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Would a m3 work for me or should I stick to a diesel

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Hi can someone help me please I am a director of a small ltd company just me and my wife and need to change one of our cars. I currently drive around 25-30k and currently looking at a bmw m340d personally. My question is would I save money by getting a m3 Lr

My biggest journey is around 200 miles.

Can I claim all charging costs back and if I lease I take it I can claim 50% of the vat back I can’t afford to buy outright.

Any advice would be good thanks
 
Fit a wall charger at home and fill up for £8.00
Not sure -but I suspect with data from the charger you can claim mileage expenses.
Or use the supercharger network, which will provide an invoice/receipt.
Servicing costs are minimal
 
Hi can someone help me please I am a director of a small ltd company just me and my wife and need to change one of our cars. I currently drive around 25-30k and currently looking at a bmw m340d personally. My question is would I save money by getting a m3 Lr

My biggest journey is around 200 miles.

Can I claim all charging costs back and if I lease I take it I can claim 50% of the vat back I can’t afford to buy outright.

Any advice would be good thanks
Your accountant will be able to advise I'm sure.
 
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Good comparison with the beemer, same price until you start adding options...

I went from an A4 3litre diesel to a hybrid A class Mercedes (trying to save money during lockdown as business dived) to an M3LR back in March when it turned around.

Honestly, take one for a test drive and see what you think? There are numerous peeves on this forum about stuff not working exactly as everyone wants, from the "it's not working" to the "auto headlights come back on too slowly, I want them 5 milliseconds faster". TBH every car I've had has had issues of one sort or another so it depends if this bothers you? Just preparing you for the barage of moaners, that's all.

Personnaly I love it. I do close to 18k a year and most charging is at home but top up for a few quid on returns sometimes just for convenience and a wee stop.

Love the auto-heating and defrost, something I can never go back from.

I'm also a director of my own 1 person company and bought the car as a personal purchase (PCP) and pay myself 45ppm. From what I pay myself I then multiply my business mileage by 5p and then pay that into my Octopus account to offset the increased electric bills.

For comparison also, my wife went from a 3l diesel X4 to an MY and they are virtually the same size dimensionally. She's loving travelling to all her work sites where there's free charging so we plan her charge levels to be comfortable to arrive then ramp up for a full 90% charge to come home again. Win win!
 
Hi can someone help me please I am a director of a small ltd company just me and my wife and need to change one of our cars. I currently drive around 25-30k and currently looking at a bmw m340d personally. My question is would I save money by getting a m3 Lr

My biggest journey is around 200 miles.

Can I claim all charging costs back and if I lease I take it I can claim 50% of the vat back I can’t afford to buy outright.

Any advice would be good thanks

Is that 200 miles one way or round trip?

It makes a big difference if it’s each way!
 
Hi can someone help me please I am a director of a small ltd company just me and my wife and need to change one of our cars. I currently drive around 25-30k and currently looking at a bmw m340d personally. My question is would I save money by getting a m3 Lr

My biggest journey is around 200 miles.

Can I claim all charging costs back and if I lease I take it I can claim 50% of the vat back I can’t afford to buy outright.

Any advice would be good thanks
I am sure there are going to be different views and as you are on a Tesla forum you get both moaners and fans equally giving their own views!

I think from a financial point of view you may be able to save some money but with increasing cost of electrics this may even out.

From a practical point of view if you are organised and your business is not a stressful one and you have more control over your business than your clients (include as you please) - Yes, Tesla goes very well with all the calculations.

However, if you do not have any of the above and your business is more stressful then go ahead with BMW as you do not have to think too much when you have 100 other things to worry about - charging, lost miles, will you make it or not, using heaters etc., should not be a major obstacle running a business.

Tesla Model 3 is an amazing car but has its own quirks and limitations. It works perfectly well in many situations but there are many situations in business where you just do not have to think about just starting a car and go. Tesla isn’t one of that car. You can see many discussions on this forum around holidays, europe trips and airports and charging related to this. I don’t think we have to think too hard to leave a BMW diesel in an airport and worry about whether there is going to be enough diesel in it etc.,
 
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If it's 200 miles or less in one day then there is no thought involved plug in each night at home and wake up to a full tank. Longer ranges aren't a problem just require some thought, speak to your accountant regarding savings etc my view is electric is much better tax wise.
We've had a fair few BMW and compared fit and finish of interior the bmws where nicer not by miles but definitely nicer. I wouldn't go back and we're considering another tesla next year because it's just worked for us.
 
