To think there are no real perks to driving an electric car?

As a self-confessed petrol head I’ve been a huge convert to EVs. I’d echo all the very good points everyone’s made about cost, whizziness, ease of driving & minimal servicing. Fundamentally, you get the smoothness and quiet of a Rolls Royce with the performance of a hot hatch - even with a lower-end EV.
And tbh the only people who ever seem to mention range issues or charger availability as barriers to purchase are people who don’t have one. Further, data shows that in Scandi countries the number of car fires has fallen as EVs have become a larger and larger %age of total cars (can’t remember where I read that so can’t post a link, sorry).
I’m definitely never going back - it would truly be a step backwards.

Io like that they are very quiet.

They really aren't many advantages for me, I have long drives as I am very rural, I can't afford new cars anyway, and we would have to have them serviced in the city a long way away. I also prefer not to be too dependent on the electrical grid.

I have some doubts about their long term sustainability as well.

@Notstrongandstable That would be a novelty - moving on! We actually just charge at home. Hotels won’t be able to cope with 20 EVs all wanting to charge overnight. Not a chance.

People are referring to app controlled heating and cooling as a perk of driving an EV - which is what the OP asked about - not bog standard heated seats and mirrors
I love being able to set the app at night and knowing that my car will be defrosted and sat with the heating on 20 degrees at the time I want to leave for work in the middle of winter. I also love being able to set the A/C in summer so on a hot day you come back to a cool car at the time you have requested.

I can do this with my petrol car (Volvo). I don't think it's specific to EVs.

Actually @TizerorFizz it’s a 7kwh charger, they are designed to slow charge overnight. It’s what all EV owners round here do.
Obviously if using a fast charger you move on when you’re done.

@NotstrongandstableWell done you. Hopefully no one else will be using the charger. Hotel chargers get queues.

And to book accommodation with a charger. Which is what we've done.

@GasPanic Agreed that purchase cost is vital in calcs and cost of charging. Plus who is buying it! Mostly EVs are sold to companies. Globally the car firms are subsiding ev buyers on finance deals to the tune of $billions. Then there’s possible fines for not selling enough so the companies subsidise the sales or make fewer petrol cars to ensure the % ev sales are met. Profitability is doubtful for many car producers and we import batteries. It’s not a rosy future for employees and expect msny Chinese cars to be dumped here.

I would disagree with it. It can be cheap, or at least cheaper than equivalent ICE. If.

You get BIK.
You get low cost charging
You get zero tax.
You get low cost maintenance
You do lots of miles.

If you are buying one solely on cost though you have to do your sums which need to take into account everything. You get so many people on here posting it costs me 2p to run 100 miles, neglecting the fact that the car may well have cost them 1.5x the price of an equivalent ICE in the first place.

I pay £30 road tax for my petrol Audi. Is an electric car cheaper than that?

The title of the post asked for perks, heating and cooling remotely is a perk.

The fact is that at the moment, EV ownership is not cheap. Nobody is disagreeing with that. Car ownership is not cheap. Owning a new car particularly, in any form, is not cheap. We don’t have company cars (public sector workers here) so we don’t have any incentives to have an EV but we have chosen 3 of them so far because they’re reliable, cheap to run and we prefer using electricity to petrol. They’re also a much nicer drive.

However, there also has to be some recognition that this is how product development goes. Companies inventing new products, especially expensive products, start with luxury/high end markets because they can recoup their R&D costs before bringing in cheaper models and other companies use the technology to develop cheaper options. Look at when iPhones or Apple generally came out. It was the case that the very few who could afford them could buy them. Then as Apple developed as a company, older models and cheaper models became available making them more mass market. If you’re a company who has out billions into developing EVs, you’re not going to start by producing £20,000 cars. You start high end and the technology works its way down to lower end models.

All that taught me was if I want to drive a long way and frequently without charging, I shouldn't get an electric car with poor range.

Cornwall is pretty awful all round in the summer as it gets jammed up with tourists. The jam for electric car chargers is just one aspect of this problem.

You wouldn't.

