To wonder if someone like me can afford an electric car?

[RagzReturnsRebooted]

Always had 10yr old+ second hand cars, last one I spent £3.5k on. Currently spending around £250 a month in Diesel and wondering if there's some way I could go electric and either cut costs or have it work out the same? I can't afford to buy a new car outright, we have a low household income. I've never bought a car on any kind of payment scheme and have no idea how they work but there must be some kind of scheme for electric vehicles that make it affordable for people like me?
We rent and can't put in a charging point, but there are two in the town I work in (none in our closest town or our village, but plans are in place to put a few in the village car park in the next few years). I drive to work 4-5 times a week, 30 mile round trip, very rarely do long journeys.

I'm just wondering if the amount I spend on Diesel could offset costs of getting an electric car. Is this a silly idea? I feel like they aren't for people like us, but I don't want that to be true.

I have done some Googling but it's quite overwhelming and I've no idea what I'm looking for. I work for the NHS but not directly, so my employer isn't part of any salary sacrifice car schemes.

I don't think most people can afford an electric car tbh. And many won't be able to, not even in the next few years...

No WAY is every person/family in the country going to be able to have/afford a bloody electric car within 8 years. Along with the fact there are so few charging points/charging stations; It's a ridiculously unrealistic target.

Maybe by 2040. Maybe. IF they reduce the electric car prices by 50-60%.

@coachmylife

Hybrid cars are in lots of ways the worst of both worlds - all the engine stuff to maintain and drag around, as well as the battery etc.

Make sure you are realistic about your mileage. Does 30 miles 5 times a week really add up to £250 in diesel? 650ish miles for £250? We don't own a car, and rental cars are generally petrol now, but that seems incredibly inefficient (or you're driving quite a lot more than that - weekends, other trips etc.) Don't under (or massively over-) estimate or it'll be expensive...

I've probably overestimated, but DH uses my car too as he has a van for work and we live rurally. I feel like I'm filling up every week at the moment, but it may be more like every 10 days, in which case it's only £200 a month. My car has a 45l tank and does around 380 miles for that, costs nearly £70 to fill up.

Looking at it, I probably can't afford to switch yet but maybe in 3-4 years it will be a more realistic option.

@icedcoffees

In your shoes, I wouldn't even consider it if there were only two charging points and I couldn't install one on my property.

What happens if you need to charge your car and the charging points are both broken, in use or out of order?

You're right. Though the landlord may let me put in a charging point. I can't imagine it would do the property value any harm.

@GetTheFlockOutOfHere

I don't think most people can afford an electric car tbh. And many won't be able to, not even in the next few years...

No WAY is every person/family in the country going to be able to have/afford a bloody electric car within 8 years. Along with the fact there are so few charging points/charging stations; It's a ridiculously unrealistic target.

Maybe by 2040. Maybe. IF they reduce the electric car prices by 50-60%.

Good points. Though I feel like it is yet another of those situations where the more money you have, the easier it is to have something that costs less over time. It's annoying! Sam Vimes' boots analogy...

We've got a Hyundai ionic for £183 per month. We don't have a charging point and just plug it in the normal electric. Takes longer but just tops it up as you go. EV car rate from our electric provider means cheaper overnight/weekend electricity

A charge point in house atm is north of 350+£ It’s not cheap is it

You're right. Though the landlord may let me put in a charging point. I can't imagine it would do the property value any harm.

I would make sure the charging point was installed before you bought the car, as they're not particularly cheap. Do you have off-road parking and/or a garage so you can charge the car at night?

I know some people who installed charge points but they don't have off-road parking and they can't always park close enough to their houses to actually use it

We've got ours on a salary sacrifice lease £300 a month for a v.v. Expensive electric car we couldn't afford to buy.

That sounds like the lower end of the market to me, a v.v expensive EV would be more towards £1k net on salary sacrifice.

@AuntieDolly

We've got a Hyundai ionic for £183 per month. We don't have a charging point and just plug it in the normal electric. Takes longer but just tops it up as you go. EV car rate from our electric provider means cheaper overnight/weekend electricity

As the average electric car currently costs around £30,000, at £183 a month, it would take 12 years to pay for an electric car. Unless you have a substantial deposit. And £183 a month is a lot of money for people to fork out every month, even if it was only for a quarter of that time.

I re-iterate, most people are not going to be able to afford to buy an electric car. Not unless they go hugely into debt. And a debt that will potentially take a decade to pay off, at more than £200 a month!!!

Fuck that for a game of bastard soldiers.

I have an electric car and I adore it, but I would not recommend getting one without a charge point at home. Mine takes 12 hours to fully charge (150miles range approx). If I time this correctly at home over 3 nights in cheap electricity it costs about £3. If I do it in the day it’s more like £8-9. If I do this at a fast charge point out and about it’s more like £30 which is as expensive (maybe more) than petrol, and takes just over an hour. There are cheaper and even free public chargers around so it might only cost £10-15 but it will take 3 or 4 hours. Unless you live within walking distance of the chargers this won’t work for you.

We went to the Isle of Wight on holiday. On paper (ok, the app) it looked like it would be fine - a couple of fast chargers and some slow ones too. In reality only 2 fast chargers on the island work, one by the ferry port which reportedly always had long queues of people about to get on the boat. Luckily the island is small and we only needed to charge once in the week (and with slight tweaks to our plans could have not charged at all til back in Southampton- but who wants their holiday plans limited like that!) and we got to the fast chargers to find it empty so used it for an hour and we’re sorted. None of the slow chargers were near anything we wanted to visit, so no option to leave it on charge while doing something.