My understanding is:

Company can buy EV and get 100% first year writeoff (you will have to pay that back when you sell because it will be "profit", but if you then buy another (and the scheme still exists) that's moot. Tax rate might change for the worse though ...).

Benefit-in-Kind on EV is tiny (I have both EVs as Company Cars)

You could perhaps also consider Salary Sacrifice (but I expect that Company Car would be better for a company-owner)

Assuming you have, or get, an overnight Off Peak rate and charge overnight (i.e. off-street parking) then settling up with the business for the electricity cost should be OK, but you might need some way of monitoring it. The "isolation box" at my distribution board, which feeds the car charger, has a kWh meter on it. You can log what the car adds (e.g. using something like TeslaFi), but that won't catch every trip, and it is "received by car" which is not the same as "Delivered from the grid". Or you could pay for the "fuel" and get reimbursed from the company for "Business miles" - you might well be paying 5P a mile and getting 20-45P back ... no idea if its worth the candle though.

Your accountant definitely best person to check all that with.

If you charge at Supercharger you will get an Invoice (to the APP on your phone). I have a company credit card logged on MyTesla account, and my book keeper has the APP and downloads the invoices (but you could obviously do that yourself). I also have the £9.99-ish monthly connectivity pcakage, also on that Company Card (different route to get those invoices AFAICR <sigh>, but still a company expense).

I suggest you try ABetterRoutePlanner and put in the CONFIG the vehicle(s) you are considering buying, and choose your averagely worst / fastest & longest journeys, and set weather to "Winter / Terrible" (worst case) and see what route it finds and what your arrive %age would be. Its data is pretty accurate, so likely to be realistic - it will also show you where you could charge, and how long it would take.

When I got my first EV, 2015, I was doing 35K miles a year. Far far fewer charging locations back then, and car had max real-world range of 240 miles, and I was out-of-range and charging 2x a month. The replacement will do 300 miles (real world motorway, "at a pinch") and my out-of-range journeys are now only a couple of times a year. Don't underestimate how much difference a bit more real-world range makes. 50 more miles, on top of any already nearly-enough-range, means you won't have to stop to charge on those borderline journeys, avoiding the time (5-10 minutes for leave-motorway-and-rejoin, plus charging time), plus risk of "chargers busy and have to wait". The first model I ordered was discontinued during my wait, and I was offered larger-or-smaller battery replacement. I paid up for the bigger one, a lot of extra money back then, and once I'd got over the £-pain! it was an excellent decision by reducing the number of journeys where I had to charge.

Stopping to charge means:

Some time stationary. If you do emails whilst charging, which you would only do when you got home, its completely time-neutral. If you are going 200+ miles you probably want a pee and a coffee anyway!

Chargers might be busy. I try to NEVER charge on the outbound journey, as it makes the arrival time unpredictable. On the return I don't care - I just do my time-neutral emails

Consider the reduced cost (and disruptive TIME) of servicing. Depending on what the Vendor requirements are for servicing once a year / 35K miles may be fine. You won't use the brakes hardly at all, so won't need new pads until 150K miles, and no cam belt / lengthy servicing tasks. I have a company service mine who is mobile (Cleevely Motors), so they come to my home or office and service the car on the driveway - saves all the hassle of take-to-dealer. Last EV I didn't service at all for last 50K miles (Tesla took it in as part-ex without quibbling that), and new ones I service at around 30K interval - its a lot less inconvenience than service interval of ICE (i.e. for a high mileage driver)

I think from a financial point of view you may be able to save some money but with increasing cost of electrics this may even out.

Home charging with an off-peak rate of, say, 20p and 4 miles per kWh is 5P a mile. Range Rover type diesel is 20P a mile, and Eco-Box is 10P - and personally I wouldn't want to have to do 30K miles a year in an eco-box ...

... also 30K miles a year in an ICE is at least 8 hours a year standing-and-filling and queueing-to-pay. I look at those as billable hours :) When I charge the EV on a trip I'm doing emails, not standing-pumping :)
 
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You've mentioned your longest trip, but not how frequently that is, what a more typical trip is, and if you end up at home every night.

If it's just day trips for work, then 200 miles should be totally doable, even in adverse conditions. Even if there was the occasional trip beyond range, My experience of the supercharger network is that leisure time is more busy than business time. Eg a bank holiday weekend is typically going to be much worse than a monday morning or a trip home in the evening.
Worth noting that if you're shooting round at 90mph all day, that might be a problem for EV range as well as your license...

