If you have an electric car…

[NewMum0305]

how easy it is to run? Are there lots of charging points near you and do you find it easy to go on trips and charge on the way if needed?

And if you’re willing to say, how much did your car cost?

My DH and I are considering getting one but I want to be sure it’s practical and worth the substantial upfront cost.

Thank you

Very easy, I’ve got a home charger on an Octopus EV tariff so I pay 5p/kWh. Or I charge at Tesco when it’s free.

Went to Devon from Essex last month and had no problems, obviously paid a bit more as rapid charging but it was very easy. I recommend using Zap-Map to plan journeys for your first few longer ones.

I’ve got a leaf e+ on lease and I think list price was about £34k off the top of my head. It’s really wonderful and I kick myself for not moving to electric sooner! I was also worried about charging etc, but realistically, how often do you do more than 250 mile journeys?

I was also worried about charging etc, but realistically, how often do you do more than 250 mile journeys

Well some people do them every week and that's when electric cars start to be a problem, especially when it's part of a long working day that you'd rather not be any longer while you wait for a car to charge.

Plus electricity at service stations costs nearly as much as petrol/diesel, so you lose the cost saving needed to make the economics stack up.

Electric cars are good if you do sufficient medium length journeys to have enough saving on petrol/diesel cost and can charge at home, preferably on a night time tariff, or know of free places.

If you do lots of long journeys where long breaks will be inconvenient (and no we don't all spend 30+ minutes each time at the service station getting coffee) or don't do sufficient mileage to make the higher purchase price worth it, they're not necessarily an environmental or cost benefit.

Thank you both. We don’t have a driveway and the council (understandably) doesn’t allow charging cords to trail across the pavement so I think we’d be filling up at service stations all the time.

My husband is very keen but I can see it being more complicated that he is envisaging it, esp not being able to charge at home.

We have one and love it. Charge at home with octopus as pp. if on long journeys (quite rare to be honest) usually charge at a Lidl/Tesco etc - it’s about £10 for a full fast charge (250 miles) and takes about an hour so just do my shopping. Slow charges at Tesco etc are free (about 50miles worth a hour). Expensive to buy (30k) but very very cheap to run

There is always some local taxis and delivery drivers charging their car at our local supermarket so presumably they also don’t want to charge or can’t charge at home. They come with a cup of tea and read the paper - I’m a bit jealous!

I'd check the cost of charging in places you're likely to use it before taking the plunge. Also be mindful that free or cheap charging might not last forever, if electricity prices keep on rising.

As I previously said, some service stations can cost nearly as much as a petrol car (eg 8-9 p per mile vs 11-12 p per mile for an efficient petrol car). Plus you have the time of making journeys there and back and possibly waiting around unless you can combine with a shop etc.

Can either of you charge the car at work?

Although there are currently rolling out lampost charging which will be good for people who can reliably park near the right lampost to plug the car in.

For a lot of people, the economics simply don't stack up and you have to remember that there's still a carbon impact of a new electric car, especially manufacturing the battery.

You might be best buying a petrol or hybrid car with a view to trading it in for electric in a few years time when hopefully there will be good scrappage deals and improved infrastructure.

Thanks @BarbaraofSeville. We both commute by train to work so not an option unfortunately and our council isn’t currently offering lamppost charging.

If we had a driveway, I’d feel a bit differently but it feels like it’s going to be quite complex to ensure we’re adequately charged when we need to be.

I don't have one but I have been considering it recently. We have a lot of free Charing available near us but as above, this won't last forever, so it isn't really a deciding factor for us. The cost of electric vehicles is predicted to come to an equivalent of petrol/diesel motors within the next 2-3 years so we are holding out to see if that happens. The electric version of a car that ticks out boxes is a good £12k more then petrol at the moment and it's not a justifiable cost.

Sounds like an electric car isn't really for you and an expensive novelty rather than a sensible environmental choice.

If you're not using the car for commuting, what sort of mileage do you do? Why is your DH 'very keen'? When would the car get charged?

What about a self charging hybrid? If you do lower mileages a lot of it will be on the battery.

I have a small petrol car, i worked out recently from a conversation with an ev driver that mine is cheaper to run than his as he can’t charge at home either.

I got a plugin hybrid, so that day to day I use the electric, but I don't need to hole up at a charge station with the kids on long journeys (the cost of snacks alone would bankrupt me)

I plugin at home, as the fast chargers don't work for mine (kuga), so a full charge, which'll take me 50km takes about 4 hours. I get a boost at the park if I go for a walk, or at the supermarket, but the one time I tried to at a motorway service station they were all full, and there were already people waiting!

I'm very impressed with the hybrid-ness of it - even when I'm driving purely on petrol, I get 25%+ electric driving still, purely from the regenerative braking (depending on what the driving is - less on motorways, more in traffic). Which seems mad, yet also seems to be the case.

Mine was about 40kEUR.

I have one, it’s our ‘local mileage car’ (which is most of our mileage in reality). We have a petrol car for longer distances. We don’t really use the public charging network, the car charges overnight on our home wallbox charger. We are also Octopus customers.

Financially it worked for us.
I sold my 2yo petrol car for £2k more than I paid for my brand new (custom order) EV & wall box
EV is £0 road tax vs £490 for prev car
Insurance is £100pa less
Costs around 75% less to ‘fill’ than my prev car (fixed rate tariff).