I think I even said somewhere on this thread that I wouldn't buy one unless I had on drive charging or the ability to implement it.

It may be that the BIK helps a lot mitigate the lack of benefit from cheaper fueling, but I don't know about that.

What I dispute is the claim that people without on drive charging can't have electric cars as many people seem to claim. It's simply not correct.

The OP literally asked for the perks of driving an EV, which is why another poster mentioned it first and other people agreed

I don’t hate my EV. It’s a £££ BMW! It charges at home via our electricity generation and battery set up. We’ve poured money into this! It’s not a cheap as chips solution.

Its a fact that most new EVs are company cars. It’s true charging at home is easy - if you can do it. Charging at a lamppost is not cheap. Ev evangelists have £££. They are not people scraping together £5,000 for a car. It’s elite and there needs to be recognition of the issues faced by many motorists.

Pre heating a car is just a perk. It’s really not solving any charging or affordability issues. Buying Chinese cars as they get diverted from the USA is our next problem. But that’s ok, they heat up quickly! WOW!

Once a week DH has to leave home at 6 for a day in the office. He sets the APP the night before so when he gets in the car is at the perfect temperature
Its certainly not the only or main reason we have an EV but its sure as hell is a "perk"

I don’t have a Polestar.

Is that you answering my question about which EV you have?

The thread is asking about perks of having an EV. You’ve made your position perfectly clear - you hate your EV, nothing is going to change your mind about it and you’re on a mission to make sure everybody knows it. You don’t care whether what you post is true or not, so long as it’s EV bashing to the cars and people who drive them (woofers???) and you can shout down any perfectly valid comments. Why are you so afraid of any pro EV posts? Because you look down on us all as scum who have never driven a ‘naice’ car?

@mafsfanGizmos. I’d just rather have a great car that drives well. I think it was you who mentioned a Polestar? Really? Get a Macan Ev and you will have a much better car. All the gizmos don’t make up for average road ability.

People are referring to app controlled heating and cooling as a perk of driving an EV - which is what the OP asked about - not bog standard heated seats and mirrors

I love being able to set the app at night and knowing that my car will be defrosted and sat with the heating on 20 degrees at the time I want to leave for work in the middle of winter. I also love being able to set the A/C in summer so on a hot day you come back to a cool car at the time you have requested.

@crackofdoom Coasting?!! You mean letting it roll in neutral? Turning the engine off so power steering doesn’t work? Who on earth does this? Madness. I’ve got petrol, diesel and EV cars. I know the EV is easily the quietest. Easily. I have no pavements in my hamlet and walkers don’t hear it. Often neighbours chatting don’t hear it. It’s definitely an issue. I come up behind people walking and they don’t know the EV is there.

There’s no lamppost charging in my nearest town. Or second nearest town. Nor in the car park. There’s two at a garage. There’s 8000 residents. Obviously some people have drives but many terraced houses don’t. Those residents don’t have EVs unless they drive a work car that’s charged at work.

Why anyone thinks ICE cars don’t have heated seats, heated windscreens , heated door mirrors, heated steering wheels and heated interiors is beyond me. All very efficient in our cars. Cannot see much difference between them and the Ev. I guess lots of people must have driven old woofers.

But why would you want to pay ( not that much) more than a petrol vehicle for the inconvenience of having to take it somewhere and wait around for it to charge ( which takes longer than filling petrol) Doesn't seem ligical

It costs me 2.5 pence a mile to drive, plus we now get cheap overnight electricity for whole house and that brings the bill down even further. It’s so lovely to drive and heats up quickly so no more sitting in cold car on winter mornings waiting for the to thaw.. and the it cools beautifully quickly on hot days too.

Love my EV. So cheap to run.

In my street alone, there are 140 houses. There are maybe about 10 lamp posts (just a guess, haven’t counted), none of them have charging points. Even if they were all fitted with chargers, there are not going to be nearly enough to go round, especially if people leave their cars overnight, thus preventing anyone else from using it until the next day. (And as I said before, as often as not, you can’t even park in your own street anyway.)