Electric car infrastructure needs a lot of investment in this country.

I’ll keep it short - no you can’t afford an electric car. It’s not your fault - they’re just really expensive still.

I have a second hand Hyundai ioniq. I financed it with a loan. It costs £276/month but I was spending at least £250 a month on fuel before that and so was my partner. It cost £16k and the loan is over 5 years.
It costs me about £50/month for electricity but that's me and my partner using it for work.
We've added almost 10,000 miles since August!
It's a love my car and I'm chuffed to bits with it.
It's currently worth £2000 more than I owe on the loan.

Sorry my point about the IOW was I can’t imagine living like that every day, knowing I needed to find a charger to get to work or whatever. It stressful enough for a couple of days on holiday but I couldn’t do it full time!

We don't have a charging point and just plug it in the normal electric. Takes longer but just tops it up as you go. EV car rate from our electric provider means cheaper overnight/weekend electricity

The issue with this is you need to be able to guarantee you can park either on your property or outside your home. We regularly have to park 8-10 houses away as there's not enough parking where we are.

Chap on radio the other day. Day out to Cheltenham.watching his charge on the dial. Found super market with 2 points available both were down. Found another 3 points with one occupied & other 2 down. How long are you going to be waiting?.. big problems

I'm not buying it, I'm renting it. I save almost that much not buying petrol and road tax on my old car.

@mogsrus

Chap on radio the other day. Day out to Cheltenham.watching his charge on the dial. Found super market with 2 points available both were down. Found another 3 points with one occupied & other 2 down. How long are you going to be waiting?.. big problems

Yeah, that would be a real issue here too. If the charging point you're aiming for is out of order, you're could easily find yourself in big trouble (ie. absolutely fucked).

We have one charging point in our town, and one more in the next town over (about 8 miles away) but other than that, the nearest ones are between 45-60 minutes drive away.

I've driven quite a few hire cars that were hybrids and I found for non town driving the fuel consumption is very high, nearly double that of my small petrol car. It would be a big mistake to expect one of these to save fuel in my experience.

@lilydaisyrose why will you hand the car back after 4 years? Surely you'll still need a car...

i drive an electric van for work - i love it. BUT it is an absolute nightmare at the end of the day. My employer has more electric vehicles than charging points - its a fight to get back to a charging point.

Also ...we have had to call the RAC out twice. If a van is not driven for at least 30 minutes a week, the battery will fail. No option but to call out RAC.

The RAC have told my employer that they have to manage the fleet better or put in more charging points.

Without my own charging point it would be too stressful for me

Probably echoing what others have said but with the lack of local chargers, I wouldn’t consider a full EV. I have a VW id3 and a charge point at home, charge points at work and live close to a large northern city. Even still, the demand for chargers and infrastructure wouldn’t allow me not to charge at home. We took a long trip via a large services in the summer and waited hours for a fast charger. It would be risky, I’d think

@modgepodge

I have an electric car and I adore it, but I would not recommend getting one without a charge point at home. Mine takes 12 hours to fully charge (150miles range approx). If I time this correctly at home over 3 nights in cheap electricity it costs about £3. If I do it in the day it’s more like £8-9. If I do this at a fast charge point out and about it’s more like £30 which is as expensive (maybe more) than petrol, and takes just over an hour. There are cheaper and even free public chargers around so it might only cost £10-15 but it will take 3 or 4 hours. Unless you live within walking distance of the chargers this won’t work for you.

We went to the Isle of Wight on holiday. On paper (ok, the app) it looked like it would be fine - a couple of fast chargers and some slow ones too. In reality only 2 fast chargers on the island work, one by the ferry port which reportedly always had long queues of people about to get on the boat. Luckily the island is small and we only needed to charge once in the week (and with slight tweaks to our plans could have not charged at all til back in Southampton- but who wants their holiday plans limited like that!) and we got to the fast chargers to find it empty so used it for an hour and we’re sorted. None of the slow chargers were near anything we wanted to visit, so no option to leave it on charge while doing something.

Electric car infrastructure needs a lot of investment in this country.

Ah OK, that's sounding more expensive than I expected. Is charging likely to get cheaper or more expensive? Maybe I should look at getting a smaller car instead, mine is huge but we bought it because we go camping/self catering and all our stuff takes up a lot of room. It does about 38mpg, a small petrol car would be cheaper to run but we do still need to fit 5 people in it! DH has a van, so could use that for camping and just not go far...

No idea if it’s likely to get more expensive or cheaper I’m afraid. I’d imagine more expensive, as electricity prices are going up generally. That said, the most expensive are about 42p per kWh which is WAY more than anyone pays at home, so they are presumably making a healthy profit.

I guess long term ie when petrol/diesel cars are being phased out, the government is going ti need to raise the tax they currently get from fuel, so electricity for cars may be taxed more??

@GetTheFlockOutOfHere totally agree. I don’t think the price is sustainable for the majority of people. I definitely can’t afford one.

Another thing that puts me off is if you’re involved in an accident the car will be repaired rather than written off obviously because of the price of battery etc would be a very expensive write off.

I know someone who was involved in an accident with a lorry. The whole back end was badly damaged yet it wasn’t written off. It was in the garage over 2 months longer than they said it would take to repair. No way would I want to drive around in that. Also because it has been repaired, an unsuspecting second buyer hasn’t got a clue.

[quote CityCommuter]@lilydaisyrose why will you hand the car back after 4 years? Surely you'll still need a car...[/quote]
That’s usually the lease time