I agree it doesn’t sound like a practical idea for you though, OP

I love mine (2018 Nissan Leaf with 140 mile range), but like PPs, I'm able to charge at home the majority of the time. For longer trips there's a bit of planning needed, and the infrastructure is not quite there yet (eg. the bewildering number of different apps needed for chargers!) but in general I'm really happy.

We have one, without a home charging point I wouldn't consider it. You have to factor in the time taken to charge a car each time, even on the fast charges, and I couldn't do with the hassle of that

In terms of charging out of the house, you get into a system where it's trips you make regularly - for example on a regular work trip, there are 3 chargers I know I could stop at. If you don't have a charger at home then I guess you get into the same kind of routine eg. always charge when you do the weekly shop.

My partner and I both drive electric cars and we’ve had at least one for the past 6 years. We don’t charge at home, we could get a charger installed but haven’t really needed to because we live near to charging points that we can walk to/from.

My current bill is around £60 a month and I typically do 800-1000 miles, my range is just short of 300 miles and the husbands around 350. I do try and use free chargers when possible (Tesco usually) as I’m happy to work in the cafe (also not using electricity in my home!) and when working in the community there’s usually a charger I can stick it on for a quick top up. Lidl are reasonably priced for a rapid charge and after a shop I’ve got enough for the week! The infrastructure is definitely getting better, well, it is near me anyway. We lease our cars through work though but my car is worth around £30k new.

You’ll find the issue of electric cars enrages people, no idea why but some people are dead against them - without actually looking into the ‘electric car bingo’ that’s frequently spouted. I’m happy to answer any questions if you want!

Following as it's something we're considering when we eventually get a new [secondhand] car. Buying a house with driveway parking that needs rewiring so will make sure we get a charging point.

We have one and a driveway charger which we rarely use. We always use public chargers.

I wouldn't go back to a normal car now and while I've no doubt that costs will go up, they'll have to go some to catch up on fuel prices. In the meantime it's a huge relief to drive past petrol stations just now, the prices are crazy.

My car cost £6150 second hand, it is a 2015 Nissan Leaf. It is a low range electric car in theory 80 miles, but in reality can only rely on it doing 50 miles. It is totally fine for my needs.

It took a while to get a feel for what mileage it would actually do, as certain roads use charge quicker, for example doing 60 miles per hour up a long hill in a motorway uses more charge, and the gauge on the dashboard which tells me how many miles left isn't 100 percent accurate, but I have learnt locally now many 'gauge miles' I need to get home from different destinations. Due to this it was a bit stressful for the first couple of months.

I am in a semi rural area, chargers are often 7 miles apart and some charging providers are not reliable. But I visit clients at home for my job travelling around an area 23 miles by 23 miles. Its fine because I have got a feel for the car and I know a couple of chargers that are reliable. But I wouldn't take my short range car on holiday- it would be too stressful in case a charging point I was planning to use was out of order. I live in an ex council house, but it has a small forecourt in front and I have had a charging point fitted , so I can home charge.

I thought it would be expensive, but although the car may depreciate by as much as £2000 a year it evens out due to low garage costs and charging it is very cheap (mostly at home). Good luck with it!

For local journeys it's really easy. For longer ones, you have to add the charging time to your journey, so it's not as simple. I'm doing a long trip tomorrow and just spent the obligatory 30 minutes today planning my charging stops.

I've had my hybrid now for 9 months - and I'm still on the fence. I don't have a home charging pod, so I have to plug the granny charger into the mains and remove it when fully charged. As it's cold and constantly raining at the moment, I can't be arsed. So mostly it's running on charge mode and I then use the electric mode for the school runs. Also, as it's winter I need heat in the car and this only works on "charge" mode so this uses fuel. So during winter I'm not seeing the savings, whereas in summer I did. I also utilise the free charging in Tesco but I don't have one locally so I only use this when im at my holiday home.

If you can’t charge at home or work I can’t see how it’ll work for you

We have a second hand BMW i3, bought for £15k in September.

We can charge on our drive. We're very happy we've switched.

I'd say, as you don't have a drive, look at the following: how many miles do you currently cover? What charging points are near you? How much do they cost?

We use the train/bikes for commuting, so with a 120mile battery range we only end up charging every couple of weeks - which would be fine without a drive.

Also, in our area there are a fair few chargers within walking distance, because the council has sprinkled them about in residential areas (London suburb). Our nearest chargers (1min walk away) offer a one-off and then a subscription charging price. The subscription price would be well worth it if you knew you were using the charger a lot. (Actually given the price increases it might be cheaper for us thinking about it ... I have sums to do!)

So I think if you were living near me it would be a great idea. So do some digging about where you live. And if it wouldn't work, drop a quick email to your local councillors to suggest they get on it!

Thanks all, lots of food for thought.

To answer questions on why we want one when we don’t drive to work, my husband is keen as he would like to drive a car that is less damaging to the environment. We drive my daughter to nursery and do about 80 miles in total every other weekend to pick up and drop off my stepson who lives a little way away from us. We also live over a hundred miles from my in-laws who my DH would like to visit more often as they are getting older.

We have noticed how sharply our spending on petrol is rising and, as we have the means to buy an electric car at the moment, are looking at that as an option.

I’m the more cautious of the two of us and so am trying to understand the practicalities first, particularly as we don’t have a driveway.

I agree it may not be for us but to answer an earlier post, it’s not about the “novelty” of having an electric car.