If you haven’t read part one, and want to know more about my thoughts on EVs in general, you can find that here. As I alluded to in that post, most of the negatives with EVs I feel like will be addressed over time, but there’s one problem I’m not sure how they’re going to fix, but first a bit of background.

As you know if you read part one, a couple of years ago we made the change to an electric car; an MG4 EV. What I didn’t mention was that it was our only car. A few years ago, we became a single car household, with the plan being I would cycle to work, and my wife would use the car for the school run and her commute. We said we would stick to one car for as long as it made sense.

Cycling to work went well - right up until I broke my collar bone - and I haven’t been able to cycle in almost two years. So my wife has been a star, doing the school run, dropping me off at work, then doing her own commute. This came to a bit of a head in February, when she had some time off work and spent far too much of it driving around. One car didn’t make sense anymore.

We didn’t want to spend a fortune, but wanted a car that I could use as a daily driver, while my wife keeps using the MG. So it was straight to autotrader to look for a low mileage used car, and it didn’t take long to find a few options. There were fiat 500s and Corsas aplenty, but none of them really piqued my interest. Now if there had been some Abarths I might have been interested but a good example was just a bit over budget for what we were looking for. Then I stumbled across this:

A 2009 Mini Cooper S. Low mileage for its age at 46000, full service history including a new timing chain and tensioner, and high pressure fuel pump in the last 10k miles. The only snag was it was in Blackburn, but I made an enquiry, it was still available, and we made the 120 mile trip to take it for a test drive. Now around two weeks after making the decision to get a second car, we own a Mini, and I’m sat writing this post.

It’s probably about time I wrote about the actual problem I have with EVs, you know that big one I mentioned at the end of part 1, and it’s this - it doesn’t feel like driving. After buying the Mini, I hopped in to make the drive home, and within about 2 minutes I had the realisation that I missed driving. For the first time in years I had a smile on my face while driving a car. It’s not like the MG drives itself, but it’s not an experience. You don’t get to shift down to overtake, you don’t have the noise and vibration of the engine. Although I’d never noticed until now, when driving it I feel disconnected from the road.

I’m not a motoring journalist that can wax lyrical about the feelings and emotions you get when driving. I also haven’t driven loads of electric cars. But I have driven plenty of cars - from my mother’s 2006 Nissan Micra, to a Ferrari 430, an Ariel Atom, and plenty of others on between. I had a go kart as a kid, a steering wheel setup at home for gaming for a while - I suppose my point is I like cars, and I like driving. I’m not going to say all EVs are the same, I’m sure you can have plenty of fun in some of them, but I’m not sure how any of them can replicate the experience of revving an engine and feeling the power in your hands. I feel like that experience is the biggest problem with EVs.

You might not agree with Jeremy Clarkson on a lot of things, but I think he might have got this one right. Some people have dismissed his views when he said that EVs are boring as him being old fashioned and needing to move with the times, but I find myself agreeing with him. Straight line speed and high torque is great, and maybe they’ll fix the weight and handling, but will they ever be actually fun? And at what price point will they be fun? Will we have to splash out a fortune to have some “sports” version of an EV to get a diluted experience of something that could have been offered by a hot hatch? Until I moved back to petrol, I would have said I was relatively content with an EV, but now I realise how soulless the MG is, and how much it feels like I’m just behind the wheel of a two ton computer.

I’ve never been convinced that electric cars were the way to go as far as green motoring was concerned - I always felt that hydrogen may have been a better option - and maybe one day a company will find some formula that’s makes an EV as fun to drive. But for me, after buying this Mini, I hope that synthetic fuel truly takes off and becomes accessible to keep combustion alive.

The day after I got the car home, I drove my three year old daughter to nursery in the Mini, and she had the biggest smile I’ve ever seen her have in a car. She labelled it “the best day ever” - and although it might not have been my best day ever, I imagine she was feeling similar happiness to what I had experienced the day before. When I picked her up later that day she asked if we were going “in the mini car”, and every day since when we leave the house she asks that same question.

She has never shown this level of excitement for a car, and it made me a little sad to think that she might never get the opportunity to drive a car like this as an adult. How much of her future will involve just getting into a car and saying where to go, before it drives itself there?

I’ve joked with my friends about her being a tiny petrolhead. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t, and I’m not going to force an interest on her either way. For now though she loves being in a proper car, and my plan is to look after the Mini (if you know anything about them you’ll know they’re far from perfect) and keep that experience alive for as long as I can.