How economical is an EV really?

[Cleo5mum]

Just that really. I need a new car soon and want a compact SUV.. will do about 150 miles a week. Does anyone have an idea of the cost electricity to run an EV? Also what would the cost of the charge point at home be..? Given the volatile petrol prices now I am thinking EV rather than a petrol hybrid I had thought of..Thanks

Depends on so many things but I do high mileage and it’s so much cheaper for me. I’ve been driving EV’s since 2015 though so am well practiced!

I do about 15k mileage annually and home charging costs me between £60-80 a month but I have an EV tariff and a smart charger and manage my charging carefully. Some nights it is completely free to charge.

We charge once a week (gives us roughly 260 miles) and pay £20 for the electricity according to the charger app.
Our charge point was free with the lease company

We have two EVs. Home charger was just over £1k. We are a high energy household and used to spend £400 pcm on electricity on economy 7 before we had a home charger.

Now it’s £300 on an EV rate as when our car is plugged in, random cheaper slots will be allocated to charge and when the car is charging, the whole house has off peak energy.

We drive about 2.5k miles a month across the two cars, and these miles are entirely free. We do everything we can to avoid a public charge as it’s a massive PITA, expensive, and we need the cars to charge at home to save money!!!

(Edited to make it clearer that we have a real world saving by having electric cars).

I have a phev kia niro.

It say 35 miles to a charge, did about 40 last summer when I got it, 25-30 over the winter, and 30-35 at the moment (depends on the outside temperature, heater etc usage).
My daily commute has been 26 miles, so it is ideal for me.

I've been paying 8.5p per kwh (dropping to 6.5p tomorrow) for 5 hours overnight, which just charges my 8.9kw battery. So about 75p a trip (dropping to 55p).
(I also run appliances and charge the house battery at the same low rate).

I am going to have the 1.5p per mile phev charge, but it will still be a lot cheaper than petrol or diesel.

I use a granny charger (around £100-£150) as the payback period was about 50 years for v slightly cheaper electricity rate I'd get with a recognised charger.

If you get solar on your roof then very cheap indeed between April and October

Wow that’s so low for 1 charge! My work commute is 45 miles round trip so that would not work. Does it switch over to petrol though presumably?

Yes, I last filled up in January and have only used about 10 of those fuel miles.

Different phev's have different ranges, so if you want to go that route then compare to see what might suit your commute.

I’ve found it more worthwhile since switching to an EV tariff (with a smart charger), however I rarely need to charge out and about. If I was regularly doing super long journeys I’d think twice as it can be so expensive to change out and about.

Downside is I paid £22k, and sold my 14yo diesel passat estate for £1,850. I was getting a newer car regardless though.

We charge at home and pay about £300 a year for round and about trips near home. We pay vastly more per year on our petrol car which we use for similar local trips (tho we use the EV where possible) and holidays. I forget the amount but more like thousands.

I have a six year old Vauxhall Corsa-e that I bought second hand two years ago for 13k. I bought it with a dealer warranty which was a good idea as it needed one major repair in the early months. It has a low range compared to the more recent models both of the Corsa and other makes, but I get 180 miles per charge which works fine for me - I dont usually drive more than 100 miles per work day and often less, so I usually charge every other day. Off-peak charging at home is 7p per kWh and a full charge takes about 30kWh or £2.10. We have solar panels at home too. I think the charger was around £1000 to install. Like the previous poster, dp manages our charging very carefully - there are often free hours with Octopus, or patches of time where we can top up a bit straight from the panels.

The car (and the solar panels) were a major investment but I am happy with how the costs have stacked up.

I have a hybrid and just wanted to say - in the winter if I use the heated aircon it will switch the petrol engine on, but if I use the heated seats and steering wheel, it stays on electric mode. Has saved me quite a bit discovering my that!

in short: heat your bum, not the air.

I got a free charger and pay £4.80-£7.20 for a full charge. Weather depending, I get 260-320 miles as I have the standard range. There was a long waiting list for the enhanced range which I believe in mild weather does up to 380-400 miles per charge.

How much of the cost of buying an electric car or hybrid is factored in though? I have a 2019 CRV, petrol, and can't make the sums work at the moment.

