Dear Alex,

I’m considering replacing my five-year-old Volvo V90 Cross Country diesel with a plug-in hybrid (PHEV). Most of my routine is 25-50 miles a day on country lanes, with monthly trips of 300 miles. Our home EV charger can charge at a rate of 7p per kWh and we also have a daytime trickle-charge option from solar panels. I require plenty of equipment and the boot must be suitable for a large dog. What would you suggest for £50,000? And is the extra cost of a PHEV worth it?

– DC

Dear DC,

While Volvo’s big estate has enjoyed a stay of execution in the UK, it’s not cheap; even an entry-level plug-in version is close to £60,000. That means opting for a used example – I found a year-old T6 Recharge Plus with 14,000 miles for £46,990. 

Volvo famously axed diesel versions of the V90 a few years ago, so if you decide against a hybrid, an Audi A6 Avant would do the job – an ex-demonstrator 2.0 TDI 40 S Line with only 3,000 miles can be yours for £42,270. 

Given your budget, if you want a brand-new car you’ll have to forgo the premium badge, although that doesn’t necessarily mean forgoing the high specification you want. 

For example, the top-of-the-range L&K model of the Skoda Superb is £47,040. It’s dripping with equipment and feels suitably lavish inside – and the huge boot means plenty of space for the dog. The 2.0-litre diesel is a gutsy 190bhp unit and you get four-wheel drive. Or you can pay £1,500 more for the plug-in hybrid, which has 202bhp, but only two-wheel drive. 

The Superb is also ideal for comparing costs to see whether a PHEV is worth the extra purchase cost.

The Superb will get around 2mpkWh (miles per kilowatt hour) on electric power and should cover at least 25 miles on a charge, if not more. 

So let’s say that your daily driving will cost about 87p, less if you pull charge from the solar panels, and let’s add 10 miles on petrol power at around 45mpg – £1.46, at today’s average fuel price, making a total of £2.33 a day.

Add £50 a month for those longer trips, assuming they’re on petrol power alone, at 40mpg (although I expect you’d better this figure in real life) and that gives you a rough annual fuel cost of about £1,450.

The diesel Superb should average 47.1mpg according to the official figures – let’s call that 45mpg in real-world use. Similar mileage would cost £2,481 each year – that’s £1,031 more. So over the course of a five-year ownership the diesel will cost about £5,155 extra in fuel.

With that in mind, if you pay the extra for the PHEV – and plug it in to charge it as much as possible – you should break even somewhere around the middle part of your second year of ownership. From there on in, you’ll be saving money. That makes it a no-brainer.

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