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!

@firesail it's a 70 plate. The batteries are guaranteed for 8 years.

@OneMoreTime23 I'm aware of that but OP might not be so just highlighting in case

I often drive from one side of the country to the other. Roughly 7 hours of driving. Frankly I don’t care how cheap it is to charge if I have to add 2 hours to that journey to charge the damn thing.

It’s not only money that matters here.

Absolutely go for it, we converted five years ago and never looked back. We have a 300
mile range now but until recently were pretty happy with 140; unless you have very hefty commutes 250 is fine. My BiL has a first gen leaf with just 65 miles range- I think that sounds tricky but he never complains.

You need octopus go but you seem clued up on that front. We also use the overnight tariff for washing machine/dishwasher etc so since getting that tariff and getting everything sorted overnight our bills are actually less, even including the EV charging.

remember servicing/repair costs will be less over the lifetime of the car too- less to go wrong.

Oh and we also have solar and when we wfh in summer the energy goes straight from the sun into the car costing us nothing at all. You don’t want to rely on this though, it’s pretty slow.

Go for it OP, we got a second hand electric car (2018) and I love it. Range c.250. Can normally do full weeks driving including weekend away on 2 charges (2 full batteries). Also it is a pleasure to drive, quiet, responsive, always first away from the lights. Will never go back to petrol after this.

I am so sorry for having a different opinion to you.

that is Roughly what we would pay to charge overnight at home. But bear in mind public charging - especially the super fast ones at motorway services which sort you out in 10minutes- are much more expensive. We only ever use these on long journeys though which for us is perhaps 2/3 times a year

Following.

It depends on your company. Mine doesn’t. Pension remains the same as my company base that on my whole salary. It’s a salary sacrifice pension, based on my full salary pre-deductions. Not every company does it this way though, so it’s worth checking in the terms of your own sacrifice scheme.

It was definitely a concern for me, but thankfully my specific scheme doesn’t affect pension.

I think you have a car problem not an EV problem. In five years with two EVs I’ve never had any issues whatsoever other than a 12v battery failure, which is normal regardless of type of car.

I would not take out a loan of £12,000 to buy a car. You'll be paying £14,100 for that loan altogether.

I'd sell the current car and buy a second hand petrol car that I could afford outright or with a very small loan.

Then save up for an electric in the future.

I'd be warry of the salary sacrifice scheme. DH could have done it but it doesn't work out cost effective. It was still cheaper for us to but our car and run it ourselves. We do only have a Nissan leaf that only does 80 miles, but I love it and we have a Zappi charger for charging off our solar panels in the summer.

Yes salary sacrifice will
affect your NHS pension , but if u r high rate tax payer it may be worthwhile you need to do the maths ; some people take the car on salary sacrifice and few years before retirement they come out of the scheme for pension benefit ; I am no expert but heard this from colleagues; you have to weigh the pros and cons , in the lease you don’t have to worry about repairs or service or insurance
east to add your husband on it as well that shouldn’t be a problem

It doesn't take 2 hours to charge though. If you use the right chargers, you can go from 20% to 80% in less than half an hour

@Flopsythebunny
actually some are even faster that that- you can charge ours in less time than it takes to grab a costa coffee.

but these threads always bring out the anti-EV brigade. Not worth arguing IMO (believe me i’ve done a lot)

We have two EVs. Would never go back. If you're spending £300 a month on fuel, even with the loan cost I doubt you'd spend more than £70 home charging, even in winter. How many miles do you do a month?

Our charges (normally going from about 40% to 80%) tend to cost about £3 overnight and we don't charge overnight.

As for long distances - people love that argument against EVs! If you're not going that far I wouldn't worry. If you do decide to use your EV, I wouldn't worry too much about it. DH drives 160 miles to work every week in our longer range car (240-280 mile range) and we've been to France and back a few times in our shorter range car (180-240 mile range).

With solar and home charging I would 100% go for it.

Sorry - we don't charge every night!!

Thank you!

@OneMoreTime23 I regularly drive very long distances, and it does not take me any longer in my EV than it did in my petrol car. You just put the car on a charger when you eg take toilet breaks.

Many EVs also don't need services - another huge cost saver!

So is it okay to buy a 2018 plate? What do people think?

Thank you everyone. I've had a look this morning actually and I think it will still work out cheaper to just buy one and sort it out myself as the savings include the promise of your mileage coming back to you but actually, when I claim my mileage with a car I'll get a higher value back. Also I'm not at all bothered about it being new which it can only be on salary sacrifice. I've been driving a 15 year old car for the past 5 years so to get a 2022 plate will feel new anyway! And I know it'll depreciate in value but even so, at the end of the loan I'll own it and if it's still running well I don't need to trade it in for another monthly payment plan. I tend to keep cars until they run into the ground anyway and whilst I might feel different in an electric, I've got 5 years to decide.

I do appreciate the long journey issue but we so so rarely do that and if we do we need to break the journey up with breaks for the children anyway I just can't see that being a problem. And my husband will still have his ICE so we'll be able to chose between them anyway.

Enjoy your new car OP!

Do you have a battery with your solar? Only octopus intelligent go charge 30p in the day which feels expensive to us. We have a battery and charge it overnight with our ev so we only ever pay 7.5p kWh it’s worth factoring the 30p in to your electric calculations if it’s more than your current rate.

with solar, a battery and ev our electricity is so cheap but we obviously sunk a lot into the upfront cost of that kit.