Anyone else thinking of dropping from one to two cars and/or switching to EV?

[LemonsMakelimes]

Or have you done this and it’s worked out well?

I think with more use of a bike and some better planning in terms of kids activities etc we should be able to sell one car. I have worked out we would save around £100-150 a month by doing this so definitely worth it. But also wondering whether we should switch to an EV given the cost of fuel etc. Problem is that we have 3 DC so in an ideal world we’d have a 6 or 7 seater so that we can go out as a family and also take DM or DMIL neither of whom drive. Or could take one of the DCs friends and that also enables more lift sharing. Struggling to find a suitable EV with good range that doesn’t cost a fortune.

We don't have an EV, but we do have just one car between us. It's only a problem very occasionally and not enough to make us regret our decision. The saving is definitely worth it.

We’ve got an EV which has saved us a fortune over the 18mths we’ve had it. Our tariff to charge it overnight is 7p per kWh but on 1st April it’s going down to 3.49p per kWh. Obviously it remains to be seen what it will go back up to in July.

We do have another car too, which is petrol, but we hardly use it however we do need it. We are thinking of changing it for a much smaller one or maybe a smaller EV.

We have only ever had 1 car and we have 4dc. It all depends on your lifestyle, if you both work really far away you will need 2 cars. DH takes the car to work (dropping DC off on the way). I either walk/bus/taxi to work. Even a taxi every day is cheaper than paying for and running a second car by our calculations, obviously if you have a long commute it wouldn't be worth it.

We have a hybrid, which practically is the best choice for our lifestyle. It's a personal decision

We do 95% of our journeys on electric only. But we also travel regularly to see family a couple of hours away so the petrol engine can kick in for that.
New EVs probably have just enough range to get to family, so we might reconsider that decision if we were making it again now. But we would need to recharge at our destination which would be a faff as they don't have a charger. The petrol engine means we get up and back down without refuelling.

If we absolutely had to we could go to one car - DH needs to drive to work, I only occasionally need to. But we swapped to EV and fuel costs have gone down hugely. Even maintenance is cheaper. We will pay a bit more when the EV tax comes in but it's still cheaper.

I've very recently bought a 2nd hand EV - love it. However, looking at the numbers, it's only really worth it if you an install a home charger (about £1K) - you need to factor this in to your calculations. I'm on an agile tariff at the moment, but looking to switch to an EV tariff - I'll crunch the numbers once I have some better usage figures.

I wish we could!
I work at different places every work day but to get to the city I work in is 24 miles each way then a couple more gor each individual base.
Occasionally in summer I may cycle two days a week but there hadn't been a chance in hell that I've done that since last August.

Dh work base is is 17 miles away in the opposite direction.
I'm thinking of EV at holding on to my car for the moment.

We had 2 cars but as 3 DS's become 3 teens needed more leg room and boot room to carry 3 huge cricket bags around. Honestly I've seen smaller golf carts. Anyway we got a slightly larger electric car a Peugeot E3008. It has far more leg room in back and enormous boot. We use the Octopus cheap overnight tariff to charge it up. It cost 7p pkh. Soon it will only cost 3.4p pkh. For a complete overnight charge it cost iro £6.50. A full tank of petrol cost iro £65. We don't use smaller car much now at all.

If you get on to Octopus they are reducing overnight (11pm onwards) electric from April to just 3.4p pkh.

Doh I obviously meant drop from two to one, not one to two!

We have an EV and EV tariff with our electricity. We worked out we've saved almost £3k in the 18 months (and 23000 miles) we've had the car that would have been spent on petrol.
If you can charge at home its a no brainer.

We can charge at home so that’s not a problem. However I do worry about range - we normally do camping/ferry holidays so need to be able to do fairly long distances for trips. Our DC are still young so don’t really want to be stopping for ages making long journeys even longer.

Cost wise it seems to be a no brainer but we don’t really know where to start with looking for a suitable vehicle or where to buy, whether we should look at leasing or buying outright (loads more options available leasing but obviously more expensive!).

We already had one petrol, one EV. We’ve switched now so we’ll almost exclusively use the EV.

We were planning to go down to one car anyway, as I think there’s one only day a week that it causes any conflict and we can easily resolve that.

I’m thinking of selling 2nd car while it still has some value for deposit on an EV. I was going to give it to the kids but think it’d be too expensive and need to get away from dependence on petrol. Our other bigger car (3 growing up teenage children) has been great which is a hybrid but doesn’t do much electric mileage (35-40 miles) so you have to be careful. Heard Skoda Kodiaq has better electric mileage yet is big enough for 5-7 people (if you buy the 7 person version).

Ooh is that Intelligent Octopus Go? We are on that but hadn't realised it was going down - that would be excellent news!

We dropped to one car a year ago and it’s been brilliant for us. There’s been the very rare occasion when one of us has needed a taxi but I think just twice that year.

We also bought an ev. An ID4. I love the car so much and I love charging it for pennies, a full tank is 330 miles and about £5.

Yes. Great news isn't it.

Absolutely no regrets dropping to one. We are rural.

We always had 2 cars - a 6/7 seat MPV for family trips (4DC) and a smaller car for whichever if us wasn’t driving the big car. When the small car reached the end of its lifespan, we replaced it with a cheap second hand EV ( Nissan Leaf with a 24 kWh battery). That way, we still had the big car for long journeys and when we needed the extra capacity but we had a second car that cost pennies to run for all the local trips. Having an EV as a second car is ideal as it meant we could buy a cheap one as we didn’t have to prioritise range as well as saving greatly on fuel costs, while still having a car each. Current value under £3k and still in daily use ( and ultra reliable).

We have one electric and one ancient diesel which we are running into the ground before it goes (20 years old and about 200k on the clock so far...). We spend less per year on home charging the EV than 2 tanks of diesel. And that was before the current spike.

The EV does 300 miles per charge which is more than enough for most routine journeys. Over that (or less) you would be taking a break anyway, so you just plan to break at a fast charger. We have never had an issue. It is a so much more comfortable drive than the diesel bus, which is mostly used for dump runs these days.

We have an EV and a plug in hybrid. Switching out hybrid for full EV soon.
The ranges have got a lot better. And the charging infrastructure is also much better than we got our first EV years ago.
If you can charge at home it is so much cheaper. We also have solar panels which in summer makes it a litle cheaper again..

We have one car and use uber, as the uber is a fraction of the cost of a second car

we have just switched from a small petrol + hybrid to an EV + hybrid. We can only seat 5 though, I’ve no experience of larger EVs.

We bought second hand both times. It is a big upfront investment.

I wfh and cycle when I can to reduce journeys but with two kids it’s very unsafe to use bicycles to get to school or shops. Cars are generally getting bigger and it’s no fun watching a big vehicle squeeze past your 7 yo who is valiantly trying to cycle in a bike lane in wet weather.

I switched to an ev last year, on octopus ev tariff and my fuel costs gave reduced massively. Costs between £3 and £4 per night when I plug in (normally a couple of times / week). I bought a second hand 70 plate as that was all I could afford at the time but it has been great ( and really fun to drive too!)

We have a fully ev and a hybrid. We need two as live rurallyish and work etc. But saved so much since we switched. We charge at home. For the PP worrying about international travel we have driven our ev to Spain a few times, lots of chargers on French motorways, just need to plan the stops.