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.

Oh no - now I'm confused again. Are they not just a battery with wheels attached then?

We've had an e-Golf for 3 years. It's been serviced once. Service was cheaper than we ever had for petrols/diesels, but the most significant savings are on fuel. In three years, we've only paid for 3 charges. We only use free chargers. I'm sure it won't continue for ever, but we've had a good run so far!

They do tend to cost slightly more in tyre wear due to the weight. They're also slightly more likely to have a crash when you get one as it's a steep learning curve. I'd happily buy one but we also need a seven seater and just add fuel for one was well over £500 a month on salary sacrifice lease versus our current car cost of about £100 a month for a diesel we get to keep at the end.

They will still need MOT at three years old and the things that fail are not generally engine related, I had to get a bit of my suspension replaced on my petrol car, probably from a pothole, EVs must have suspension as well.

I had absolutely no idea about this!

this thread is great, all this stuff about inevitably moving across to electric is somewhere in the back of my mind but I don’t know where to begin! Thanks OP!

I was thinking of getting one for the convenience as PP said and I don't drive much, DH won't get one though as we need a large SUV for towing so ours would be a second car if I got one which DH would use occasionally if he wasn't going too far and didn't need the boot space. The large load lugger EVs are very expensive and haven't really got the distance for towing as the mileage goes down a lot with more load

Totally disagree on the crash thing! Mine is so much easier to drive than anything else I’ve ever driven

I have had to have some suspension related work, but also cambelt, exhaust, and various other engine related stuff which was eye wateringly expensive. I assume those things aren't in an electric car? Exhaust obviously not.

I've been looking at hybrids, but I guess those would remove any maintenance benefit because there still a conventional engine that needs all the normal work?

Insurance will be roughly the same
No fuel
You'll still have to replace tyres, however maint is lower as you don't have an engine to maintain
Tax will be nothing
You'll have to put electric in but that works out to be about 5p per kw.

Hybrid, self charging 2nd hand Hyundai Ioniq. £60 a month petrol, no electric. Love it, it's so smooth, so powerful, adore driving it.

Petrol and diesel engines require fuel (obviously) and lots of moving parts that move very fast to ge.nerate the motion. Needs water to cool the engine due to heat caused by the fuel burning which generates gases ie exhaust. Electric is just a battery. Stores electricity. Turn it on, allow the electricity to power the motor, off you go. Everything works off the battery. Heating, air con, radio etc. It's obv a lot simpler to run and maintain but surprise, the dealers still will charge you for whatever. Note that when the balance tips in favour of electric and the govt wants the revenue the elec won't be cheaper or free. Only 2 ways. A tariff on your electricity kWh or road pricing. Still a way off but it will come.

Yes.
double the amount of things to go wrong.
tbh I think hybrids’ days are numbered. The whole point of them was that in the early EV days you couldn’t get a reasonable range in an affordable EV hence needed a “back up”
engine.
Now, just a few years later, there are many mid range EVs with a realistic range close to 300 miles. making long distance driving on a battery totally doable.

I just read an article where the author remortgaged to buy an electric car due to the ongoing savings. Also leading may be an option. We pay £20 for a 250 mile tank.

Are they not just a battery with wheels attached then?

In as much as a combustion car is an engine and fuel tank with wheels attached, yes.

If you are wanting one based on their reliability, you need to do your research first…

Electric cars are LESS reliable than petrols and diesels with nearly a third reporting faults taking longer to fix - and Tesla is rated worst overall, says Which?

Electric charging at home is going to be interesting - if you get the right supplier, then you can charge your car at times when electricity is cheaper.

I bought mine new - the biggest payment is the PCP which is £200 a month.
A 50% charge is about £2.50 on Octopus Go (I don’t generally let it get below 50% so that I can charge it to full in the 4 hours I get cheap electricity), that lasts me about a week. In the summer a full charge is about 235 miles, it’s less in the winter.
Dd1 needs driving to a monthly dance lesson 1 1/2 hours away - I can charge for free whilst she is in there so I’ve gone from needing probably £20 of petrol to get her there to about £1 worth of fuel - longer journeys just need careful planning including back up options.
My first 3 services will be free, I also have an 8 year warranty.
My insurance went up slightly but the car is worth more than my old Clio so that’s probably why.
Tax is free.
Tyres will apparently cost slightly more.
I also run the washing machine and dishwasher on the cheap rates so save money that way.
It is an absolute dream to drive - I had never liked automatic cars before but this is so smooth!

Needs water to cool the engine due to heat caused by the fuel burning which generates gases ie exhaust. Electric is just a battery

No it isn’t. Electric cars need cooling systems to cool the battery and drivetrain.

We have 2 EVs. I drive about 25 miles a day for my commute, DH drives at least 300 miles a week with 1 charge a week at a public charger.

Last month we drove over 2500 miles between us. Our home charger shows us how much our electricity for charging costs - £42.50 last month! There is no way we could drive ICE cars for that. I'd barely even get to work for a week!

One car has had a service so far - £80

Our insurance is about £350 per car.

You need to drive one - it'll pull off from the lights far quicker than the ICE car next to you! There are no gears to work up (manual or automatic) so they just go!! They're very quick.

Is PCP better for electric car, we always buy outright but notice on threads that most have PCP, is it cheaper.

£350 sounds a lot for insurance but that depends on a lot of factors so a bit hard to tell.

If you are happy to buy second hand then you can get a decent car for under £10k - you don't need to buy brand new.

I have what is considered quite an old electric car 24KWH Leaf with poor range - 70 in summer, more like 50 in the winter, but I rarely do more than 25 miles a day so it suits my needs as I can use it then come home and plug it in on Economy 7 overnight and come back to a fully charged car in the morning. If you buy an electric car with a bigger battery capacity then you can get longer range.

On odd occasions where I have had to do a longer journey I can charge from 15% to 80% in the time it takes to go for a wee / grab a cuppa at the services. If I have to do lots of long journeys in a week then the amount of money I save over the rest of the year means that I can comfortably hire a conventional car, although haven't needed to.

So my insurance is the same as it was on me previous car (Volvo), there is no tax on my Leaf whereas I used to pay £220ish on my Volvo.

As a PP said, the lack of moving parts in an engine mean that there is less to go wrong - still need to replace tyres and wipers and brakes, but I use less brake pads / shoes as the car immediately slows down when I take my foot off the accelerator and regenerates the energy back into the car so I don't actually need to brake often.

I don't think so. Just googled and apparently the average insurance is £468 and that's for people mid-fifties. DH and I are not so ours would be more. Plus we're insuring 2 new/almost new cars that are reasonably valuable, not £2k bangers.

Tesla model x
Merc eq b
Merc eq v
Merc eqs suv
Some random French converted van things.

Can people set out what their miles are on a full charge

My OH has been considering this but his commute is 160 round trip, more if there are diversions, and obviously lots of ideling in traffic, lights, heater/air con etc etc need to be factored in

In order to be cost effective it needs to be cheaper than about £250 per month all in really but its so hard working out which cars definitely have that sort of range and can be reliable about it.