Tell us about your EV journey

Now on our second EV and would never go back to ICE. Had lots of niggles with the first car, a Peugeot e208, which was let down by the Stellantis software and supply chain delays for spares. Four years on we went for a Fiat 600e which is fun to drive but, as it’s another Stellantis brand, the software could be better. 
 The most annoying aspect is the sheer profusion of apps for public charging and the reality is that lack of standardisation means that it is worth searching for a brand that works for you and try to use it whenever practical. Our range is around 230 miles, less in winter, and we have never had any problems even on longer journeys. At home we use OVO Charge on the basic plan and normally the 700 “free” miles is more than adequate. We went for a Hypervolt 3 home charger because this cope with flexible tariffs and has excellent support should anything go wrong. 
To sum up - no regrets and despite the naysayers, it is the future.

In 2019, we bought a Nissan Leaf, which had a 100-mile range at the time (down to about 78 now), as a first foray into EVs. We were lucky enough to get on OVO’s V2G trial, and that has been great. It’s a CHADMEO adapter, which is a bit old school now. We’ve recently bought a second EV, a Renault Megane E-tech (range about 230 miles), simply because the Leaf’s range is a bit too low now for anything that really isn’t local. The Leaf will stay with us until it packs up – it’s still great for short journeys. I, too, would never go back to ICE now. The issue has been that we’ve needed to install a second charger (CSS2) as the V2G won’t charge the Megane. Frustratingly, despite buying the Hypervolt charger through OVO, they killed their discounted EV charging and introduced plans that just didn’t suit us. Luckily, we have JOLT charging around us, which is way cheaper than OVO, so my new Hypervolt charger has had literally no use to date. The biggest issue with EVs is always going to be range anxiety – I recently did a round trip from London to Birmingham in the Megane and had to recharge before returning home. Pretty easy to do, although it has been mentioned, sometimes involves downloading apps (not sure why they can’t just be tapped and charged). Cost me £15, which I would say would have been roughly the same as the petrol cost (may be a bit cheaper) and took 30 mins to go from 20-80% charge. All very reasonable. If you have a driveway, I would wholly recommend moving to EV.

Always had a ICE car but my last one a Ford Kuga was approaching it’s wet belt(what the f--k were you thinking ford) replacement & I wasn’t going to cough up £1500 for that!! After doing my research I plumped for a 6 mth old Skoda Enyaq 85! What a great car it’s proved to be! The usual software niggles & 12v battery issues that all EV’s seem to get but nothing major so far! If you can charge at home it really is a no brainer running an EV cost wise! Saying that OVO’s doubling of their EV rate wasn’t good business but at the moment I’m staying with them as it means I don’t need to change my charging point! Overall if you don’t do too many miles & can avoid public chargers it really is the way to go!

We bought our Kia EV6 around 10 months ago and, overall, the experience has been extremely positive.

One of the biggest surprises has been just how quickly owning an EV becomes normal. The initial concerns around charging and range disappeared fairly quickly once we established a routine. Most charging is now simply done at home overnight, which is far more convenient than regular petrol station visits.

The EV6 itself has been excellent to live with. It is quiet, comfortable, very quick when needed, and surprisingly relaxing on longer journeys. The technology took a little getting used to initially, but after a few weeks it all became second nature.

For anyone considering their first EV, my biggest advice would be:

• Think carefully about how and where you will charge most often

• Research electricity tariffs before buying, as off peak charging can make running costs very low

• Be realistic about your actual daily mileage rather than occasional long trips

• Test drive several EVs because they all feel quite different

One thing I did not fully appreciate before ownership was how much the charging network and home energy setup influence the overall experience. Having a good home charger and suitable tariff makes a huge difference.

From an environmental perspective, it also feels positive knowing everyday driving has a lower impact, especially for shorter local journeys.

The transition to EV ownership was far easier than expected, and I would not go back to a petrol or diesel car for daily use now.

I've been looking at EV infrastructure and cars for several years. Having had a full hybrid Lexus since 2016 I was mildly taken with electric only drive. When I was offered a test drive of their UX full electric I thought why not. Well the drive was amazing. Now this car is not state of the art by modern standards but the smooth, quiet and fast performance convinced me that the full electric drive was my thing.

