Interesting post and when I'm doing my 'man maths' and in my personal circumstance, I compare it to leasing. I've had Tesla's and Range Rover Sports* for the last 8 years as the daily (well, the wife's daily) and they're circa £1k pm to lease then with fuel and insurance on top.
So in that scenario the maths is very different - £84k for lease alone (7 years) with no value at the end + everything in your list minus maintenance and RFL. On that basis a Tesla over seven years is closer to £100k. Even if you went for a £750 pm lease car, that still isn't that interesting (to me, at least), then cars like the Z4M are incredible value.
At least you get circa £20-£30k back with all the value you've had out of if in the meantime. Whereas I've been bored to tears with tax efficient dullards.
Or this is just is just my man maths giving me the answer that suits
*They're company cars, so I pick low tax-bearing options. The Range Rover's a hybrid, hence the lower bracket. It's my company either way, so it's just tax efficiency. A performance car through the company would cost a fortune in tax that I'm just not prepared to pay - there's nothing out there that really excites me anyway. And I wanted a non EV for my weekend car - hence the cheap Z4.
Yeah, it all depends on what you actually need from the car.
I also have my own business and lease a seven seat Tesla Model Y because, for the job it does, it costs me pennies to run. I won’t go into all the details, but my priorities for a daily are completely different to what I want from something like the Z4M.
I do around 15,000 to 16,000 miles a year, and the cost of fuelling, insuring, taxing and maintaining a seven seater from Audi, Land Rover or similar would be astronomical. I worked it out at around £1,500 a month all in. The Tesla cost me about £400 in electricity last year at home and on the road. If it was just at home at the current 3p per KWH and 4 miles pkwh it would have been like £120 so it is just a completely different proposition. Compared to the £2.5-3k a petrol car was costing me.
The lease also means you dont need to worry about the depreciation which is the killer with EVs.
For a car I do that many miles in, I don’t need every journey to feel like an occasion. Most long trips are just monotonous motorway miles anyway. What I value in a daily is something quiet, comfortable and cheap to run, and EVs are very hard to beat for that.
That being said, doing that sort of mileage in a Z4M, or really most of the Z4 range, would be a tough ask for me.
If anything, having the EV makes the Z feel even more special. Getting into it becomes a properly visceral experience, and I genuinely cherish the time I spend in it. In this age, I feel lucky to own something like that because they simply don’t make cars with that kind of character anymore.
As Tiglon mentioned, two seaters are basically dead in the water now. If you want a proper roadster, your choices are pretty limited. You’ve got things like the Boxster, MX 5 and, if you want to count an EV, the Cyberster.
Everything has moved towards SUVs, and a lot of the traditional body styles have fallen out of fashion. Saloons, estates and coupes have all been squeezed while SUVs have more or less replaced everything.
Estates have made a bit of a comeback, but even then they are still pretty niche at the top end. Who realistically has £100k plus to spend on an M3 or M5 Touring? As much as I would love one, if you think the Z is expensive to run, trying to lease one of those and do 10,000 to 15,000 miles a year must be eye watering.
And if you are leasing something like that but are too scared to use it properly because of the mileage, wear or cost, then what is the point of having it in the first place?
Part of the issue a lot of traditional body styles have fallen off is because the platform is not suitable for hybrid or EV, the SUV is because they sit high and you can put the battery down low.
I hope to see a revival in other model but people vote with their wallets and from what I can see people are buying 35k Chinese EVs because people cant afford 70-80k cars. The whole thing has gone a bit bonkers.
The 33k over 7 years actually looks fantastic value in comparison.
Derby
At the summit of the picturesque fens
