New PHEV owner seeking same.

flysplat

Hi.

Ive just bought a 3 year old Citroen C5 Aircross Shine with 3000 miles on the clock. A bit of an impulse buy with no research..... very unlikely me!

I'm now puzzling over energy tariffs as mine with Eon expires on 1st October.

We are a retired couple, drive about 8000 miles a year with the occasional journey exceeding the car's battery range of 30-34 miles.

We have a home charger.

We only have a washing that we could switch to overnight tariff.

What advice can people give to get the most economical miles out of the car?

Woodstok2000

There are a few different tariffs for EVs which would help. Ovo have charge anytime where you can charge at a cheap rate any time as long as you let them schedule the sessions. Their rate is not great (14p) and it's only for the car.

You would probably be better with one of the cheap overnight tariffs which give you low cost electricity for the whole house. Most suppliers do them at around 7-9p for a period overnight. Given your relatively low usage you might be best finding the cheapest tariff for your household use and then checking what EV bolt ons are available.

Exodi

EON offers two EV tariffs:

The Next Drive Smart and the Next Drive

https://www.eonnext.com/tariffs/next-drive/smart

https://www.eonnext.com/tariffs/next-drive

The main difference is the smart tariff is slightly better, but only supports charging one vehicle among other eligibility criteria.

The good bit is it sounds like you are able to run off the battery most of the time. My wife has a PHEV with similar range and situation.

As you know, these EV tariffs provide extremely cheap electricity at night (usually between 12-6). The idea is you set your home charger to dispense electricity during this window. So you'd plug in your car when you get back for the day and it will automatically start charging at the cheap rate while you sleep.

Even though the day rate is slightly more on these tariffs, when I did the sums, it wasn't even close - the savings on an EV tariff are significant.

To use the maths for my wife's car - she has a 16.6kWh battery that she gets approximately 30 miles out of. Using the current EON Next Drive Smart off-peak rate of 8p/kWh gives 9*0.166 = £1.33 to charge her battery. As she gets 30 miles from it, that means 1.33/30 = £0.044, just over 4 pence per mile.

If I use my napkin maths for her MPG (36), convert to MPL (36/4.546=7.92) and current price of petrol from my local supermarket of 167.9p/l, I get the cost per mile at 167.9/7.92 = £0.212, or just over 21 pence per mile, nearly 5x more expensive. MPG is based journey tracking in her car with an empty battery (using MPG online was not a fair comparison are based on using a full battery).

I accept this is a bit misleading, as the comparison shouldn't be between the cost of using electric charging, and using a PHEV as an ICE vehicle, lugging round a relatively heavy battery, but I've had many ICE company cars in the past, and the fuel cost worked out to generally around 15p-ish per mile for a medium size car (obviously more the bigger the car) and this was many years ago before petrol prices spiked.

The government actually tracks this sort of thing in the advisory fuel rate: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/advisory-fuel-rates

Here you can see they estimate rough cost per mile of a petrol car to be between 14-26p/mile depending on engine size.

So all in all, an impressive saving in the cost per mile, though be aware that unfortunately the government currently intends to introduce a 1.5p/mile surcharge for PHEV and 3p/mile surcharge for EV's from 2028 (not that it changes the result). It's also worth mentioning that while the current rate is 8p/kWh (for Next Drive Smart) and 9p/kWh (for Next Drive), many are locked in for much cheaper (my electricity rate is currently 3.99p/kWh on Next Drive) which makes the equation even more absurd.

I wouldn't overthink trying to run appliances overnight to justify the tariff - an EV alone will more than justify it (though we do have a dishwasher that features a timer function that we use).

The only thing I will say (though it may be obvious) is if you do run out of electricity, basically do not charge at public charging points unless they're free of very heavily subsidised. They charge an absolute fortune and the maths goes heavily the other way, as they can often charge 90p/kWh! Which would cost about £13.30 to charge the battery in my example above, working out to £0.44 per mile… way more than just using traditional fuel.

facade

You need to do the maths on your current electricity bill.

An example EV tariff Octopus Go offers electricity in the wee small hours for 9.5p/kWh BUT all the rest of the time it is 33.7p/kWh. The current fixed tariff is 25p

Assuming you really do 20 miles every single day you will be using about 5kWh which costs 47.5p vs £1.25, saving you 77.5p a day over standard rate. (£310 a year for 8000 miles ) However, you pay 8.7p extra for daytime electricity.

In my case, I use about 10kWh a day, so if I were you I'd overpay by 87p, and save 77.5p, so I'd be 9.5p down per day- £35 a year!

I don't do anything like 8000 miles a year, more like 2000, so I can't possibly make an EV tariff pay and just charge on standard rate.

(Some people fit large storage batteries and charge them at the EV rate, then mainly use battery electricity during the day, to bring their average unit price down nearer 10p overall, but the system costs a lot of money and takes a very long time, if ever to pay back the investment)

If you have an intelligent wall charger and a car that Octopus recognise, then you can just plug it in when you get home and it will automatically charge on the cheap rate. If you are using a granny charger (all you'd need for 5kWh a day) you'd have to set a schedule in the car to charge during cheap hours.

You'd also have to load up the washer and put it on a timer, which isn't any trouble, except you can't use the drier unless you get up in the night and transfer the washing over.

