price, and so on. The MG ZS EV came out on top as his favourite option, especially as it’s pretty good value.
The MG is his first ‘brand new’ car and he’s like a kid with a new toy; he loves playing about with it and exploring all the bells & whistles, having opted for the ‘exclusive’ model that has all the swish features like heated seats, rear parking camera, and so on. We even accidentally got Supagard paint protection due to a slight mix up at the dealer, although the same mix up did mean our car had to go back for a day to have the software updates done.
It is nice to have a car with Apple Carplay functionality, and the kids are pleased they have their own USB power socket in the back for long journeys! We had a pretty bog standard people carrier, and so going from an 11 year old ‘basic’ car to a modern swish one is a big jump. After having auto wipers for five years in our first car and then having to do it manually for the last 8 years, James is pleased to have that feature back, haha.
The Citroen did it’s job, and got us through the baby, toddler & pre-school years. Now the girls are older they travel with much less luggage, and so we just don’t need the space any more. It was also much worse from an environmental standpoint – and would have cost us a small fortune in congestion zone charges when the Birmingham Clean Air Zone finally came in. I will miss having what amounted to a small van with the seats down for IKEA shopping though!
Last week we had one man in a van (The Car Spa) come to fit window tints, and another guy (Shield IT) turned up in a Tesla to install dash cams, both of which James is pleased with. Now we just have to get used to our weirdly quiet car… and for Covid to be over so we can go further afield in it!
How exciting! I bought my Nissan Leaf just over three years ago and I absolutely adore it, although I still haven’t done any long journeys in it that would require me to rapid charge on the way. I’ve heard some very good things about the MG, so I hope it will be a great car for you 🙂
So far we are really pleased with it! I remember seeing you when you were trialling a Leaf 🙂