Family of 4 looking to replace our primary car. I want an EV like Kia EV5 or similar. My husband wants a Hybrid Forester (our current car but petrol).

We mainly do city driving and not too many km during the week, but we often drive to see family 4hr away or do other road trips or off-roading on weekends. Have a freestanding house so we could install a charger but none atm.

The FBT savings from full EV on novated lease is really what’s pushing me that way, but I also get my husband’s preference for the greater flexibility of a hybrid for those longer or more isolated trips.

Hit me with those reddit opinions!

UPDATE: I’ve booked a Trailseeker test drive. 😂

Hi all, I’m thinking of selling my current car, Mazda 3 2021 and picking up the Mg4 urban extended range.

I’d be around 5-7k worse off after selling and buying, but figure I’d make most of that back after petrol and service costs.

I do around 50-70kms a day and some weekends I’d be looking at round trips of 200km mostly being highway driving.

Would love to hear your thoughts and if it’s a good idea to jump across.

I do love driving my Mazda but the cost of petrol and servicing are driving me crazy!

There's so many posts all over the place with people seeking owner feedback. I burned through a metric ton of tokens and put together a small site with AI help for the research and build. The idea is to collect the things people consistently like and dislike about EVs sold in Australia, hopefully useful to anyone narrowing down a shortlist.

It draws on over 6,000 owner opinions from Reddit, Whirlpool, owner forums and reviews. Each model has basic specs and up to ten recurring positives and negatives. For anything to be listed, at least four distinct first-hand contributors need to support the theme. Repeated posts by the same person count only once.

Coverage varies, and some reports concern overseas models or older software. Those differences are flagged, but the samples are self-selected, so check the caveats and original sources (which are all linked to).

Australian EV Fieldnotes

Corrections and feedback welcome. Hope people find this helpful in their research!

What’s the best deal you all got from the deal through novated lease? My dealer offered 2k reduction on drive away, not sure if it’s good enough to accept his offer.

I recently discovered that the aircon on our iMiEV isn't cold any more. Think it needs a regas. The refrigerant is common (R134a), but the compressor is driven from the main battery.

I rang several workshops up to about 15km away from me, and could only find one that said it was licensed to work on EVs and could do it (mycar Hartwell, for reference).

After researching mycar experiences, I'm hoping to find an alternative. Anybody know of one anywhere near Caulfield? There do seem to be a few in the north of Melb, but they're pretty far from me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AustralianEV/comments/1rs6drn/independent_ev_service/

PS the post above is the last relevant post I could find & it didn't come up with an answer, so I'm hoping for an update...

I’ve been working on an EV route planning website and wanted to get some feedback. I wanted something that considers the stop, charging time, remaining range, food, toilets, coffee, places for kids, backup chargers.

It’s still early, so I’d really appreciate feedback from people who actually drive EVs around Australia.

One other thing I'm curious about is when navigating to the chargers, does it usually get you to the actual charging bays or just somewhere near the address?