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?

The BBC?? @FixTheBone They are trying to sell evs all the time on radio 5! Sometimes it’s relentless. I guess they can all charge at work.

I love that people have driven poor petrol cars and make comparisons with them. Of course a Chinese EV isn’t better than a Porsche. It’s just that the Ev devotees have never had a decent car. Drive better??? No. They really don’t.

I love my electric leased car. It’s so nice and comfortable to drive, only needs charging approximately once a month and is so convenient to charge it on my drive. I don’t miss visits filling stations and I certainly don’t miss the expense of diesel or petrol. Since December I’ve done almost 1200 miles at a cost of just £31. These are reasons people like electric cars. Oh and the car is the only one used by myself and my husband for work and leisure. Would definitely get another electric vehicle.

We have two EVs.

DH has just replaced his so we’ve owned 3, had a couple as short term leases and had them as hire cars so we’ve drives quite a lot of different types.

We would never go back to petrol cars. They’re so inconvenient having to take them to a petrol station to fill up!!

I have a 25 mile commute in a rural part of the country. DH works away and drives 160 miles to work and then the same home each week. We’ve also been to France on three holidays in my car. All three times we’ve take 4 bikes on a tow bar bike rack and last time we also took a large roof box. Never have we thought we’d be better with an ICE car. They’re so awful to drive after you’ve drive an EV.

We know we’re lucky we can charge at home for so little but even charging on the go isn’t that bad. As I said, we’ve been to France and back 3 times from the midlands down to the south west coast and at no point has anything gone wrong. Yes you have to plan your route but it’s not a big deal - just stop for a coffee and the loo at a large charging station, not ad hoc at some services.

Pros far outweigh the cons to us.

As for fires, don’t buy into the anti EV media. Most car fires are because ICE cars carry around a big tank of flammable liquid but that isn’t such a good story to sell.

We have solar panels so we effectively run our car on free energy
it’s WAY nicer to drive. Acceleration is INSTANT. It’s incredible.
the only people I ever hear talking them down are people who have never driven one if your driving pattern allows and you have the sort of property that you can charge from it’s a complete no brainer.

You're making a big assumption about people's previous cars, there.

No one is responding because they are nonsense.
An ice vehicle is 20 times more likely to catch fire than an ev
A battery will last 15 to 20 years minimum
3 months savings on petrol paid for my outside charger, but you can always "granny charge"
Gone are the days when an ev would only do 100 miles per charge. mine does around 360. It does make a difference if you actually drive one as they should be driven and allow the car to use regen rather than braking all the time.
It costs me less than £5 to do those 360 miles because I have a cheap overnight ev tariff with the added bonus that I can put my washer, dryer and dishwasher on overnight too. My electricity bill has actually gone down £70 per month since I got my ev.
Sitting in traffic, even with the heater, I radio etc on uses less than 2% per hour , so ideal if you get stuck in the snow for 8 hours like I did a few years ago. You can even watch Netflix while you're stuck.
My insurance for the ev is less than for my previous ice and I'm saving a fortune in fuel and servicing, but the vehicle cost me the same as my previous ice.
I haven't had any problems the few times that I've needed to charge when away from home, even in rural locations. I have an app that can connect me with people who have home chargers that they are willing to let other people use.
I haven't come across any downsides.
Im not sure if I would have got an ev if I couldn't charge at home though

I've driven and owned many luxury cars, mainly jaguar. I prefer my ev (also taxed as a luxury car)

It's massively cheaper to 'fill up' your car if you can charge from home? And no road tax for now. I love ours. It's only got about a 120 mile range but we don't often need to do more than that and have been able to charge it whenever needed. The vast majority of charging is done from home though. It's quiet, smooth and just lovely.

What happens if and it's an if the cheap charge tariff ends? If as someone earlier said the take up of ev increases then demand rises so the energy company decides to raise the price.Clearly people are in the position of having the facility to charge at home but what happens if you move? Suppose you can't have that facility. Your car dictates where you live.
Battery life appears to be longer than was presumed. No guarantee a fuel engine has longevity. All those moving parts,fluids and electrics can fail (and do). The EV road tax will be with us soon enough. The Govt of the day is not going to let fuel duty etc go. It's 50 billion or more. I can't see free charging lasting at places of work. Some accountant is going to look at that.

For me there’s no extra cost - it’s much cheaper to run than a petrol car. Plus, visits to service stations are much reduced so it’s less hassle as well. I’d have to go every 10 to 12 days in a petrol car; now the car is ‘full’ every morning, and I stop enroute maybe once every 2 or 3 months, and then for just 5 or 10 minutes.