Too late now and you'll have to make do with what you have got, but a full EV with 100+ miles range would probably suit you better for 20 miles a day, you'd only charge once or twice a week, I'd find charging every night a chore.

Rodders53

I have a proper EV with a decent range and was on a EV tariff with EoN and probably a similar number of miles total per annum. We can't move energy use to night due to appliance/water noise. I'm now with Octopus on a fixed rate (was 25p, now 22.09 p/kWh) - as we moved just as the Iran kerfuffle started… and Intelligent Octopus Go prices rocketed up.

EoN used to allow one to change tariffs free of charge mid term if it suits you… BUT Do your sums carefully: My calcs show my fixed rate is cheaper than using any of the EV alternatives and our day/night use of electricity…. Particularly so with this hot weather and our use of air conditioning! That will change next year when my fix runs out, no doubt.

Many of the "better" EV tariffs need specific EVSEs ('charger') and/or specific vehicles; so that the supplier can control then to switch on when energy is cheap for them. Without such, one is limited to the overnight off peak times (5, 6 or 7 hours depending on supplier).

Exodi

I keep quite detailed usage statistics for my household, including for the vehicles and was curious what the difference would be based on the current tariff rates being offered to me.

This is for 2 adults and 1 baby in a 3 bed detached house - 1x EV and 1x PHEV (but before anyone switches off, I'll split them out).

I drive ~6.7k miles per year in the EV and my wife drives ~7.1k miles per year in the PHEV (but some miles will be from petrol).

Total annual electric usage = 5907 kWh, of which 2123 kWh is peak and 3784 kWh is off-peak. Of this, 2208 kWh is the EV and 1304 kWh is the PHEV, so we can see ~93% of off-peak usage is for charging vehicles.

Current EV tariff rates offered me for eon next drive fixed v28 are 60p SC, 32.6p peak and 9p off-peak (I can't use the smart EV tariff as we have two electric vehicles). To compare, next fixed 24m v63 is 54.45p SC, and 25.61p unit rate.

Under eon next drive fixed v28, over a year I'd pay £219 in standing charges (0.60*365), £692.10 in peak usage (0.326*2123) and £340.56 in off-peak usage (0.09*3784), giving a total electricity cost of £1251.66.

Under eon next fixed 24m v63, over a year I'd pay £198.74 in standing charges (0.5445*365) and £1512.78 in overall usage (0.2561*5907), giving a total electricity cost of £1711.52, an increase of £459.86.

Now I appreciate owning two electric vehicles means I'm a better candidate for an EV tariff, so if I remove the EV out the numbers, so just include my wife's PHEV I would get total annual electric usage = 3699 kWh, of which 2123 kWh is peak and 1576 kWh is off-peak.

Under eon next drive fixed v28, over a year I'd pay £219 in standing charges (0.60*365), £692.10 in peak usage (0.326*2123) and £141.84 in off-peak usage (0.09*1576), giving a total electricity cost of £1052.94.

Under eon next fixed 24m v63, over a year I'd pay £198.74 in standing charges (0.5445*365) and £947.31 in overall usage (0.2561*3699), giving a total electricity cost of £1,146.05, an increase of £93.11

Clearly there will be a sweet spot - which depends on both how high or low your non-EV usage is and high or low your EV electricity usage.

Someone with high non-EV usage and/or low EV usage may well find it makes more sense to use a non-EV tariff. For example as mentioned above, we don't have air conditioning, which massively increases daytime usage. Similar if you don't have mains gas and use electric heating/oven/etc or have a big pond with pumps running 24/7 that can change the equation.

born_again

13.2 kWh battery. So less then 2 hours from 0 to 100% on a 7kWh wall charger, which I take it yours is.

So at 26p kWh that would be around 50p. Not that you ever would get down to zero, BMS would stop it before then.

Personally hardly worth a change to a EV tariff, which would limit your charging times. At least on variable, if you need a 2nd charge in one day. You could do it.

basill

I'm in a similar position, Wallbox installed and a PHEV doing about 9000miles. The EV point logs the amount of KWh going into the car. My electricity currently costs 19p/KWh at all times with a few hours half price on Sundays.

Comparing Ev tariffs without having to visit each providers website and search for the unit prices is a great use for AI. If you tell Gemini or your choice of assistant your mileage, tariff and domestic power usage it will compare other tarfifs and work out your break even points with or without moving your washing.

matt_drummer

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82107983#Comment_82107983

What?

13.2 kWh @ 26p per kWh is £3.43 assuming no charging losses.

matt_drummer

And I have to ask.

@ around 20 miles a day on average why on earth would you buy a PHEV when you could have just bought a full EV?

A full EV will be twice as efficient and avoid all the other PHEV issues that come with a small battery.

And then you have to get the engine serviced and all that.

The sales person really should have given you better advice in my opinion.

Aldrich22

We make a decent saving by allowing Octopus to charge the car during the day. We plug it in when we have a load we cannot shift in the day, e.g. hungry kids and need the oven. That way we get cheap rate while the car is charging and overnight for delayed washing, dishwasher etc. Up to 12 hours per day. It definitely helps that I can set the car to charge slowly, otherwise it would be full all the time. WFH helps, too.