I bought a new EV last June. I don’t do a lot of mileage typically - I’ve done 3,500 since I got it but it’s cost me under £400 in charging (and that includes fast chargers on the M25 etc). And not having to worry about fuel shortages is blissful

Typically, you get around 4 miles per kWh so so you can work out the approximate running cost from that, which will vary depending on whether you charge at home or away, and if at home whether you’re on an EV tariff.

I didn’t really factor in the cost of the car overall, as my previous car was falling to pieces after 16 years and I was going to replace it anyway. Without a doubt I could have got a decent reliable liquid fuelled hatchback from a dealer for something like a third to a half of what I paid for a second hand EV. That extra we my choice to pay and obviously I’m lucky to have had that option, but I do save money every month on the fuel.

We e got an electric car. It costs about £5.20 to “fill up” at home and that will give us a range of over 300 miles. We’re getting solar panels installed so the price will be even less (December and January are poor months for solar panels)

There are fuel shortages in our area at the moment so there’s also that!

personally I think the current instability will go on for a while so, in my view solar and ev is the way forward.

Bloody expensive to recharge away from home tho.

We do about 150-200 miles a week on average. Electricity bill is around £30 higher a month than it was previously. EV installation was about £1500. Love our EV. Wouldn’t be without it.

I do cheap leases or PCP’s usually, so pay around £200pcm for the car (current one is £172). Electricity on top was still cheaper than fuel in my old diesel as I used to spend a good £300 on fuel and tax and maintenance. Maintenance costs on EV’s are lower and I’ve not had one go wrong yet. Full service and MOT on mine is £125. Just tyres and brakes on top of that.

Obviously there is now road tax and electric charging has gone up since I started back in 2015 but the costs definitely still stack up for me, it’s just not such a big gap. But does depend how you do it.

I’m replacing my lease with a used EV that I will buy outright this time, as can get something I like for under £15k and the leases aren’t cheap enough at the moment. There used to be a lot of loss leaders as they wanted to get them on the road- but now there is a better used circuit instead.

My ex was a motoring journalist in the past so he got me in to it early on and we have had all the EV’s to try at some point. I haven’t ever wanted to go back though. It’s one of the few good influences he had lol. I still get a few press car drives though via him (we are pretty amicable co-parents).

I loved it when I was the only EV driver in the work car park though and got all the stares (and sniggers). My first was an i3 and it’s still my favourite as it was just so innovative. Happy memories ☺️

Earlier this year I researched the cost of changing to an EV. Once I'd factored in the cost of the vehicle (leasing, finance, buying outright, etc), then considered the cost of a replacement battery at some point in the future, I couldn't make the figures stack up. I also considered the possibility of range anxiety.

Of course, in the light of the current oil crisis EV drivers are laughing all the way to the bank, but I'm still not persuaded because even with the increase in fuel prices, anyone switching to electric right now will take years to recoup their initial outlay.

It really boils down to choice; we're all different with varying budgets, and we all use our vehicles differently. It's horses for courses.

Who are you with? This sounds interesting

With our ev, we reckon our car journeys cost a third iof equivalent petrol costs, or 50% if we charge at service stations.

We have two EVs, DHs is a company car so no upfront cost, I loved it so much (especially being able to schedule it to heat up on a winters morning, but also the way it drives) that when I bought a second car it had to be an EV.

My budget wasn’t big as I mostly do a few local miles so a second car is a luxury, I got a used Nissan Leaf. I love it, heated seats and steering wheel (great for my Raynauds), all round cameras, pre heating. Only drawback is it only does about 90-100 miles before I need to charge, so less good for long journeys but then I don’t need it for that.

We’ve recently had a battery installed which charges at the cheap rate overnight and we use it during the day. As others have said if the car is charging the whole house gets the cheap rate, so we often get cheap electricity from about 6:30 when DH gets home (then use the battery on the morning).

Our overnight rate is about to go down to 3.5p a unit, which will make a full charge £1.75 for about 200 miles (more in summer, less in winter). So yes very worth it for us! As our EV was within £500-1,000 of the equivalent petrol model in the first place so we have well recouped any difference at this point. Also my husband uses it for business mileage and his work pay the full 40p a mile or whatever as we own our own car, it’s not a business lease, so one business trip from him pays for all our leisure use for over a month or even more.