Once you’ve owned an electric car, you’re very unlikely to go back to petrol or diesel power. That’s the case for nine out of 10 EV drivers, anyway, and it mirrors my own thoughts. My Hyundai Kona Electric is quiet, easy to drive and phenomenally cheap to run — it would never make sense to swap it for a combustion-engined car as a sensible daily driver. But, as someone who’s spent the last 15 years driving lots of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars, I’m actually a little sad that I’m unlikely to ever own one again.
There are caveats to this. Until recently I ran a petrol soft-top alongside my EV (no spoilers — more on that below) and I think it’s highly likely that I’ll buy another in the future. But actually swapping my EV daily driver for a car with an engine would be a backwards step in so many ways. Here are seven cars I would actually consider it for.
1. Suzuki Jimny
The Suzuki Jimny is the worst car I’ve ever wanted to own… so why does it lead this list?!
I first drove the current Jimny in 2019, borrowed from Suzuki for a weekend of green laning and camping in Yorkshire. I remember the shock of joining the A1 and getting battered by a side wind — a straightforward motorway run suddenly felt like part of the adventure.
By the end of the weekend, I loved it — and so did everyone who saw it. I recall dropping the window to a haggard-looking rambler who I expected to shout at me for being many miles from a tarmaced road. “That’s bloody brilliant!” he shouted.
I wish I’d bought one there and then — you could get one new for less than £15,500. It’d be worth twice that today. The problem is it’s noisy, cramped, inefficient and hard work to live with — which makes replacing my EV with one completely irrational. I still check the classifieds.
2. Kia Picanto GT-Line
I bloody love a Kia Picanto. They’re just really good cars — cheap to run, well equipped, and properly dependable. I think they appeal to my sensible side in much the same way a modern electric car does.
Which is the strange part: Kia also happens to make some of the best EVs you can buy, so why do I feel FOMO over an ageing petrol city car? Buy one with the 1.0-litre turbo engine and it’s an absolute giggle. 99bhp doesn’t sound like much, but it’s plenty to shift the Picanto’s one-tonne kerb weight along with surprising vigour.
It looks mega in GT-Line trim, too — red stitching on the seats, twin exhaust finishers, 17-inch alloy wheels. It’s less try-hard than, say, a Volkswagen Up GTI.
The catch: this is barely even a downgrade in sensibleness, which rather undermines the whole point of this list. I don’t care.
3. Honda Prelude
I haven’t driven the new Prelude yet but it’s already won me over.
It’s a hybrid rather than a traditional petrol car — a step backwards from an EV, which is why it earns its place here. I ran a Honda CR-V Hybrid before the Kona, and it was dependable in a way that made it easy to forget it was even there. That’s the thing about Hondas: they feel engineered rather than assembled.
The Prelude brings that philosophy to a coupe shape Honda hasn’t offered in years. It borrows adaptive dampers and Brembo brakes from the Civic Type R, and Honda has said it benchmarked the Alpine A110 when developing the chassis — an ambitious target for a car that isn’t trying to be a full performance model.
It also uses Honda’s S+ Shift system, simulating gear changes and rev-matched downshifts despite there being no conventional gearbox underneath.
Whether it feels like a traditional sports coupe or something new remains to be seen, but the engineering curiosity alone makes it interesting. And it looks really flipping cool.
4. Mazda MX-5
I’m a proper Mazda MX-5 nerd so of course it features here. For a while, my Kona shared a driveway with a 2021 ND Mazda MX-5. It was the perfect pairing: the Kona did the commuting and motorway trips. The Mazda existed purely for evenings and weekends when driving didn’t need to be efficient or sensible.
It wasn’t especially fast, and by modern standards it feels modest. That’s never really been the point. You sit low, almost on the rear axle, and the steering communicates everything happening through the front wheels. Even simple journeys become more engaging just because of how involved you feel.
Electric cars are often accused of lacking character… and I do kinda get that. But there’s one thing they can’t replicate: dropping the roof on a warm evening, hearing the world instead of being sealed off from it, and remembering driving can be enjoyable for its own sake. I’d happily own another MX-5… and yes, I’d even consider swapping my EV for one.
5. Volkswagen Caddy
You didn’t come here expecting Porsche 911s and Honda Civic Type Rs, did you?
A Volkswagen Caddy is the only car I’ve ever ordered to my own spec. Back in 2022, Volkswagen gave me the chance to run a Caddy for six months — and I mean really run one, choosing the colour, the trim level, every option. The result was ‘Wybble’: a Caddy Life that went on camping trips, doubled as triathlon transport, and served as my daily driver for half a year. When it appeared on Autotrader a year or so later, I was genuinely tempted to buy it back with my own money.
It’s not even really a car — more of a van-with-windows, although it shares the same MQB platform as the Golf and the Audi TT, which I think earns it a spot here. I loved the sliding doors. I liked that it swallowed furniture without complaint. And it was almost as easy to live with as my Kona Electric — which, for something shaped like a shoebox, is a genuine compliment.
6. Volvo V90 Cross Country
I can’t pretend this is entirely objective, because my only experience of a V90 Cross Country wasn’t normal.
It happened on a frozen lake in northern Sweden, in a Volvo built for the police — flashing blue lights, sirens, and free rein on sheet ice. Unsurprisingly, enormous fun.
The civilian version is more restrained, and most V90 Cross Country models are diesel, which suits the car’s relaxed character. If I were buying one, I’d hunt down a rarer petrol T5.
Ten years ago I’d have gone for something lower, faster and more obviously sporty. These days I’m more interested in something that handles long distances comfortably, copes with muddy car parks after a walk, and carries a ridiculous amount of gear without complaint. The V90 Cross Country is exactly that — a properly useful estate that doesn’t pretend to be anything else.
7. Reliant Rialto
This is where things fall apart.
I have, in fact, driven a Reliant Rialto — the van version, being used to collect stale bread from a local bakery for the owner’s ponies. The back was full of loaves. I drove it on Valentine’s Day, which added to the surreality of the experience (and explains the picture above).
At one point mid-corner I lifted a wheel off the ground, which I can confirm is unsettling in a three-wheeled vehicle.
It’s a terrible replacement for an electric car by any rational measure: slow, noisy, unstable, outclassed in every category that matters. I still came away smiling.
Modern cars are astonishingly competent but very few of them have that effect. The Rialto does, precisely because it feels so far removed from anything we now consider normal.
Would I replace my EV with one? Probably not. But I’d waste far too much time convincing myself it isn’t as ridiculous an idea as it clearly is.
Final thoughts
Living with an electric car hasn’t made me fall out of love with petrol cars. If anything, it’s helped me understand why I liked them in the first place.
The Kona is the best daily driver I’ve owned — cheap to run, relaxed to drive, requires very little thought. On logic alone, I’d keep it without hesitation.
But cars have never been entirely about logic. Sometimes they’re about green lanes in a Jimny, or a small hatchback being more entertaining than it has any right to be. Sometimes they’re about a van becoming one of the most useful vehicles you’ve owned. And sometimes they’re about driving a police car across a frozen lake in Sweden and wondering how that became a normal sentence.
I wouldn’t give up the EV. But for these seven, I understand the temptation.