Living with a Citroen e-C3: should I have chosen the hybrid model instead? 

This is my Citroen e-C3, and I’ve been using this as my only car for the last six months. It’s been great for my local commutes, with comfy suspension which soaks up any potholes North London can throw its way.

However, whenever I’ve had to venture further afield there has been a problem. Citroen claims this car can do 200 miles on a charge, but I’m lucky if I can get 130 miles from it. Considering I make a regular 112-mile round trip to visit my sister, and I don’t have charging at home, that’s not ideal.

The thing is, you can also buy a hybrid Citroen C3 which has the same soft suspension and funky styling, but with a frugal petrol engine under the bonnet. I’m starting to think this may make more sense for me, especially seeing as I have nowhere to charge my car at home.

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Citroen e-C3 vs Citroen C3 hybrid: crunching the numbers

My Citroen e-C3 is the top-spec Max version, meaning it costs £23,800. The equivalent C3 hybrid is £22,900, so they’re not a million miles apart in terms of price.

What really matters though is the price you pay at a dealer, and at the time of writing you can get an e-C3 Max like mine for as little as £19,800. The equivalent hybrid model is currently available for £20,700 through Carwow, so it’s important to check out the latest offers to see how much you can save.

So the two cars cost about the same to buy, but what about running costs? Well I have to rely on a public charger around the corner from my house, and it costs 46p per kWh. To fully charge the Citroen’s 44kWh battery therefore costs me around £20, and that will take me 130 miles at most.

Citroen says the C3 hybrid will do 55mpg, and at that rate it would cost me around £17 to do the same 130 miles. To put it another way, 8,000 miles a year in the hybrid would cost just over £1,000 in fuel, whereas the e-C3 would cost £1,200 in charging – assuming I never use the more expensive rapid chargers.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that the hybrid does 50mpg in the real world. This would bump the fuel cost over 8,000 miles to around 1,100, so there’s not a huge amount in it.

Should you buy the Citroen e-C3 or the C3 hybrid?

For my use case, I think the Citroen C3 hybrid makes more sense. Its 44-litre fuel tank would take me around 480 miles, assuming a real-world economy of 50mpg, and with nowhere to fit a home charger at my flat the electric car is slightly more expensive to run.

That said, if my Citroen e-C3 would get closer to its 200-mile claimed range figure then I’d stick with the EV. Getting 200 miles for £20 works out to around £800 over 8,000 miles, and it would mean I could cover pretty much all of my regular journeys without having to stop and charge. I also prefer the way electric cars drive – they’re just smoother and more relaxing than petrol cars.

And if you have a charger at home, the e-C3 is a bit of a no-brainer unless you cover long distances on a regular basis. Some EV charging tariffs offer prices as low as 7p per kWh, so a full charge will only cost you £3. Even if you’re only getting 130 miles from the car, that still works out to £160 per year in charging to cover 8,000 miles.

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