Eletric cars are they worth it - do you have one

ElefantEd

I'm on my 3rd electric car (Nissan Leaf 24kwH, Nissan Leaf 30kwH, now an MG4 (64kwH). Been very pleased with all of them, the first two were bought nearly new, the MG actually new.

Early days there was loads of free public charging (Scotland and Northumberland, as well as motorway services, IKEA etc). Nowadays there is very little free charging - though my wife can charge for free at work and a hotel we stayed in recently gave free charging. However there is much less need for charging on the road now as the range is so much greater.

Charging at home is obviously cheaper than doing it elsewhere so if you have a drive or garage this is the way to go - we got a grant for installing a home charging point so it didn't cost anything, not sure if that scheme still operates. Some tariffs have cheap overnight rates and you can programme most modern cars to charge at a time of your choosing.

We saved a lot of fuel costs on the first two Leafs (due to free charging and electricity being a lot cheaper than petrol/diesel then). Although relatively speaking electricity prices have gone up it is still much cheaper to refuel electrons than fossil fuels; and more convenient as you don't have to go anywhere, you just plug it in when the car is parked anyway.

Another bonus is that maintenance costs are much lower, there's hardly anything to go wrong, no clutch, exhaust system etc. In fact in 10 years of driving an EV we've only had to replace the tyres, windscreen wipers and the occasional suspension related issue (due to the crappy roads round here).

EVs are very nice to drive, accelerate like beasts and are smooth. Range anxiety was certainly a thing a few years ago, though you can mitigate this by altering yoru driving style. With the new car it's never been an issue. Our longest journey has been just over 200 miles, which we easily did without needing to recharge (we did stop for a rest break so we could have charged if we'd wanted to), it was stress free and we still had 50+ miles of range left. This was mostly on motoways/dual carriageway A roads and I drive at the speed limit. I would say that driving at 70 does reduce the range somewhat, as does cold weather. But as most of our journeys are a max of 100 miles return it isn't likely to be a problem.

Grumpy_chap

I was considering an EV for a long time.
Then in June I bought one and I absolutely love it.
There are some attractive prices available at the moment - we got a good price on TM3.  There was a post in another thread earlier this week about very attractive prices for 1 yo Nissan Leaf.
It really is worth making the switch.

grumiofoundation

Big question is are you able to charge at home? (or have free/cheap charging at work).

If yes - will save a lot versus petrol

If no - as above cost of 'fuel' (charging) will be similar to petrol (depending on where you would charge it)

daivid

WellKnownSid said:

TooManyPoints said:

I noticed there were hundreds of free slow charging sockets at our local hospital when I visited. 

Are there really hundreds??

Yes - I was walking through the car park, half way down one row and was at number 37 - and there were several other rows of them, plus other car parks with them all lit up.  

Is there a mix up here between free - available, and free - at zero cost? From casual observation there seem to be lots of available chargers though I doubt any give free electricity. There are also apps that will guide you to the nearest available charger just as my satnav can take me to the nearest petrol station.

WellKnownSid

daivid said:

WellKnownSid said:

TooManyPoints said:

I noticed there were hundreds of free slow charging sockets at our local hospital when I visited. 

Are there really hundreds??

Yes - I was walking through the car park, half way down one row and was at number 37 - and there were several other rows of them, plus other car parks with them all lit up.  

Is there a mix up here between free - available, and free - at zero cost? From casual observation there seem to be lots of available chargers though I doubt any give free electricity. There are also apps that will guide you to the nearest available charger just as my satnav can take me to the nearest petrol station.

Sorry should have been clearer.

Free as in no-one was parked there
Free as in there was no cost to use it
Free as in there was no cost to park

They were just sockets with a light on top and presumably only charged at 2.2kW hence free.

The obvious gotcha was that they were not marked so any car could park in the space. EV or not. Probably only a handful of cars actually charging when I was there.

WellKnownSid

Grumpy_chap said:

I was considering an EV for a long time.
Then in June I bought one and I absolutely love it.
There are some attractive prices available at the moment - we got a good price on TM3.  There was a post in another thread earlier this week about very attractive prices for 1 yo Nissan Leaf.
It really is worth making the switch.

How are you enjoying the Tesla? 

There are some amazing prices for one year old leafs, definitely thinking of cancelling my hybrid on order… 🤔

Cardew

IMO many motorists over-emphasis the importance of fuel costs in the overall cost of motoring. 

10,000 miles pa  @ 40mpg with petrol/diesel @£1.50 a litre costs £1,890.  Compare that to depreciation on a newish car.

If the additional cost of buying an equivalent to a petrol/diesel is, say, £5000, that is a loss of £300pa in interest - more if borrowing.

 

grumiofoundation

Cardew said:

IMO many motorists over-emphasis the importance of fuel costs in the overall cost of motoring. 

10,000 miles pa  @ 40mpg with petrol/diesel @£1.50 a litre costs £1,890.  Compare that to depreciation on a newish car.

If the additional cost of buying an equivalent to a petrol/diesel is, say, £5000, that is a loss of £300pa in interest - more if borrowing.

 

And 10,000 miles at 4 mile per kwh at 7.5p per kWh is £187.50 (charging at home). 

So even factoring in £300 lost interest the electric is £1400 cheaper per year - so you have made back your £5000 in ~4 years.

WellKnownSid

Cardew said:

IMO many motorists over-emphasis the importance of fuel costs in the overall cost of motoring. 

10,000 miles pa  @ 40mpg with petrol/diesel @£1.50 a litre costs £1,890.  Compare that to depreciation on a newish car.

If the additional cost of buying an equivalent to a petrol/diesel is, say, £5000, that is a loss of £300pa in interest - more if borrowing.

 

If you live in Scotland there is also the interest free loan for used electric cars <£30k to factor in

PixelPound

A lot of the talk is new cars electric vs ICE. However its the second hand market that I'm not sure about. I tend to buy a 3 yr old car, keep for 3-5 years and repeat.

I wonder how good the batteries would be. If you have a mobile phone for a few years or buy a second hand one, often the battery can be sub-par especially if it's been on a lot of short charge cycles. Some phones you can change the batteries fairly cheaply and get many years of use out of them. If buying a second hand electric - how can you tell the life left in the batteries and it's effect on the car's range. I would assume changing the batteries on an electric car is a fairly costly option.