Steph’s EV adventure (Part 1) 🤔🚗
Hi, I’m Steph and I’m part of the team at The Electric Car Scheme.
I’m about to make THE jump into the world of EVs and wanted to share my journey to help others in the same position.
I live with my husband and our labradoodle in a ground floor flat in north-west London. Like many Londoners, we have been car-free for many years. We only decided to buy a secondhand car in 2021, partly prompted by Covid, after finding ourselves wanting to spend more of our weekends exploring the nature surrounding London and to easily head off on driving holidays within the UK.
While we have enjoyed having a car (and the additional freedom) this past year, we have also found it to be an increasingly expensive transport option with increasing petrol and parking costs.
Working at The Electric Car Scheme, I am well aware of the fantastic benefits of EVs: cost efficient, low emission, smooth and silent drive, reduced noise pollution and lower running costs… We’d actually originally hoped to buy a second hand EV when we first started looking at pre-owned cars in 2021 - but the options were very limited and so we ultimately purchased a second hand petrol car.
However, as we have approached the renewal date for our car registration and parking, we have found ourselves seriously thinking about making THE jump. As such, we’ve spent the last month thinking through the following questions to determine if an EV is the right choice for us:
Does an EV fit with how we like to travel?
Is a lease or subscription EV the right choice?
Where can we park and charge the EV?
Will an EV end up cheaper to run?
How do we choose the right EV for us?
Does an EV fit with how we like to travel?
The majority of our car travel is city driving (30 minutes or less) or short trips of 1-2 hours. We knew that an EV is ideal for this type of driving – so we were mainly nervous about how an EV would work with longer trips of 2 or more hours. In the past year alone we’ve driven to Cornwall, the Lakes, Scotland and Northern Ireland and so it was important for us that we weren’t limited by the EV’s battery. I don’t think we were alone in having ‘range anxiety’ about Electric cars!
To better understand the reality of long-distance driving with an EV, we found it really helpful to look at charger maps (e.g. Google, Zap Map, Shell) and see where chargers are located throughout the UK. We also spoke to friends and colleagues about their experiences (my colleague Gaurav wrote about his experience driving to France) and we watched a few YouTube videos covering specific routes that we knew we’d want to take (e.g. to Scotland).
After this research, our main takeaway has been that planning a roadside charge is really not that different to planning a petrol stop…we just don’t realise how we factor in petrol (and food!) stops into our travel without realising. Plus, the built-in satnav functionality in EVs (along with the various apps) seems to make it very easy to find charge points en route while planning a trip. We also recognise that the EV charging network is constantly improving and the number of chargers will only increase with the growing investment in this space as more EVs hit the road.
On a more realistic level, we also realised that with a dog (and a baby on the way) it was too ambitious of us to think about driving 4 or 5 hours without stopping. As such, stopping every couple of hours for a charge wouldn’t actually be an inconvenience.
Is a lease or subscription EV the right choice?
This was an easy choice, as our company car scheme only offers subscription vehicles (as we’ve been trading for less than 2 years). However, we didn’t feel that we were missing out as the subscription model has a number of perks for first time EV-drivers like ourselves, with charge cards included in the package (along with insurance, service and maintenance).
Where can we park and charge an EV?
Living in central London, we only have access to street parking and therefore knew that home charging might not be the most suitable option for us. However, after looking on Zap Map and Google we saw that we had a number (and variety) of street charging stations near us and that we had a lot of readily accessible options for charging an EV near us as necessary. We also saw that we could register as an EV driver with the borough and request additional charge points near us.
Once we started looking for public chargers, we actually started to notice them everywhere! We found some public chargers near our favourite local park and in the car park of a local supermarket, and each will provide a hassle-free charging option without requiring us to change our routine.
Will an EV end up cheaper to run?
Our initial calculations suggested that even the basic ‘ownership’ costs of an EV would be cheaper than our previous car – annual parking for an EV in our borough is c. £45/year, whereas the previous year we’d paid c. £500 to park our car. With a subscription EV, we also didn’t have to worry about upfront car registration or MOT costs as these were included in our package.
As to running costs, we expected to pay c. £40/month to charge an EV (although, most of that cost would hopefully be covered by the charge cards provided with our subscription). In comparison, we were currently averaging £80/month in petrol.
How do we choose the right EV for us?
The final hurdle was finding the right car for us. Working in this space, I was very familiar with the supply chain issues that the car industry is facing and the growing demand for EVs. However, despite that, we still had a wide variety of EVs to choose from (all with delivery in the coming weeks!). Our EV specialist team is incredibly knowledgeable and have offered lots of helpful guidance as to the pros and cons of different EVs and what might suit us best. After making a shortlist of 3 cars, we then watched some YouTube reviews of these cars and found that we were quite easily able to decide on an EV – all without even having to go into a car dealer!
What next?
After going through this process, we’ve decided to make the jump and go electric! I’ll also be sharing our experience adjusting to the first month in an EV – so stay tuned.
To find out how you can salary sacrifice an electric car, book into a group session to talk with one of our specialists or check out or salary sacrifice calculator.
