electric cars are USELESS for high mileage users?
Electric cars are rubbish for high mileage users. How many times have you heard that? Now, if you’re talking about something like this, my 2025 Citronami, you might have a point. Let’s be honest, it’s designed for local short journeys and sort of running around town. And it’s absolutely great at it when it works. Uh if you haven’t seen videos about this car and how broken it is, you might want to catch up on those. But I don’t believe that it’s true that electric cars are useless if you’re a high mileage driver. And in fact, I’m going to prove it to you. This is my 2021 Vauxhall Vivaro Life Electric, which is the 9seater people carrier version. It’s a 2021 on a 21 reg and it has covered, wait for it, 219,000 miles in 4 years. [Music] Just to show you that I’m not joking. It has 219,044 miles on the clock. So, what’s going on here then? How did this manage to rack up quite so many miles in such a short amount of time? Well, uh it turns out that this uh was a taxi, which probably isn’t particularly surprising to anybody. It’s hard to believe anybody else would be doing that kind of annual mileage in a vehicle like this. You know, a 9seater uh sort of well, it’s not quite a mini bus, is it? But it’s not far away. Uh and what this actually was was it it belonged to MK Connect which is a fleet of like dialer ride type services in Milton Kes that closely affiliated with Milton Kees Council and you unlike a traditional taxi you you request a ride a bit like with Uber and you get told where you’ll be picked up from and then it’s like a shared ride with with other people. Um but it looked like like the fairs are quite low and stuff and and the idea is that uh you can get around uh places where the bus services and stuff might not quite cover. Um and and it seems that what they use for that are these electric Vauhall Vivaros. There were quite a few of these for sale at the auctions. I think there was five or six of them. They all had I think the lowest mileage one was 180,000 mi. They all had between 180 and 230,000 mi. I wanted to buy the highest mileage one, which was this one. It had 232,000 mi on the clock, but unfortunately it got away from me in the bidding. Uh, this one was a little bit cheaper, uh, cuz it was a grade five for the cosmetics. I don’t think it’s actually that bad. So, let’s take a quick look at what it looked like when it turned up. I’ve cleaned it up a little bit since. Um, so obviously we have a quick walk around it here and you see that yeah, you can see where all the the the sort of stickers and stuff were when it was branded up for MK Connect and there’s a few little dings and scrapes and obly the steel wheels are are pretty rusty, but on the whole it’s not in bad condition. It maybe doesn’t quite look like it’s 4 years old, but also doesn’t look like it’s done 219,000 mi either. I think it looks all right. Most of this will clean up. we’ll be able to get the signw writing sort of remnants off the uh wheels all paint up and they’ll look nice and you know I think it’ll be okay. Uh but because it was grade five that meant it was a little bit cheaper. Um however I did notice in the photos that this one was showing a higher predicted remaining range than the others at a similar kind of state of charge. So hopefully that puts us in goodstead for battery health. You may have noticed when I started it up then to show you the mileage that it’s currently predicting there’s 116 miles remaining. Um, so that’s down from 121 when it was charged to properly 100%. And uh I don’t think that’s that far off what it would have been when it was new. So obviously we will have some battery degradation here. Uh there’s no doubt about that. 219,000 mi and the fact it’s it’s done that in a pretty short period of time. So, we’re going to have seen plenty of rapid charging. We’d expect a bit of battery degradation, but this is a modern EV with liquid cooling for the battery, and therefore that should hopefully at least be minimized. So, fingers crossed it’s it’s not too bad. And we will do a battery health test, and we’ll um we’ll see what it’s like. Now, I haven’t really managed to drive this very much just yet. Uh cuz the other sort of sticking point is it doesn’t currently have an MOT. It looks like it was taken off fleet in March. Uh, and that was when when the MOT expired. All of the ones that were for sale were the same. None of them had an MOT and they all kind of expired in March. So, it looks like maybe the new ones arrived then and and these were taken off fleet and they’ve just kind of been sitting around waiting to be sold. So, we do need to obviously get it roadworthy so that we can use it. And I don’t think that’s going to be too difficult. I’ve kind of shunted it around the private roads here at the estate and it seems okay. Uh, the suspension seems quite good. I’ve noticed a little bit of a noise under braking. Uh, it seems to be coming from the rear. So, I’m guessing maybe the rear brakes need some attention, but on the whole, it doesn’t look too bad. Uh, looking at the last MOT, which was more than 60,000 mi ago, last March. Uh, it had some advisories. Um, so the one I was most concerned about was this CV boot. Obviously, if it had been left with an acured CV boot for 60,000 mi, then the CV joint that the boot protects will be completely shot. There is no doubt about that. Uh, but it looks like the boot has been replaced. So, I’m guessing they at least did do some kind of maintenance and didn’t just rely on it, you know, getting through an MOT and being deemed road legal as a result. So, it probably helps that this service that it was used for is really closely affiliated with the council. You’d like to think that Milton Kee Council would be on top of making sure these vehicles weren’t complete death traps on the road. So hopefully that means getting it through an MT isn’t going to be too difficult. Going to obviously need to check it over um and make sure that it’s all uh up to standard before taking in test. But I’m reasonably confident that it’s going to be okay. It seems to drive quite well. Nothing from the sort of electric drivetrain, the the motor, the battery, etc. worries me at all. It just seems to work. Everything seems fine. So, I think we’re we’re in pretty goodstead. I think it’s quite remarkable for the mileage, but there we