Why Buy an Electric Car?

People are asking why should I buy an electric car? every day. They’re looking for insights into:

  • What was your decision making process to buying one?
  • Did it add up economically to buy an electric vehicle as opposed to hybrid or low carbon?
  • How did the vehicle run for you?

People need to know whether electric vehicles are reliable and cost effective over the lifetime of vehicle use, and what the alternatives are. You can also see the experiences of people using electric vehicles as there is some cross-over.

The Energy Saving Trust provides quite useful info regarding this matter:
‘A full charge in a pure electric vehicle will give a typical range of over 100 miles and will cost approximately £4 to £6 if charging at home, and £8 to £10 if using public chargepoints. Driving 100 miles in a petrol or diesel car will cost around £13 to £16 in fuel, which can be two to three times more than the cost of charging the electric car…’ (https://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/transport/electric-vehicles)

There’s also a maintenance saving - pure (battery) electric vehicles (BEVs) have a far lower number of parts than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Over 4 years/60,000 miles BEVs save £367.29 - £1,234.60 compared with their ICE equivalents (for more information, please see: https://www.goultralow.com/choosing/electric-car-service-and-maintenance/).

In addition, you don’t have to pay road tax on pure electric vehicles (BEVs) (see: https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables).

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Thanks @Alex_Beckett, really useful. So if you drove 10,000 miles a year, you’d save around £800 driving electric… not bad… And around £100 a year in servicing…

Would be interesting to hear whether this had working well for EV car owners practically.

The ultimate solution is to have solar PV, battery storage, and an electric vehicle (EV) charge point (CP) installed at your home. There are estimates that this could make you 75% less reliant on the grid!

Thought I’d mention that I’ve found this really useful EV forum which has classifieds in it and some help around becoming an electric vehicle car owner. It’s a bit slow because of all the advertising and people on there are mostly car owners, so a little bit difficult to navigate… But it would be remiss of me not to share…

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5 posts were split to a new topic: Experiences of using electric cars

You don’t have to buy one. Just use an electric :zap: vehicle, whether it be possible to hire one, rent one, lease one, borrow/test one, car share with someone else. Electric buses & commercial vehicles need to be implemented as a priority, due to higher mileage per annum relative to personal ownership modelling. The ULEV will become ZEZ in future, so why not preemptively appease your conscience and make the sensible choice?

There is a new website due to be launched in August called Zoom. It is a car share site for EVS. I will post more when I know the details

I’m a gadget geek. This was part of the reason we bought an electric car. Other key reasons were cost savings on running costs (Not so much of a saving for the initial purchase). In my mind currently it is a bit like the early stages of home computers. Initially they are a bit “techie” and you have to learn a fair amount about what makes them tick. Over time they are becoming easier to get to grips with. I’ve seen my music collection go from records, to cassettes, to CD’s, to .mp3’s, and currently I have ditched all those formats and use Spotify. I see electric vehicles as the next iteration of transport. Soon we will have robo-taxis. But until that happens I’ll enjoy the instant responsiveness of my Hyundai Ioniq :heart_eyes:.

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wow that’s great :slight_smile:

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I bought my BEV knowing that although it may cost a bit more to buy, it would save me money in the long term due to the cheeper energy.
Also the driving experience was just amazing. I used to drive for wark in and around Liverpool. city driving of stop start is so much easier in an elecrtric car. auto gearbox and auto handbrakes make it a doddle for city driving.
I can get free charging when I visit scotland and many National Trust places in England.
Oh and it makes no tailpipe polution.

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