Some months later and I have gone for a Ford Capri. Now don't laugh. I know anyone over 50 will remember the original Capri. It was the first car I drove as a 15 year old in NEW ZEALAND.. Driving age was 15 then. Well this modern Capri is nothing like that. State of the art technology and in the premium speck it ticks all the boxes.

As for advise. The bigger the battery, the better. Even if  you only do local hops it saves time when charging. If you do longer journeys, you have the capacity for that. Ideally a range of 300 miles is adequate. Who drives for more than 300 miles without a break?

Economically the ideal way to change is at home. The OVO charge EV tariff is brilliant. I've got charge anytime but the monthly may suit those with more regular usage. Don't be fooled by super low charging rates. There is probably a catch. The OVO package is very simple and doesn't effect your normal domestic tariff. Important to install a compatible charger by the way. Check before installing. I have a Myenergy Zappi.

As for public charging I can say the infrastructure has come on leaps and bounds. The cars and apps make it very easy to find chargers. They are everywhere and lots are 50 plus kw/h. Sadly the cost at charging at these is obscene. 20 vat for a start but only use if you are desperate.

What I will say is I couldn't go back to ICE. Once you get your head around fueling..... sorry charging, it becomes quite normal. Going to the fuel station to fill the cans for the mower seems quite strange now!!

Take a test drive in a EV. Believe me you'll be taken.

My previous car was a diesel Ford Focus 1.8 Sport. It was 16 years old with over 70,000 miles on the clock. Although it had been a reliable car, in its later years the running and servicing costs were constantly increasing. Also, the car was generally feeling a bit tired, and it was obviously becoming time to upgrade.

As a retired electronics engineer I was interested in owning an EV, but like most potential EV drivers I had many questions. The main problem is the enormous amount of misinformation and anti-EV rhetoric you find online, and attempting to sort fact from fiction can be somewhat challenging.

Coming from an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle with a predicted range of 550 miles, it’s normal to expect the same sort of range when you move to an EV. It soon became clear that there were no vehicles available with that sort of range, and wanting to stay below the luxury car tax level would be challenging. In reality a range close to 300 miles is perfectly OK, even on a long journey. Nobody ever drives 500 miles without taking a break. At a constant 70 mph, a distance of 500 miles would take over 7 hours.

To cut a long story short, after watching endless car reviews and attending some EV events, I decided to buy a brand new Niro EV 3 from a local Kia dealership. There are 3 models of Niro EV available. The 2 version lacks many features, and is often referred to as the poverty version (apologies to any Niro EV 2 owners). The 4 version has additional features that I wasn’t really interested in, except perhaps the sun roof. The 3 version is known as the Goldilocks version, and its only option was whether to have a heat pump. In the UK, with our generally mild temperatures, the time for the heat pump to pay for itself would have been so long that it was better to not have it, especially as it would have cost about £950 more and is just one more moving part to go wrong. The Niro EV 3 has a WLTP range of 285 miles, but in the real world the average range is 240 miles. In the summer I have seen 286 miles, but in the winter it can drop closer to 200 miles. The battery pack has a nominal capacity of 64.8kWh. For the record I always drive in NORMAL mode using iPedal with the climate control set to Auto and a temperature of 21 degrees C, and adaptive cruise control on the motorway.

One of the most important things to consider is whether you have a driveway or a dedicated parking space, as charging at home on an EV tariff is the cheapest way to refuel (to use an outdated term). There may also be the option of on-street charging using a gulley system or something similar, but this can be fraught with problems over gaining permission from the local council, and having the right to park outside your own house. If I didn’t have my own driveway I would most likely have opted for a hybrid car.

Once you start driving an EV, you soon realise that driving becomes much more relaxing. With the instant torque from zero you no longer have to judge whether your ICE car can accelerate fast enough to nip into that gap in the traffic. The drive is also smooth and quiet with no more gear changes. One thing you won’t miss is the horrid smell of exhaust fumes.

Is there a negative side? Most of the time ... no.

