After a few months of waiting, my new car has finally arrived
I have been driving my Toyota Wish for more than a decade. More than 220,000 km on it and still doing about 14 km/L. It has been a spacious, reliable car.
Despite the fuel economy of my Wish, I still need to pay an arm and a leg for petrol each week. My commute until recently was pretty long, about 50 km each way. With the crazy fuel price (HK$23/L, ~US$ 3/L or US$ 11.3 a gallon) here, I pay around HK$4,000 each month for petrol.
It is also getting more difficult to pass the annual car inspection as I have had to get some parts replaced to pass the inspection for the last two years.
Given that the government offers an incentive to replace conventional vehicles with electrical ones and the fuel price does not seem to go down any time soon, I decided a while back to replace my Wish with an electric car and have set aside around HK$400,000 for it.
The criteria I had for picking the EV were simple — anything but Tesla.
We have been to a Mercedes EQA car show in early 2022 and we were not impressed. My wife complained about the rear seats being cramped. The boot storage was also very small. Delivery time was around a year.
Then a lot of hype about the Hyundai Ioniq 5 emerged in May 2022. I even took the day off to visit the dealership when the car was first available for viewing. LOVED it. It did not feel like a stereotypical Korean car. The look was great, with plenty of space inside and many gadgets to play around with. We immediately placed a HK$20,000 deposit and were told the car would be available in Q4 of 2023. Yes, Q4 of 2023. One and a half years after placing the deposit.
I was actually OK with that as my Wish was still running fine and it would take many months, if ever, for our apartment block to provide EV charging stations for residents. I could not charge the EV at home even if it was available there and then.
I was quite chuffed when the dealership raised the price of the Ioniq 5 a few weeks after I placed the deposit. The sales representative reassured me that I would only need to pay the old price when the car arrived. That was all I needed to know, and I did not pay much attention to other electric cars after that.
Then in early December, the dealership called me to say that due to the semiconductors shortage, the car may not be delivered until Q2 of 2024, and the replacement subsidy scheme would have lapsed by then.
That means I would have to fork out an extra HK$190,000 in tax. They gave me two options; I could get back my deposit any time now or wait and see whether the scheme would be extended.
I decided to wait it out. The agreed price was about HK$50,000 lower than the RRP, and I could wait a few months to see whether the scheme would be extended. Besides, I could transfer the ownership to someone else if needed.
Then a few days after the phone call, my wife and I chanced upon a Volvo car show. We saw the XC40 Recharge P6. The vibe was good. The interior was spacious. The two-tone looked neat. More importantly, the wife liked it and it was within the budget.
We again put down a deposit straight away.
The car arrived two months later, and Volvo helped with all the documents, from the application for the replacement subsidy, comprehensive insurance cover, transferring the vehicle registration mark and cancelling the old vehicle registration. The whole thing was hassle-free, and I was very happy with the experience.
I have been driving it for a week and I really like it. The handling is good and is definitely quieter than my old Wish. The range is OK for my need, although I have been conscious of nearby EV chargers and need to plan my trips more carefully to allay my range anxiety.
But there is just one thing that I am not too happy about it.
The lack of electric child safety locks for the XC40 P6 Recharge. I was ready to pay a few thousand dollars for this option, but it would only be available if I paid HK$ 110,000 (30% more) to upgrade it to the dual-motor P8.