Next car an hybrid or electric one?

The motor options have increased so much in the last years and with it many new tech terms have been created.

To decide what car ist best depends on many new factors. To facilitate the understanding a deeper analysis is done.

There are many ways to start the process of buying a new car.

A top down approach would be to start defining the hard requirements. This can prevent bad surprises after the purchase and is especially useful when you are not just replacing an existing car.

The bottom-up approach starts with the features and is here at the end of the list.

Hard Requirements

It is useful to define the Hard Requirements to eliminate quickly the cars, vans, busses, caravans which do not fulfil a requirement e.g.,

1. The car length cannot exceed the length of the garage space
2. The car width cannot exceed the width
  - of the garage minus the space needed to get out of the car
  - of the garage entry or other narrow ways needed to take
3. The car ground clearance has to be enough
  - to enter the garage
  - to drive over
    - well-worn ways and
    - bumpers (at least at the usual route)
4. The car hight cannot exceed garage hight or other used entries. The additional hight of a roof rack empty or with storage might be taken into account as well.
5. The headroom (the distance from a vehicle’s roof to its seat bottom) has to be enough for driver and passengers torso hight
6. The car price cannot exceed the budget
7. The car expenses for insurance, tax, gas and/or electricity etc. cannot exceed the monthly budget

Medium Requirements

The medium requirements relate to the individual comfort and are therefore less strict e.g.,

1. To all of the hard requirements can be given an additional space to feel more comfortable while parking, sitting in the car and have more money available for unexpected events.
2. Car shall have a good size to be parked in the street
3. Secure
4. Calm
5. Comfortable
6. Chic
7. Luxarious
8. Good in snow
9. Good off road
10. Sportive
11. Fast
12. Big trunk

Purpose

While for some the motor and the features are of most interest to define the “Purpose” is especially useful when more than one person is involved in the decision process. Often a car has to serve for several purposes, then a ranking is useful.

Possible purposes can be:

1. Baby to drive
2. Children to drive
3. Adults to drive
4. Commute to work/school etc.
5. Mainly for the city
6. Mainly for the country side
7. Mainly on highways
8. Go on weekend trips
9. Go into vacation
10. Use car for work
11. Load car for work
12. Load car for sport etc.
13. Have fun driving around
14. Use it for sporty driving
15. To represent
16. To be driven
17. To chauffeur

Car Type

Often we fall in love with a car by just seeing it. The reason for this is usually the design and the type of car.

To identify the type classification of a car is due to the many new types sometimes not so easy.

On the right you can see a classification overview of car types.

Motor Type

In general, it can be said that the more motors and batteries there are in the car, the more expensive it is to buy. On the other hand, the monthly costs are lower when using electric motors, since it saves gas and if electricity is poured in, it is cheaper than gas.

Comparison of electric motors to combustion engines:

- + Electricity is cheaper
- + Grid power has a lower carbon footprint
- – The additional batteries for the electric motor make the car heavier
- – The range of an electric car is shorter
- – The network for recharging electricity is less developed

The hybrid cars use both motor types to use the benefits of both.

There are the following hybrid types:

- Mild Hybrids (use only in addition a 48V battery)
- Full Hybrids (use lot’s of additional batteries)
- Plug-In Hybrids (Full Hybrid with external recharging plug)

Car Brand

There are many car brands in the world but not all are available in each country.

Each car brand can be categorised in its status and its reliability but this can be differ by country.

Features

The list of car features is very long. I will list here the ones which can use additional comments.

1. Automatic light sensor: Useful in areas where are a lot of tunnels
2. Automatic rain sensor: Useful in countries where it starts often to rain slightly
3. Sun roof
4. Color light vs. dark