go. Uh, sort of interior condition wise and stuff. Let me give you a bit of a look now. It’s sort of just come in and it’s very much in that just come in kind of state. And this show actually shows really well. People ask me to buy cars for them from the auction because they think they’re going to save a load of money because they’re not going to have to pay, you know, the dealer’s margin. But it also means you don’t get any prep. So, I mean, yeah, these seats are really quite dirty. We’re going to have to give those a really good clean. So, it’s just generally really grubby everywhere. This is fairly typical. I mean, even some of the lower mileage ex lease stuff you get at auction with company cars and stuff like that, they can turn up in this kind of state because people don’t really look after cars that aren’t theirs. Um, they don’t meticulously clean them and stuff. So, it wouldn’t surprise me maybe sometimes to to get stuff that’s this kind of dirty, but certainly this one uh is well used. Um looks like you’ll catch something off those seats if you’re not too careful. The back ones are nice and clean, so I’m guessing a lot fewer people sat in the back and chose to sit in the front instead. And then around the back. Now, see, I don’t really like that we’ve got the big tailgate on this. I much prefer barn doors. Um, but obviously that’s because I come from the point of view of wanting to actually use this as a van, not particularly as a people mover. Um, but we’ve got plenty of space in here. It’s a big old bus. Uh, and so one of the only other trim related things like these are all smashed up, which isn’t ideal, but we’ll maybe just cut out some plywood to replace those. They’re both smashed up. So, I’m guessing like suitcases and stuff like that. Spell the end of those. I’ve got my nice shiny new number plates on there already. Helps make it look a little bit better. Taking some of the decals off. And for some inexplicable reason, this air vent is just not here. I don’t know quite how that happens cuz you’d think if if it was broken, I’d expect it just to be broken for it to be completely gone. It’s kind of confusing. Don’t know if maybe they mounted like the taxi booking thing here and stuff or what, but yeah, the first time I’ve seen an air vent just completely missing. And this was probably one of the big contributing factors to it being grade five. When things are missing or broken like that, they they tend to very quickly consider it to be a five over a four. This is a bit weird, too. Like all the chrome on the Vauxhall badge on the steering wheel is gone. I’m guessing maybe being picked at when sat in traffic will cause that. I can’t think of any other reason. I’ve never seen that before. Pretty odd. But all in all, I think it’s pretty good for the mileage. So, what is the plan here then? Why have we bought a 219,000 mi van? Well, uh I recently sold my 190,000 Nissan ENV200. You see, you saw that on the channel briefly before and um I did that to raise some cash. Obviously, you at the same kind of time I sold the DACA spring. Uh things were looking a bit dodgy with day job and all that stuff. Um, turns out that situation is resolving itself and we should be back on track fairly shortly. Uh, but in the meantime, I’m just really struggling without a van. Um, moving parts around, sets of wheels, stuff like that to sort of keep the sales business running and and do all that stuff. I really really hate putting filthy parts and stuff in cars cuz you end up getting the interior dirty or even damaging it. Much much prefer having a van. And when these came up at the auctions, I was like, well, it’s a really good opportunity to bring you a story about the the longevity of some of these modern EVs as well. Uh, it’s quite remarkable how many miles it’s managed to do in a short period of time and yet still be in pretty decent order. We’ll get this cleaned up. We’ll get it emoteed and it it’s just going to be getting used. It’s not for retail. I’m not brave enough to retail something like this high mileage, but it’s certainly something that I can make use of and bring you along for the journey. Uh I’m sure there’s a number of you that’d be really interested to learn what it’s like having something this high mileage. Um we will obviously answer the battery health question pretty shortly. I’ve not got the dongle with me for the uh battery health certificate, but I I will do that and we’ll see what the state of health is. I’d say it’s looking pretty good so far. Um, maybe let me know in the comments what you think the battery health is going to be after 219,000 miles and the next video we do about this van, we’ll get you an answer to that question. Uh, and maybe the the the closest to the actual battery health, maybe sort you out with some stickers or something like that as a bit of a prize. So, get me get in the comments and tell me what you think the battery health of this is going to be after 219,000 mi. I think it’ll be quite interesting to see what the sort of popular opinion is versus reality when we actually scan it and do a health check on it. But that is pretty much it for this video. It was just a quick introduction to this, my 219,000 mi 2021 Vauxhall Vivaro Electric. Uh sort of permanent fleet member uh kind of replacing both the ENV200 and the spring at the same time. Although I don’t know if many people would thank you if you gave them the keys to this as a courtesy car. Thank you very much for watching. Do let me know what you think in the comments. Get those state of health guesses in there. I’ll see you next time.
Nobody could possibly cover 219,000 miles in 4 years in a 50kWh electric van that is stupidly uneconomical
Oh, yeah, I’ve just bought a 2021 Vauxhall Vivaro-E Life with 219k on.
DoThisNext: https://www.dothisnext.co.uk – submit your news articles and other video ideas here!
Octopus Energy referral – join Octopus for your home energy and we both get £50 credit! https://share.octopus.energy/river-storm-654
Visit my Amazon storefront for useful tools and accessories and support the channel! https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernheroes
Business: modernheroescars@gmail.com
Follow Me:
Twitter (X): https://www.twitter.com/@ModernHeroesTV
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/modernheroestv
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ModernHeroes
