Choice Blog

Ditched diesel for hybrid

Paul and Sarah Wray live in south London with their three young children and have recently bought a Volvo XC90 T8 hybrid. "We need a big family car but we still wanted to do our bit for the environment," says Paul.

The family's previous car was a diesel. "When we bought it, diesel cars were thought to be better for the environment. As we all know this has been proven not to be the case, so we kind of wanted to make up for that."

The Wrays have a charger attached to the side of their house so they can park the car in the driveway and plug it in overnight. This gives them around 21 miles of electric motoring, although Paul says if you drive at more than 25mph the petrol engine seamlessly takes over. It is also possible to re-charge the batter from the petrol engine while driving along. "We don't tend o do long journeys and both of us commute to work on public transport, so we only fill the car up with petrol every three weeks or so, making ti much cheaper to run than our old diesel car". Paul says the driving experience is no different form traditional petrol or diesel engine cars, except that it is much quieter when running on electric.

"You don't feel any lack of  power. On the whole we are really pleased with it, and I definitely think hybrids and electric cars are the future."

Have you recently upgraded your car? What do you think to this?

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