If you have home charging, then you'll just be plugging in at night and letting the car do it's thing, rather than a trip to the petrol station.

In general, a model 3 is is a nice place to be. Electric will likely be quieter. The assistance features are good, but perhaps not that much better than a good assistance package on a high end ice.
 
In general, a model 3 is is a nice place to be. Electric will likely be quieter.

When I went from Golf to MS the improvement in arrival-state was very noticeable. I had a regular trip from East Anglia to Bristol which, when done as a day trip, was tiring. Post MS that became arrival fully refreshed - both at Bristol and also when returning home. Maybe bigger car helped, but I put most of it down to quieter, and a significant reduction in driver-workload using AP. Stopping to recharge definitely helps - my trips to the Alps, which we used to do non-stop just changing driver every 3 hours and refuelling every 6 hours, and back then we just assumed that arriving knackered was to be expected! now replaced with enforced 20 minute recharge stop every 2-2.5 hours we arrive completely fresh.

But I've also read a psychology report that says the main reason for this is because the EV driver is smug. Don't care, works for me :)

So hopefully some improvement on wear-and-tear on a high mileage driver changing from ICE to small-ish EV too.
 
If it is 200 miles round trip you should also consider the model 3 Standard Range.
Depends on how often the 200-mile journey is. Once a month would be OK, but weekly would mean charging 100% regularly, which is a bit much. Long Range and Performance would be no problem.

Get a test drive and see what you think. I moved from BMW --> Volvo --> EV. Would never go back.
 
The answers are still the same as when you asked the same question in May asking about a Model Y and WannabeOwner gave you a long and sensible set of answers then and now.

Did you speak to your accountant? You said then that you did lots of motorway miles and about 25k miles per year. You have not answered the question as to whether the 200 miles is a round trip or one way. It may make a difference in planning.

Has anything changed or are you still just undecided? My accountant gave me very clear advice which helped move my decision on swiftly!
 
Another point to consider for a 30K miles p.a. high mileage driver is the time needed each night to charge.

A 4-hour Off Peak rate (single phase) is only 4 x 7kW = 28kWh (@ 4 miles / kWh is 112 miles - in practice likely to be a few percentage points less than that)

Whereas Ecconomy-7 would be 7 x 7kW = 49kWh approx 196 miles - but the rate for that would be more than a 4-hour rate. Maybe there are flexile rates which would, in practice, provide a "cheapest off-peak 4 hour slot" and also "additional 30 minute affordable slots overnight"

If work requires leaving early in the morning for (some) trips then something to schedule pre-condition would help, and also being able to stop charging at the end of Off-Peak - e.g. on a day when working at home, and following a day "far away"; the car will have partly recharged by end of off-peak, and can do the rest "tonight". Tesla doesn't have inbuilt ability to stop charging at end of Off Peak, but there are various 3rd party API solutions.

Such logging services can also record where the car has been / energy used / etc. so useful for other things such as business expenses and remembering when / where you went. I've just used a car park two days in a row which has ANPR on entry and type in your REG on exit to pay, and it charged me fine the first day, and for a 24 hour stay the second!!. Apart from the fact that I find it extraordinary that it took my payment, camera saw me on exit, and again on next entrance, and all of those?!!! failed such that its decision was "never left, one single visit" I am able to demonstrate, from the logs, the exact time I went through the barrier - so that will move the resolution from "We don't believe you Sir" to "Reluctantly we'll have spend time checking CCTV" ...
 
The OP here will be claiming the charging as a business expense, so using a SC on a long journey should not be a problem. I reckon it is hard to do a 200 mile journey without coming close to a SC or a working Gridserve or Applegreen etc. Taking a 20 minute comfort break is an easy adaption on a 3 hour 200 mile trip.

As I may have said elsewhere, I regularly do a long trip and stay overnight at Scotch Corner. In earlier times I filled up using the SC for 20 mins on arrival, but now just use the destination chargers overnight. It is something that the OP needs to understand about EV travel. I do about 20k miles per year and after about 3 weeks it was an easy transition.
 
Thank you all for the replies the 200 miles would be a round trip and I understand It might be worth just using a small charge on them days when I am doing 200 or so miles.

I did speak to my accountant and to be honest he did not give me a clear answer for which one is better for me.

Going back to the Y I have test drove a y and a 3 and I think the 3 would suit me better.