Should I Buy An Electric Car?
Electric vehicles (EV’s) have been around for well over a decade. Infact, if you’re going to be geeky about it, the first tested EV made it to the roads of Paris in 1881, invented by Gustave Trouve. OK, it was basic by today’s standards and wasn’t exactly equipped with any creature comforts, but it did have a rechargeable lead-acid battery.
By Jacques CATTELIN - http://academie-de-touraine.com/Tome_25_files/067-092.pdf (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52267675
As far as we are concerned, the first mainstream vehicle to have a motor driven by a rechargeable battery was the Toyota Prius, which was introduced in 1997 would you believe it! Whilst there were a number of models before it (the GM EV1 and the Tesla Roadster to name but a few), the Nissan Leaf, introduced in 2010 was probably the first mainstream fully EV that we’re all familiar with.
Living With An Electric Car
I have had an Audi Etron (55 Sportback) for just under three years. My partner and I have leased this and I will get on to why that has been the best deal for us in a bit. For now though, here are the main positives and negatives that I have found living with an EV.
Positives
- Whilst the Audi is not the most efficient EV, given that it weighs in at a hefty 2,500kg, it is still less costly to run than your average diesel car, IF (and this is a big IF), you charge it at home! I have averaged 2.6miles per KW and this has cost me around £1,970 per year to charge as opposed to £2,250 per year if I had a diesel car that averaged 50mpg.
- It’s really quiet and easy to drive and a dream on long motorway journeys. Driving an electric car is very similar to driving an automatic in my experience. It does make a noise when going slowly for safety reasons, although I have found myself catching people by surprise when driving past them slowly on my street.
- It’s pretty quick. Not that I’m an advocate for breaking speed limits, but you’ll beat the average boy/girl racer off the lights, which is quite satisfying it you like that kind of thing. Even the 2,500kg Etron will get to 60mph in 5.5sec in launch mode!
- I feel good that I am doing my small part to save the planet. I have done nearly 50,000 miles in mine and not a sniff of Carbon dioxide or Carbon Monoxide has been emitted
- Servicing: Mine car is a lease car, so I don’t need to worry about this anyway, however if I did have to service it, the cost of this is far less than a petrol / diesel car, simply because there is no engine, and therefore far fewer moving parts. NOTE, this wouldn’t be applicable for Hybrid cars!
Negatives
- The range! You have probably heard the expression “range anxiety”. You need to plan any journeys longer than say 100 miles (on the basis that you will need to drive 100 miles to get home again, so 200 miles in total). The Etron can do up to 270 miles on a full charge in the Summer and if you drive at 60mph on the motorway, effectively Hypermiling, however more realistic range is around 230 miles, depending on how you drive.
- The Winter! Yes you heard that right. Not just the winter though, any adverse weather really, which if you live in the UK like me, is pretty much 95% of the time! I would see a range drop of at least 20%, particularly in the Winter, so not only does it cost you more to run in the winter, but you need to plan long journeys more carefully too. The 2.6miles / KW that I mentioned earlier is a yearly average. In the summer I can get upwards of 3.0miles / KW, however in the winter, try as I might, it is generally down at around 2.4miles / KW.
- Charging infrastructure and prices: The UK infrastructure at least, whilst it has improved a lot over the last 3 years, it is still not where it needs to be. I drive the M4 corridor a lot and actually this is not a bad route for service station chargers. If you happen to venture up the M5/M6 corridor though it is horrendous. The fastest chargers I have found were 50KW, which means me waiting for over an hour to get enough charge to drive home. On top of that you’re looking at around 70-90p per KW, which makes it more expensive to run than an average diesel car.
- Tyres: EV’s are heavy! Not just my Etron, but all of them! They will therefore get through tyres a bit quicker than your standard petrol / diesel car. You may also find that you can’t fit standard tyres, as given the weight of the vehicle, it needs special tyres! Again, I have leased mine, so I don’t need to worry about this, but something to consider!
- Used values: At the time of writing this, we’re in a bit of a perfect storm with regards to EV’s. The UK government has delayed the ban of pure petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, however they have not changed the stringent targets that EV car makers must meet, meaning that they still need to meet 2030 targets. This means that EV car makers are having to increase the numbers of EV’s they are producing year on year to meet those targets. Meanwhile, the numbers of EV’s being bought appears to have hit a peak and is now showing signs of dropping a little. The increase in production and drop in sales is therefore saturating the market and there are stories of stockpiles of brand new EV’s that manufacturers can’t shift. This has a massive knock on effect on second hand prices.
Should I buy an Electric car??
Well, in my opinion, at the moment, I would not buy an electric car. That’s not to say I wouldn’t have one again when my current lease runs out, but leasing for me at least is the way to go.
My Etron has cost me around £650 per month on a lease, which is a good deal when you take into account that I don’t pay for anything else other than to charge it. A set of tyres on this car will set you back £1,000, insurance is expensive on EV’s and would conservatively be in excess of £1,000 (even me in my 40’s with no points on my license and 9+ years NCB) so that on it’s own is enough to think about it!
The biggest reason why I wouldn’t buy one at the moment though is the depreciation. My Etron is 3 years old with around 50k miles and is worth about £28k as I write this. List price of the latest Q8 Etron is around £100k. If I had bought this car and for example put a £20k deposit down, then paid £650 per month for the last 3 years, I would have paid off a total of £43,400. In other words, I would need to sell this car for £66,600 to be free of my finance agreement. Given that it is worth £28k, I would be nearly £40k out of pocket.
I’ll let you make your own mind up though. If you’re in it for the long haul and intend to keep your EV for 10 years then it may be worth it. For me though, until the technology improves and second hand prices start to stabilise, I’ll be sticking with a lease!
