Is it silly to think spending £16k on an EV might save me money?

[Chickenrategg]

I need a new car anyway, the current one is held together with rust and literally falling apart (the door handle fell off last year, they put it back on but seriously! Whose door handle falls off?!)
I have £4000 cash but nothing else. I returned to work from mat leave so savings a still scare but slowly rebuilding.

We have solar panels and whilst in winter they're pretty negligible, in summer they save us a fortune on our energy bills; we barely pay anything for electricity between May and August.

Because of the state of my current car I budget annually for it's MOT and random repairs and budget £85 a month for that.

We've been thinking about getting an EV. We have two small children so need enough room for pram and all their paraphernalia so we're thinking of an MG5 EV which we can get for about £15k for a 2022 plate and about 10-20k miles.
We can have a home charger installed for £1k

I've looked at insurance and it'll be about £100 more expensive annually than my current insurance but the tax is £0 so I can afford that out of my current budget as my tax and insurance will be due next month anyway for my current car.

So I'd need a loan for £12,000 which my bank will give me for 5 years at £235 a month.

I currently spend £300 a month on fuel as I do a lot of miles for work. I also thought I wouldn't need to budget so much for annual repairs any more so I could reduce that to maybe £50 a month so after fuel too I'd save £100 a month which I will put into our joint account to cover the extra energy used to charge the car.

Obviously I can't know for sure just yet how much it'll cost to charge the car but we should be able to get on Octopus' intelligent go tariff with the EV charger we have chosen (already with Octopus and have a smart meter) which lets you charge the car overnight for 7.5p/kWh and obviously in the summer the solar will help too.

I've never bought a car on finance before, always just bought outright and it does seem that this is a way to get a much newer, nicer car for a lot less money that I could possibly get the equivalent ICE car even though the initial outlay is more expensive.

Or am I being incredibly naive?

Thanks in advance!

Buying a second hand electric car was the best thing I ever did. Please do consider the range of the car and how long it takes to charge, but other than that, it sounds like a plan!!

To help your budgeting the car will do about 4 miles/kWh so at 7.5p/kWh that will be a fuel cost of just less than 2p/mile.

If you're currently spending £300/month on fuel then you're doing around 1-2000 miles a month which means the fuel cost saving will be massive for you.

Couple of our neighbours have MG5s and they seem happy with them. There is a long range version which may be worth it.

Thank you. Yes, the range is supposed to be 250 miles which should be plenty. I know they rarely actually achieve that as well. But I do a lot of the same miles over and over again with work so it's not a case of doing different journeys that might go too near the max range. I work for a large NHS trust and travel to different sites 3 or 4 times a week which is where the fuel cost comes in but no one return journey will be further than 100 miles so it should be fine as long as I can charge the car overnight which once we have the charger installed should be no problem in theory.

The upfront costs are the most expensive things about an EV car, running costs are cheap as chips.

Even for me, who has not yet bought a home charger, my car electricity costs about £40 per month as I charge at a street charger almost directly outside my house, which is more expensive than charging at home; 45p pkWh.

If you do lots of miles, the thing you need to be conscious of is the range of the car you are buying. Fully charged, my car has 175 miles ready to go. That's fine for me, as I only do local journeys, with the occasional further journey, I top up the charge once a week.

If you work for NHS please look into salary sacrifice scheme about getting a care through this scheme it will save you tax and you will get a new car every three years in lease but includes all insurance service etc ; it is much better than getting a loan as the car value will depreciate speak to your payroll and each trust has its own car company for example gmpdrivercare is one

Just seen you work for the NHS, get a car on the salary sacrifice like a pp said.

it covers tax (if there is any) and insurance.

look for deals. I have a BMW ix3 and it’s bloody brilliant. It works out at £320 per month for everything accept charging it.

Doesn't salary sacrifice affect your pension though? I've heard it can make an enormous difference to your take home pension.

Surely work pay your petrol though, will they pay charging, can you get an itemized bill for charging?

i have an ev via salary sacrifice (not NHS). It has saved me a fortune compared to the car I was running before. Currently both the council where I live and more importantly the one that covers the city centre where I work give free parking permits. I used to pay £12 per day to park at work.
i have solar panels and a battery. On the EV tariff even in winter I can charge the battery on the cheap electricity so never pay more than the overnight rate for any electricity used at home.

Yes they do and the current policy is the price per mile is the same for an EV as an ICE so actually this will also save me money as I'll get more back in my expenses than the amount spent on the cost to travel for work. I imagine it won't be long before that policy changes though it'll be nice whilst it lasts.

If you want to charge using solar, get an EV charger that is solar compatible like zappi. This will drip charge your car just using solar, or you can override to charge normally.
If you are charging using an EV tariff I think you would definitely save money.

Agree with others definitely look at a salx scheme, the company car benefit charge on EVs is tiny. I'm a 40% tax payer and the tax on my £70k car is £45 a month (to add £70k sounds a bit ridiculous but it's a mid range EV, EVs just have high list prices!) Vs £250 I would have paid on my sacrificed salary.

I will definitely look at salary sacrifice. I'm a bit hesitant though as when not at work my husband drives my car too, so how easy would it be to add him to the insurance if that is included? And I do worry about my pension. My husband is self employed and although he has a pension it'll be tuppence compared to mine so I'm eager to not do anything to negatively impact that really.

Yes it does.

I love my EV! We also have solar panels and are with Octopus so I charge overnight on the cheap rate. You can set the charger (ours is a Zappi) to do this automatically. Just be aware that the range in winter can be 10-15% lower than in summer. In cold weather my max range is 180 miles compared to 220 in warmer weather.

I just found this which tells you all about salary sacrifice with an EV car scheme and pension:

octopusev.com/ev-hub/does-salary-sacrifice-impact-pensions#

It’s easy to add extra drivers to the insurance at no extra cost.

You need to get advice on your individual pension scheme.

"Final Salary" type schemes such as the NHS can be affected by salary sacrifice schemes for cars/childcare. It will depending on which version of salary is counted for pension purposes - gross, taxable or something in between.

NHS pension scheme is definitely affected.

https://cavuhb.nhs.wales/files/leavers/uhb-salary-sacrifice-pension-implications-1-pdf/

I've recently bought a second hand e golf and I love it. Range is lower than what you have stated but it saves me a fortune. I charge it at home and just plug it into the socket in the garage as we've not got a charger. Only downside I've found is that when you put the heating on the range drops quite a lot, but as I don't normally do huge distances it's ok. My husband had an enyak for a short time which also had the same issues heating wise. Other than that I think electric vehicles are an excellent choice.

How old is your golf? Just looking at a 2018 model, does battery life get worse etc?

Check out also if the sites have chargers and if they cost as it may be cheaper/ more convenient to park and charge.

Do check your insurance costs - sime are higher for EVs

That’s how e cars work. Everything off the battery. Of course using heating/air con uses up battery power.

We have a top of the range RV as DH’s company car.

Cant wait to return to petrol. Darent go anywhere, and there’s been so many electrical based problems. Refusal to charge, refusal to open doors. It’s endless. Never again.

I read an article the other day, didn't scrutinise the figures for accuracy. But it reckoned that it costs an average £5 to charge up an EV. So comparing that to the cost of similar of petrol or diesel to give you a similar range, it would seem on face value to make good financial sense. Then as you say, £0 road tax, and reduced servicing costs (in theory), it sounds worth while.