In my case I charge at home more than 95% of the time. A few times a year I make a journey of about 200 miles up to Yorkshire, but am able to charge at my destination, so no charging required on the way. Even in the depths of winter, with a diversion on the journey to visit friends, popping the car on a public charger for a few minutes during a toilet break is no hardship. Once a year I go over to East Anglia where I’m not able to charge on an EV tariff, and I usually top up at an open-to-all Tesla charger on the way while we take a lunch break. These are super simple to use. I also like to use MFG chargers.

There is a lot of negative talk around about range anxiety and charging anxiety. Honestly, once you follow the EV mantra of ABC (always be charging) then you won’t have a problem. Range anxiety only occurs when you let the charge level drop close to zero. There really is no excuse for that to ever happen. A widely recommended guideline is to take a break at least every 2 hours of driving, or roughly every 100–150 miles depending on conditions. Just make sure that you take a break where there’s a public charging station. Problem solved.

Charging anxiety can happen when you arrive at a public charging station to find that all the chargers are in use, not operational, or some kind person has cut the cables. On the rare occasion that I’ve arrived to find all the chargers occupied or out of order, I’ve used the Kia navigation system to redirect me to a different nearby charger, which is usually only a couple of miles away. It’s actually amazing just how many chargers there are nowadays. Once I did wait at a Tesla supercharger station for someone to leave, but that only took a few minutes and was no longer than has happened at the fuel pumps in the past.

Personally I would hate to have to go back to an ICE vehicle.

We are also a 2 EV household. My wife recently traded in her 23 year old BMW Mini Cooper with nearly 120,000 miles on the clock for a 2021 Renault Zoe ZE50 (52 kWh battery) with less than 14,500 miles on the clock. She’s eventually got used to not trying to change gear! Considering that she says she doesn’t like driving, she goes out in it an awful lot. Like my old Ford Focus, the Mini was starting to look tired even though it was still going strong, although the air conditioning wasn’t working (despite having been re-gassed) and the rear windscreen wiper only worked when it felt like it.

My home charger is an Indra Smart Pro Gen2 which is a compatible charger with OVO Charge Anytime. Having a supported charger rather a supported car is so much easier. I swapped out my Pod Point Solo 3 for the Indra, and it was worth every penny.

Finally, I recently purchased a battery powered mulching mower, as the only reason I was having to go to the local garage was to to buy petrol for the mower.

It started with an EV and ended up with so much more

Get comfortable it’s a long read but I had no idea it would take me to where we got to.

Summer 2020 - COVID / Eat Out To Help Out - I’ve discussed with my family about getting an EV, not that it matters much to them as they’ve all left home, and said that Jenny and I were getting one that year but it didn’t work out that way. Wanted a Renault Zoe ZE40 with and owned battery but too expensive for our budget that year.

July 2021- Found a ZE40 within our budget (£16k) and bought it. The test drive was amazing. So much better than our ageing Ford Fiesta. Can’t go wrong with electricity at 15p a unit. September came and the fuel crisis started over the (perceived) shortage of delivery drivers. Felt very fortunate to be bypassing all the queues at filling station and the empty stations with no fuel.

2022 – Energy Crisis – No longer on 15p a unit but still significantly cheaper than petrol or diesel. Time to grit our teeth a bit. Not going back to petrol. It drives like a dream. I’ve monitored the SpeakEV forum which has helped out considerably with choosing the right car and getting to understand EV tariffs and also Agile Octopus and Time Of Use tariff where the unit rate varies each half hour.

2023 – Another 10,000 miles of trouble free motoring and increasingly cheaper electricity. Looking on the SpeakEV forum I’m seeing all sorts of good, environmentally friendly ideas like heat pumps because after ditching petrol I’m now beginning to wonder if I can’t reduce my gas usage for heating and hot water which is about 10,000kWh a year. Getting an EV is making me question all my fossil fuel use. We look at getting an Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) but the quote came in at £16,000. There is also solar power and a home battery.

2024 – I’ve discarded the solar idea but I’ve found a whole load of Agile Octopus data going back to 2018  and by crunching the numbers (it’s one of the things I do) it’s obvious that I can benefit from solar and wind renewables without having to get them myself. There is also an alternative to ASHP called an Air To Air Heat Pump (A2AHP) and they are much cheaper. I can install a 3.5kW unit myself for £800. Sorry - we are so off the EV track at this point. The gas boiler is on its last legs so instead of having an ASHP I’ve gone for replacing my boiler to use as a top up for heating and installing the 3.5kW A2AHP. To stop using the gas for heating the hot water I’ve got an immersion heater in my new hot water tank. I’ve also jumped to Agile Octopus. OVO have served me well over the past decade, thank you everyone, but I need a ToU tariff.

