How much cheaper is an electric car to run?

[BewareTheBeardedDragon]

Totted up the monthly cost of running my 12yo diesel people carrier - all in. With astronomical fuel prices now and additional pollution levies it is about £550 per month.

My preference would be to just get rid if I had the choice but sadly this is not logistically possible for a good few years yet.

So I'm just idly wondering, excluding the cost of buying it, how much the running cost of an electric car would be? Including and tax, insurance, maintenance, and electric costs.

I probably drive approx 300 miles per month averaged out.

Indeed. Also you get to be slightly smug when you go past the filling station and realise the price has gone up again.

You need to do total costs. This podcast gives one view based on buying new www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00162yr

They're usually guarantees- think at least five years.

I have a bmw i3 which I bought with a five year loan expecting to do 200000 miles in it. I'm a member of a FB forum with loads of people who've had i3s do that sort of mileage with very little battery deterioration.

Mines done 90000 now and good as new. Drive about 650 miles a week.

We were early adopters, had at least one EV for almost 10 years and currently run 2. I do about 10,000 miles a year. Car service this year was £120. I also had a set of tyres which was about £300. MOT standard price.
We are on a special EV electric tariff with Octopus so charge at night for very cheap. I rarely charge publicly but a full charge is £10-12 on a rapid. Estimated cost of home charging for us is about £40 a month now. It used to be even less.
Insurance is cheap, we insure 2 on a multicar policy for £45pcm.
So my car is under £100 to run per month. The other one is leased at £155pcm plus £100 to run. Absolute bargains. Cost to buy my car would be about £12k but I have also had some much more expensive ones on lease. Had to drop down to an older one though as we have high nursery and mortgage now and I went part time. I miss the Tesla and Kia sometimes for the range but now I’m an old hand at it I’m less scared about range.

Thanks for the link. I just did a back of the envelope sum and I reckon if the maintenance costs are so low, over all I'd prob save about £2000 per year. Which is not inconsiderable.

This is an electric car - responsive is the one thing that definitely are! 🤣

My i3 is a joy.

My DH had one too and had to have a petrol courtesy car recently while his i4 had body work done after someone drive into it.

He was so shocked at how awful the petrol car was all round.

I think I need to challenge my preconceptions then!

What I mean is an automatic petrol car and an electric are two very different beasts ...

There's not many options for 7 seaters though are there?

We do on average 1000miles per month and it's currently costing around £20 per month in added electricity (5ppkw 0030-0430)
Sadly our tariff is changing next month, lowest ppkw is 7.5p but an extra hour we would get.
Standing rates have gone up exponentially!
We've had our full EV nearly 3 years now, and I'd not go back to ICE.
The only downside is I used to be the only one using the free chargers at supermarkets, now I don't get a look in!

For a PP who was leaning toward a Tesla - don't! There are now better designed EVs out there.
I've got my eye on the Skoda enyaq or SEAT/cupra. The polestars are getting good reviews too.

I would have thought that would be the bare minimum you could save

next stage for us is to get solar on the roof to help power it. In summer this means it shouldn’t cost anything at all to charge.

£550 a month for only 300 miles is a lot. That’s less than 4,000 miles a year. I do about double that mileage and my diesel SUV costs about £200 a month in fuel, insurance and parking permit. How does that £550 figure break down? (Some more detail might help get better figs on EV vs current car, you see.)

Friend on second ev, can't remember first one,battery gave up,too expensive to replace. Now has a Nissan leaf (in fact I bought his astra Estate diesel) he was so pleased, however, his electricity has now gone to 40p kw,is costing him £40 per week to charge,he bought it new,it's a couple of years old. He has a home charger,has found frequently going out.... chargers in use or broken. He's an electrical engineer on the railway,says the figures given for mileage on a charge are rubbish.

I did 345 miles in June, all charging at home, and used roughly 97kw. On Octopus Go it cost £7.27 at 7.5p off peak. My mot was £50. My insurance is £20 per month and my car attracts no tax. The big cost is the car payment. Mine is £329 month. My husband's leaf was £168, but is paid off now. Both were second hand. I plan to drive my car for many years. We'll likely upgrade the leaf in 5 years or so for one with more range.

I am on a cheap electricity tariff, it costs £15 per week to charge compared with £80 petrol. I do get quite a lot of free charge at venues I go to.
Things like a trip to the coast etc are not a cost consideration at all now.
My gas, electricity and car charge cost £200 per month and I have quite a big modern house
Its an Audi
1250 miles per month.

I hope he’s a better engineer than home economist. I pay 5p per kw (current deals are 7.5p per kw) so he’s throwing money away.

I was thinking of upgrading my petrol car, I pay no car tax but reading this it seems only cost effective if you do a lot of miles, I do less than 2000 a year and was thinking about getting a Fiat 500.

I'm interested to see whether maintenance savings stack up over time. Modern cars have so much additional stuff to go wrong, I've seen good stuff on tesla being designed to run for years. But other brands? A lot of normal consumables are the same (tyres, brakes, brake fluid, power steering, aircon regas, hepa filters, wiper blades).

You lose the oil change, spark plug replacement, cam chain, clutch and exhaust.

I have probably not calculated my mileage right, the breakdown of monthly cost is as follows:

2 full tanks fuel - £320
Insurance - £40
Driving in ULEZ (unavoidable) - £50
Tax - £15
Maintenance and MOT - £130
Total - £555

Maintenance costs obv vary but evened out over the years approx £1500 per year. I might not use 2 full tanks some months but on average I refuel fortnightly and a tank now cost £160.

Good point about maintenance, I had a Clio where the electric windows failed, that could happen whatever the car ran on, the cars are all quite new at the moment so many would not have got to the things failing stage.

We have a Tesla which we have had for a while so no road tax or congestion charge. We also have solar panels on our roof which we have also had for quite a while so we can charge our car for free. We also utilise Tesla chargers on long journeys. It was expensive to buy but has been free virtually since then as paid out for a home charger from the start.

The cost savings are more the more miles you do but if you have low mileage, as long as you are able to have a charger at home it will be super convenient as you likely will never need to find a public charger

I want a 7 seater too

My Leaf goes like a rat up a drain pipe if I let it 😁 I can beat the Audi's at the lights!

I am lucky if I come out of my service and MOT with a bill under £1000 and it's a killer.

Electric cars share most of the things that combustion cars are likely to fail MOTs on. Obviously, they won’t fail the emission tests.