Eventually, somewhere between "What is a kilowatt-hour?" and "Do I really need vehicle-to-load capability?", I discovered that I'd accidentally developed a hobby. This happens to me frighteningly often (see my six weeks of coverage on 3D printers).
I'm not a car person (or I wasn't, anyway), and like many non-car-people, my first impression of electric cars wasn't excitement, it was anxiety.
"What if the battery dies?"
"How long do they really last?"
"Will we spend every family holiday sitting in motorway service stations eating junk food while waiting for enough electrons to cross a membrane...or cathode...or something..."
Well, it turns out that, in Ireland anyway, it's all pretty straight forward. The technology has advanced enough that pretty much all electric cars have a big enough battery (Ireland is a small country, but even still, few people have a daily commute of over 450km!) and in pretty much all situations we came across, the battery has a longer warranty than the rest of the car! A nice fact to remember is that nobody fills their petrol car every night, but you can wake up every morning with a "full tank" in an EV.
We narrowed our search quite easily by realising that we still needed a 7-seater and without an unlimited budget there were really only a few options.
After a bit of toing-and-froing we have landed on the Peugeot E5008, and what a beauty she is...well, he actually. In a house of women, I'm vying for the car to be called "Leo" (inspired by the Peugeot logo of a rampant lion, and by Leonardo being the blue ninja turtle). The colour of the car is called "Obsession Blue" and it's accurate. I am obsessed.
To be honest, if we could have picked any car (without the constraint of wanting a 7-seater) I would have gone for a relative newcomer in Ireland: Leapmotor's C10. It has all the bells and whistles by default (including an expansive panoramic sunroof) and is made out of nuclear submarine-grade steel. But it only comes in a 5-seater. Here's a promotional shot of the Leapmotor:
We've owned the car for a week and a day now and we're all already in love with it. We've already gone on a roadtrip, we've public charged, we've granny-charged. We're becoming EV drivers - those kind of people!
The search began with range anxiety. It ended with excitement.
In between, we flirted with futuristic design, we admired Scandinavian practicality, we almost fell head over heels for an unexpected outsider with an enormous sunroof and we've ended up with a car we love...and I've ended up with another new hobby to boot!
See you next week when we get to the beginning of the end of my Space Station Zero team! See you then on The Art of Caesura!
Reading: Red Rising - Pierce Brown
Watching: Outlast - Jungle (2026)
Next Week:
O Captain, my Captain!
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