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!

We’ve got an ID3 and it’s great, range is about 200 miles. We charge at night in the Octopus tariff. Was paying £300 a month on diesel so it’s saved us a lot!

I'd really consider the salary sacrifice. I had an EV, whilst I love the idea of them the car itself is an absolute pig. It's been problematic from the word go, even replacing a tyre costs hundreds, and all that was covered by the fleet company. It includes insurance for you and anyone you nominate over 21, servicing, I don't even have to pay for windscreen wipers. If you buy second d hand and inadvertently get stuck with a pig it'll cost you ££££. You can pick up an entry level EV for about £200 a month through NHS lease, it really is hassle free driving and won't dent your pension in a noticeable way.

The OP had said they work for the NHS. It impacts on the NHS pension. I was answering the OP.

Assuming

a) the charger is working
b) nobody else is using it

Interesting post, we've been looking at similar but I've stopped commuting by car (and won't go back to it) so interested to hear the positive views on EV here. We've been considering but as we do approx 200 mile return journey a few times a year without the ability to charge overnight at the stop off and the rest all short we didn't want to risk switching to EV and getting stuck hiring for the long journeys. Everyone I know in real life with an EV absolutely slates them so good to hear the other side!

@CheesecakeandCrackers

Everyone I know in real life with an EV absolutely slates them so good to hear the other side

I genuinely find this surprising. Everyone I know that had one loves it and would never go back. And we have converted previously sceptical MiL and 2 x Bils.

Assume you haven’t yet spotted the latest generation of gridserve chargers which have 20-30 ultra fast charge points, popping up at motorway service stations all over the place

That’s great. What if you don’t live where there are motorways?

I agree. Ours has caused nothing but hassle. I spent an entire holiday looking for chargers

You’re obviously very anti EV (that’s fine)- but not sure why you are so argumentative. EVs can work great for many families, but not all.

but to answer your question they are popping up everywhere, obviously trunk routes are prioritised.

it’s not a huge conspiracy you know. Just quite a good thing for those of us that want it. You’ve clearly never had an EV so not sure why you’re contributing so negatively to this thread.

Drive a load of them when looking for a new car last year. Couldn’t find any I liked and the range was just pitiful if you didn’t stick cruise on at 56 and pootle along. Ended up with a petrol SUV that’s actually fun to drive. 🤷🏻‍♀️

In the NHS pension (career average) you get 1/54 of your salary added to your yearly pension.
So if your salary sacrifice is £3000 you would lose about £56 per year from your pension. (this will be adjusted for inflation so will be more than £56 when you retire - but should be worth around £56 in todays money.
If you pay 40% tax then you would obviously save £1200 income tax per year. Plus other smaller savings from NI and not paying pension contribution on the £3000 - probably around £1500 per year.

I only know 3 friends, one colleague and one acquaintance so probably not that surprising as its not enough people to give me any real flavour of what they're like! Another colleague just bought a Tesla so I'm looking forward to hearing their experience

I bought a second hand Corsa-e about a month ago and in general would give it a big round of applause. Financially I'm certain it's better, but we haven't really seen the impact on our electricity bill yet. I do really like driving past petrol stations. Dp has had a similar car for two years and the charging infrastructure is both much much better and also much much busier than it was. It is a really lovely car to drive, so simple and responsive.

A few things have taken some getting used to, principally for me the fact that I don't have to put the key in the ignition - have lost keys twice, get a smart tag to track yours. And the impact of speed on the range is something I knew about from dp but it does affect journey times - I rarely go above 60 these days. Ultimately thats a good thing but it takes some planning for.

I think it's completely reasonable for those driving really long distances like a pp to hold back at the moment, also environmentally it's obviously better imo to wait until you were going to replace the car anyway - which was the case for me, and for you.

The running costs of an EV are really low. Also much less to (generally) go wrong as they don't have an engine as such!

We rely on the public charging network and generally only spend £50 a month on charging.

I charge at home overnight so it costs me less than 2p per mile. I my car has a range of around 350 miles in summer, that goes down to around 300 in winter.
I have never had problems using a public charger, never had to queue and only once come across one not working. Luckily the other 7 next to it were working.