EV for the main family car

[Ticketybloop]

If you have made the transition to electric for your main family car, how has it been? Do you regret it or are you glad you made the switch?

We have been sorely in need of a new family car as our old diesel is on its last legs. Really wanted to go electric with this one, but with 3 kids and periodic live-in grandparents, we also needed something large and practical. When the Volvo EX90 (aka electric XC90) came out, we took the plunge and ordered one for 2024 delivery.

I am now second guessing our decision and am worried about how we will fare as a family on pure electric. 600km
on a charge seems okay to me, but now we have family members now telling us we will regret it. For day to day use I think it will be great as we can charge in our driveway or garage. We chose electric over hybrid for a number of reasons, and maybe by the time it’s delivered in 2024, the charging infrastructure will be better, but now I am worried we have made the transition too soon.

Would love to hear personal experiences of making the move to EV for your family car if you have done so!

Not a family car, but I have a 2016 Zoe that I'm very happy with. Bought second hand 18 months ago and yes I will keep it for 5-10 years.

I get about 80% range in winter compared to summer (although summer 2022 was v hot so used the aircon a lot - not much in it in those circumstances). We're at 650m (also in France) and have been scraping sheet ice off the drive this week! We have a garage which probably helps.

The cap on electricity here makes it cheap to charge compared to the U.K. There are lots of free charging points at supermarkets and in shopping centres. My tiny local Intermarché has 4 and I am usually the only one there.

We've never had this issue. Both my car and dh's have the charging point when the petrol cap would normally be. We've never had an issue using any charging unit.

We have a Kia e-Niro 100% EV. Brilliant. We love it. It has a fantastic range of around 300 miles in the summer and 260 miles in winter. I make full use of Zap Map which is an app that tells you where chargers are and crucially, whether they are working. We live in a terraced house in London. No home charger. We use street chargers - no issue. It obviously isn't the same as a 10 minute petrol refill but the rapid chargers give an excellent charge in about 40 minutes. We rarely drive that far anyway. Love the driving style too. And we feel better not polluting the environment.

To piggy back onto you bunch of experts. I’ve got a hire car at the moment that’s a plug in hybrid BMW. I was in a car park yesterday that had free chargers - dumb question, but can anyone use them? I haven’t actually tried charging the car yet as the place I’m staying doesn’t have an outdoor plug and it’s too cold to have the door open to charge. How do people charge at night if you don’t have a dedicated charger?
Id like to get a plug in hybrid going forward as it’s ideal for our driving (mainly school run and local work in the week but longer drives at the weekend) but I’m not sure how I’ll charge it as we’ll be in a rental and won’t have a charging station installed. Thank you!

@Ozgirl75 re: free chargers
It depends on how they are set up.
In my local town you just rock up and plug in, (have to pay for parking but free to charge) but the ones in the local city you need to get the app.
So when you get to the car park you need to plug in and connect to the app to start charging - it's more of a faff and can be a bit hit and miss for connection problems.

How do people charge at night if you don’t have a dedicated charger?
Outdoor plug, or extension cable (you can get special ones for EVs) through the letterbox with the gaps around it stuffed with bubble wrap.

We took our 160 mile range Leaf from South East England to South Tyneside last February in a headwind and fully laden with passengers so we did have to charge frequently but it was perfectly doable. MUCH harder than it ought to have been because England's motorway charging network is disgracefully bad but nothing we couldn't handle. You do have to plan ahead and have a plan B for fast charging at the moment.

Charging in the North East was fine, even without the ability to charge at our accommodation, because there are FastNed charging stations in Sunderland and Newcastle and they are just excellent. They have a forecourt style design to make it easier to pull in and out after charging without being obstructed by other cars. All the chargers work and there is lighting and canopy to keep off the rain. I think FastNed are expanding into France so you will be well provided for.

As an asthmatic who is quite sensitive to noise pollution I want to say thank you for choosing an EV.

Thank you @wonkylegs and @Bramshott - excellent advice.

So, I thought we'd add our journey to having an EV and I hope this may help? We moved away to the country a few years ago, though we was now having spent more than enough on fuel travelling to work (£80 a week) each car during the price hike we though enough was enough. We found an EV that we liked which was the Kia Niro, having spent enough time at the dealership and many chats with the hubby we decided to part ex our diesel car.

We had to have a charging point fitted at our home luckily we was met by a reputable company recommended to us by the dealership which was Impra Charge, we thought it would be complicated but turned out to be easy. We had some upgrade work prior to the job.

Once we got the hang of charging/ using our EV we truly won't look back now. We have had many trips around the UK now and had full car with the family.