To think there are no real perks to driving an electric car?

[MyHeartyBlueShaker]

You’d think there would be more incentives - cheaper parking, easier charging access, or some kind of priority. But in reality, it often feels like there are just extra costs and hassle. What are the actual rewards?

Ease and pleasure of driving
Being massively cheaper to run. I get 250miles for just over £3
Not having to go into petrol stations
Very little to go wrong in electric cars
Servicing only every three years
Decent road tax pricing

I could go on but suffice to say, I'd never go back to a mechanical car.

We are still 20 years away from getting the infrastructure right but I do believe it's good for the future, it just isn't quite there yet.

Mine is lovely to drive and is cheaper to run. It’s not had a single mechanical issue since I got it two years ago.

I don’t buy all the environmental arguments (and it’s not why I got one) but I think not contributing to air pollution in the local area is a positive.

I’d be reluctant to go back to petrol.

Saving the planet

All the above, plus
It's so much more quiet and comfortable to drive. And you can set your car to pre-heat on a morning so that you always get into a warm car in winter.

Filling up my old car was £80 every 10 days in diesel. Flash new electric one is about £6 a week in energy. Speaks for itself.

The perk is I spend £3 for 200+ miles and I don’t have to make a trip to the petrol station. We live rurally and nearest petrol station is 40 mile round trip. That’s enough for me.

Of course there are other perks. When my husband uses it for work he gets 45p a mile same as an ICE car as we own our EV. It’s really nice to drive and in winter it’s set to automatically preheat before we need to use it so no need to defrost or be cold driving off. Servicing is cheaper too, less moving parts.

No negatives that I’ve discovered in over a year of driving it.

If you’re doing the right sort of mileage it’s brilliant. It is saving us a lot as my husband commutes an hour each day and can charge on cheap rates overnight. Where it isn’t so good is really long distance routes where you have to ‘fill up’. A charge is pretty much the same price as petrol and the charging points can be temperamental and faffy.

And cool it on hot days prior to getting in.

Well apart from lower road tax. Much cheaper home fueling.

They probably should do something about the cost of using commercial chargers though, which to me is £££silly. I have never charged my hybrid away from home. It doesn't really stack up against the cost of petrol.

Oh yeah, I forgot about those days. 😁

Also the ‘infrastructure’ matters more for some than others. I don’t use public chargers, I charge exclusively at home, so the infrastructure doesn’t matter to me at all. I don’t use it for long journeys, and if I did, the journeys I do are to places where infrastructure isn’t an issue anyway. We are in rural north-east Scotland and there are plenty of chargers around here.

The biggest issue imo with infrastructure is home charging for people in flats or without driveways, as that’s a real issue currently. If you can’t charge at home and rely on public charging, then cost wise EVs are much nearer to petrol cars to run.

It costs me about €2 for 250km of driving. I changed electric plan when I got my car last year, the new plan meant I was spending €10 less a month on electric that includes car charging. I used to spend €200+ a month on petrol. For me it's been a great decision.

The safety ( electrical fires), the huge cost of replacing the battery, the distance that you can travel on a single charge and the not very accurate of the amount of charge left would all put me off buying an electric car. And the fact of needing to rail wires across the pavement or pay for underground cabling (over a grand around here) would also put me off. I don't understand how a poster only pays £3 for a charge that lasts 250 miles. Public charging points cost way more than that. Dh drives an electric vehicle for work sometimes and and a fully charged battery works for 100 miles max. It can be less, part of the problem is that sitting in traffic can use up charge disproportionately and reduce the range.
Why aren't the people responding to the OP mentioning these things? I'd have thought they outweigh any of the benefits.

My tariff is 6.7p a unit overnight. My car battery is 50 units for a range of around 210 miles. That’s £3.35 for a full charge.

The majority of people who drive EVs do not use public chargers. They charge at home on specialist tariffs for buttons.

There's lots of benefits. For a start youll never have to buy fuel or engine oil ever again. No costly spark plugs or combustion engine filters.

I only really charge at home. That’s why it’s so cheap. I get 300 miles out of a charge. I only occasionally have to use chargers put and about. I also have a driveway so no need to trail cables.

My range is about 350 miles, I charge it at home overnight at 5.5p/kWh.

That’s just not true! I fully accept that if you don’t have a driveway then charging at home can be tricky and that infrastructure needs improvement but the pace of infrastructure improvement is increasing. I work for the government’s innovation research agency and there is substantial investment in all parts of the EV supply chain.

I am also a fairly recent EV owner and at the moment I see no downsides!

A 100 miles range is pretty rare now. I get what mine says 250-300 miles. I rarely have to drive more than that in one go.

I don’t have any extra costs? I have to drive a hybrid as we live in London and not many houses have driveways. It’s free to park in the designated bays, my permit is cheaper, and I can charge for free on work sites. It’s so much nicer to drive in electric mode, I’d love a full electric. It feels so much cleaner, especially where I live.

Mine is wonderful and I’ll never go back.

It didn’t cost any more than an equivalent petrol one would have, it’s insanely cheap to run, it’s got amazing acceleration which I need because I have to exit my town straight onto a busy bypass, it’s quiet, it’s not adding to smog (which I love because my asthma is pollution triggered)…

I’ve never had a problem with range - mine goes over 250 in the winter and around 313 in the summer without needing to recharge. And the cost of the charging is essentially the same as the amount I get from selling solar energy back to the grid from my house. So I feel like I drive for free.

My sibling has one also (but fancier) and has been abroad with it too without issue.

Unless you’re driving a lorry or heavily loaded van, or have to cover hundreds of miles in a day, which is not the majority of us, electric is brilliant.

i also currently don’t pay road tax.

The other points: EVs are less likely to catch fire than ICE cars; batteries are increasingly unlikely to need replaced before the car itself ages out of feasible use; and range is increasing a lot rapidly. Ours isn’t one of the top for ranges and in summer we get 200+ miles from a charge. Less in winter. But we don’t routinely drive 200 miles in a day.

I’ve got an electric car. I’ve also got loads of solar panels.

Last year I spent £250 on electricity and repair costs for my car. When I had a petrol one I spent £90 every 10 days.

I’ve got a luxury EV on finance for significantly less per month than I was spending on diesel. It was a no brainer. Costs about £3 to charge at home for about 200 miles, rarely need to charge it away from home. Winning.