The vast majority of EV owners on this thread love their cars and their vast financial savings (almost £100 per week for me). It’s mainly the non owners who are finding fault.

I’ve just remembered 2 other massive benefits - it’s over 10 years since my first EV so I take these for granted 2. Firstly, the car is always at the right temperature when I get in it, and there’s no need to de-ice it ever. Secondly, it only needs a service every 2 years, apparently regardless of mileage :)

For me, not having to trek around 6 miles to the nearest petrol station would be nice!

Also, the electric charging and parking spaces in town tend to be empty most of the time, while the rest of us peasants with mechanical cars have to jostle for parking space on the only free car park around 😂

No, they just chuck out noxious emissions that stink 🤣🤣. It’s so much more pleasant walking round much of London now that the old snokey diesels have been banned.

And sure, people with a new-ish diesel will say ‘oh, but it’s got all the latest tech and barely emits anything’…. But you can smell them straight away, so I don’t believe that for a moment. I followed a (relatively) new diesel Toyota yesterday, clearly badly maintained, and it was emitting clouds of smoke under acceleration. That that was a 2019 car! But regardless of how well or badly maintained an EV is it’s not polluting its local environment…I can’t wait for the tipping point to be reached where more cars are EV than not, as local streets will become so much cleaner.

@Tryingtokeepgoing That’s a 6 year old car.

The big problem we are facing with EVs is price and charging of them. I suspect that Toyota driver cannot afford an electric car. They might not have anywhere to charge one. They might have three DC and need a family EV that’s going to be taxed another £2,000 plus. Of course they might choose to buy an aged piece of Tesla or a Chinese takeaway. We will end up with no European car makers and just buy cheap cars from China. That’s a fairly horrible thought but we don’t care about jobs do we? Or poor people who cannot afford to buy an Ev. We will have emissions for years.

Typo, should say been, not 'beeb'.

Both my teslas are much nicer to drive than my previous cars, other than the bmw 335d, where apart from the tesla being much faster, the handling was pretty similar.

The model 3 performance isn't going to have the same track handling as an aventador svj, but it's as fast in a straight line at any speed thats legal on a road in the UK, does it carrying a family of 5 plus luggage, and costs 1/3 the price....

Just out of interest, I’ve been having a look at the electric version of my Smart car. It would cost me around £10k to buy one that’s a few years old and it has a range of less than 100 miles.

It might be doable on really short local journeys but I’d have to factor in sitting in the supermarket car park charging it every week or so. No way could I do one of my camping trips where I do several hundred miles on one tank of fuel. Even a local trip would be a challenge as the type of camp sites I like don’t have charging facilities.

Drive better??? No. They really don’t.

They really do. You couldn’t pay me enough to make me go back.

Sure it’s 6 years old, but it’s shouldn’t be smoking. All diesel cars emit noxious substances, and even modern ones can be smelt (and heard…) from 100s of meters away. The number of new EVs on the market and sensible price points has mushroomed…they are often not much more than an ICE car nowadays. You don’t even have to but a Chinese one. A Renault 5 is available for well under £25k; a Dacia for under £16k. Ford won’t even sell you a Fiesta at all! A Tesla Model 3 is as cheap as a VW Passat, albeit the VW is a better quality product…

Yeah I mean I think it's mostly worthwhile if you can charge it at home. So you need a driveway really. I wouldn't be sitting in a supermarket car park! Some areas have on street charging now though.

Except that simply isn't true. You can drive 250+ miles on a single charge, spend as long as you want with your kids while your car is on charge and then drive home again.

Admittedly I can't do a round trip to my parents without a recharge at their house. But that's between Hertfordshire and Northern Ireland, so I'm hardly going to do there and back in a day whatever I drive.

We did a five-nations trip last summer: Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, NI. This summer we're doing Scotland to the tip of Cornwall. Hardly 'little commutes down the road'.

I like mine - I only do local trips so although it's an older one with a lower range it suits me fine. I charge almost exclusively at home on overnight electricity, so very cheap to run. I'd already switched to an automatic due to ankle problems. Not having to get petrol is a big plus too. It's from 2016, I've had it nearly 4 years and other than electricity I have only spent money on lights and tyres.

We are not near public transport so DH has his own ICE car which we use for longer trips.

@NoBinturongsHereMate Good luck with Cornwall. Charging desert.

I love driving past a petrol station, seeing the price of petrol and saying to my DH we don't need to do that any more! It costs us about £5 a week to keep our car charged as opposed to about £40 in petrol for our old car.

I love not having to think about what gear I need, being able to nip out of junctions when there's a gap, and being able to accelerate up steep hills.