Should I get an EV??

Arsenal2019

Should I get an EV? I can get one through work on a salary sacrifice scheme.

They currently have some new EV cars which I like and are at around £450. This includes the hire of the car, insurance, breakdown cover, tyres, maintenance and has the EV charging point in that price too. Now obviously there’s no MOT or tax too.

I currently have a petrol vehicle and all in all I pay around £550 for the running costs and finance per month.

Now, obviously there’s a £100 saving there

My work is 40 mile round trip and I do some driving when I’m not in work too. I need to contact EON who I’m with to see if they can alter my electric meter tariff to factor in me possibly charging my vehicle at home.

What I would like to know is

Would an EV suit me? How much roughly does it cost to charge my car.  

Any help or suggestions would be great. Thanks 

WellKnownSid

Arsenal2019 said:

Should I get an EV? I can get one through work on a salary sacrifice scheme.

...

My work is 40 mile round trip and I do some driving when I’m not in work too. I need to contact EON who I’m with to see if they can alter my electric meter tariff to factor in me possibly charging my vehicle at home.

What I would like to know is

Would an EV suit me? How much roughly does it cost to charge my car.  

Any help or suggestions would be great. Thanks 

A 40 mile round trip = 200 miles a week.  Assuming you do a another 120 miles over the weekend that's 320 miles a week / 16,640 miles a year.

16,640 miles a year at 3.6m/kWh = 4,622kW x 7p = £27 a month in electricity.

Check out Bjorn Nyland's YouTube channel - he has done 1,000km challenges in most EVs on the market in all conditions.  That'll give you a lot more insight on things like quality of route planning, real life charging speeds, etc.

Factor in what happens if you are ill, made redundant, or decide to resign.  Different schemes have different rules as to what they cover so worth checking out.

Remember that salary sacrifice will mean you will have a lower income which may impact other things like pensions and mortgage applications.  If you do move house, you will need to factor in another EVSE installation if one isn't already there.

The big downside is that you'll become a terrible bore at parties where you'll talk for hours about the instant response, quietness, lack of vibration and the convenience of having a filling station on your drive.

Keep_pedalling

Providing you can charge at home, you will be paying somewhere between 2 and 3p a mile on an EV tariff. 

Petriix

If you charge from home then definitely do it. Salary sacrifice is not necessarily the best way to do it as some direct leases can be better value overall but you'll save a fortune in fuel whatever way you do it. 

born_again

Charge at home is a no brainer.
For me 13500 miles has cost £240.

You could also pester company to install charge points if they have their own parking. 

Tree_pipe99

If you want a direct comparison to petrol costs, I'm paying the equivalent of 11 pence per litre (assuming petrol is around £1.30 per litre).

facade

I don't do enough miles to justify an EV tariff, so I pay standard rate for electricity, and it works out about 7p a mile, a third of what The Other Car costs.

(Actually, it is completely "free" as it just goes on the electricity bill, and with my low mileage I don't really notice!)

If I did your mileage I'd definitely get an EV tariff and pay more like 2p a mile.

Best to go EV sooner rather than later, as HMG will eventually start taxing home EV charging, easy enough, they could simply raise VAT on EV tariffs, or they could use smart meter & smart charger data to calculate your tax liability. (You've already missed out on years of "free" road tax)

It will definitely come, the question is how much longer have we got?

Peter999_2

You are an ideal candidate for an electric car.    The single most important thing is to be able to charge frome home closely followed by if the range of the EV is far enough that you don't ever have to charge away from home.

I have two EVs in my houshold and we have done a combined 12,840 miles since October last year.   We share the one 7kW charger and am on the Octopos Intelligent Go tariff.   With this tariff, you specify how much % you want your car to be and what time you want it to be done by.   It then intelligently charges the car by working out when to charge during the day/night at the off-peak times - as soon as you plug it in the app gives you the schedule of when it will charge.        All of the charging costs 7p per kWh no matter when it decides to charge and the good thing is that the whole house gets the electric for 7p per kWh during the charging period so you do your washing/dish washing during those times if you can.

I started making a spreadsheet when we got a charger detailing how much each of us have charged/cost (it's very easy getting the info from the app) and working out how much our old petrol cars would cost.   Below are the current figures.

12,840 miles used
3,212.4 kWh used
£222.06 total cost of charging
£2,441.42 total cost of petrol if we had kept the old cars

£2,219.36 saving since October 2024

As you can see, you can save quite a lot of money.    However, the 7p per kWh is not guaranteed forever (have to factor in the current government and they insatiable thirst to screw every last penny from everyone).     We did fix the tariff for a year in July just in case it does get increased.

Arsenal2019

Tree_pipe99 said:

If you want a direct comparison to petrol costs, I'm paying the equivalent of 11 pence per litre (assuming petrol is around £1.30 per litre).

Petrol near me is £1.44

daveyjp

Only rent a car if your business mileage covers the rental costs. 

Arsenal2019

Peter999_2 said:

You are an ideal candidate for an electric car.    The single most important thing is to be able to charge frome home closely followed by if the range of the EV is far enough that you don't ever have to charge away from home.

I have two EVs in my houshold and we have done a combined 12,840 miles since October last year.   We share the one 7kW charger and am on the Octopos Intelligent Go tariff.   With this tariff, you specify how much % you want your car to be and what time you want it to be done by.   It then intelligently charges the car by working out when to charge during the day/night at the off-peak times - as soon as you plug it in the app gives you the schedule of when it will charge.        All of the charging costs 7p per kWh no matter when it decides to charge and the good thing is that the whole house gets the electric for 7p per kWh during the charging period so you do your washing/dish washing during those times if you can.

I started making a spreadsheet when we got a charger detailing how much each of us have charged/cost (it's very easy getting the info from the app) and working out how much our old petrol cars would cost.   Below are the current figures.

12,840 miles used
3,212.4 kWh used
£222.06 total cost of charging
£2,441.42 total cost of petrol if we had kept the old cars

£2,219.36 saving since October 2024

As you can see, you can save quite a lot of money.    However, the 7p per kWh is not guaranteed forever (have to factor in the current government and they insatiable thirst to screw every last penny from everyone).     We did fix the tariff for a year in July just in case it does get increased.

Thank you - that sounds like an enormous saving.

my current electricity tarrif is around 25p per kwh and I don’t have an ev add on on it. My contact with Eon expires June 2026 so I have several months left until the contact expires. I heavily doubt I’d be able to switch or leave without paying an early termination fee