2025 – A year of monitoring. The EV is saving 900 litres of petrol and my average cost for the Zoe is 3.3p/mile compared with 14p/mile (now about 19p/mile) for the car I would have got instead (Skoda Fabia). The A2AHP drops my heating gas from 10,000kWh to 900kWh and my immersion heater from 1,500kWh to nothing. Altogether, compared with the Standard Variable Rate I’m saving about £700 a year. My estimate (which I thought was over optimistic) was £550 per year. We still have a gas hob.

2026 – The Zoe is getting a bit old now at just over 50,000 miles. Its one failure was the heat pump at £1,300 which was paid for by an extended warranty. What I loved was its ability to clear the windscreen of frost remotely and get into a warm car even at -9C. My neighbours are still scraping theirs. Not been in a petrol station for nearly five years and now we have another fuel crisis. We get a 2024 Cupra Born V2 e-boost. It drives like a spaceship, or rather, it does most of the driving and I just change the driving mode depending on traffic conditions. The one thing I was always concerned about in 2021 was whether Jenny would be able to adapt to the Zoe (and the charging) and she was keen to continue using the Fiesta and just treat the Zoe it as my toy. Three days later and I was left with the Fiesta and as it didn’t get used for two weeks we sold it.

As for electricity prices, these are generally going up but my Agile prices are more or less the same or dropping due to increased renewables dropping the wholesale price they are based on. My last YTD saved me £850 relative to the SVT (admittedly the most expensive rate – generally) and we have nights or afternoon with zero or even negative rates due to an excess of renewables.

What did we learn?

Without a doubt getting an EV in 2021 was the right time in terms of what was available and also for making us more environmentally aware to take the other steps. It was strange getting to grips with charging rather than refuelling but we never got stranded mainly because we started planning the journey more with a break and a bit of charging.

You don’t have to do a ‘Big Bang’ and change everything at once. In fact, changing one thing (getting the EV) and then thinking about the next move (tariff, heat pump, immersion heater) was a good choice. We didn’t feel the need to get solar or a home battery. Solar has a good business case but you need to think carefully about the economics of a battery.

The A2AHP has been brilliant even though it is undersized for the house it takes 90% of the heating load and works well with Agile. To be clear we also have a wood burning stove but we have cut that back to half of what we used before. It bridges the heating gap during the 4-7pm Agile peak rates.

We are never going back to a fossil fuelled car, or heating the house just with gas or heating hot water with gas.

Peter

Update: I thought I would add a comment about range anxiety. Or at least the lack of that specific issue. It is perhaps strange to see the level on the battery symbol dropping much faster than the fuel guage on a car. The 170 mile range on a Zoe being much smaller than the 700 mile range on an earlier Peugeot 405 but what I learned was I never needed that range with the 405. The Born has a 240 mile range which makes for less outside charging but hardly noticeable. With the Zoe it was at least 95% home charging. With the Born it's higher than that. We just plan a stop where there is charging. If it's a holiday trip we buy the holiday food, get a coffee and charge the car. As a preference we choose places with destination charging but it's not a deal breaker if it doesn't have that. 

I’ve had EVs for around nine years now. My first was an Ionic which I kept for over five years, but, whie it was an amazing car, the range was only 130 miles, not the 174 that was promised when it was sold. I now drive an ID3, again a wonderful drive with outstanding technology. This time, the range is 240 miles, so much better for travelling the occasional longer distances.

While I do accept that a chargeable hybrid might have avoided the concerns of running out of electricity, I’m very happy with what I have. I’m thinking that this may be my last car - I’m 77 - as I can’t see me wanting to drive much into my eighties. If I were to swap the existing one for a replacement, I might be tempted to get an MG, just as my daughter has.

​@HangNail999 You caught the very essence of driving an EV and what I found from the first test drive. It’s what driving should have been from the beginning but the choice of an ICE means smell, noise, clutch, gears or the very least an annoying automatic transmission which I never loved on cars.

Peter