Sara and I sold our old Skoda and Ford and went electric last year. We now drive a Tesla Model 3 LR and Renault Zoe. They are both a better drive, cheaper overall and of course have a much lower carbon footprint than our old cars. We don’t own either and instead lease them through my company’s salary sacrifice scheme. These allows me to offset the lease payments against my income tax.  Any company (I think) can set up a salary sacrifice scheme for zero cost and these give employees access to reduced price car lease schemes with tax benefits for electric cars. 

 

The Tesla says its does just over 300 miles and the Zoe says just over 200. The speed u go makes a huge difference to the range.  I’ve never tried, but my guess is that the Tes would go over 300 miles if driven at a steady 30 MPH and less than 200 if driven at over 70MPH in the winter. In practice we find that the Tesla does about 20% less than that, while the Zoe does do about 200.  The difference may be that we drive the Tesla faster and accelerate more rapidly than we do with the Zoe.

 

You can charge an electric car using a 3 PIN plug, but that is very slow (about 2.5/KWH or about 9 miles per hour). So we installed a smart charger, which allows for faster charging (7.5 KWH/27 miles per hour) and enables us to use its smart charging features. A smart charger costs about £1k to buy and install, but you can get a government grant of £350. 

 

We drive about 30,000 miles a year.  That cost us about £6,000 in petrol.  The electricity costs us just over £375 a year.  We pay 13.8p/KWH for our electricity through the day, but only 5p/KWH between 00.30 and 04.30 with Octopus Go. Using the smart charger app (or the car app), we generally only charge between 00.30-4.30 thus adding 100miles overnight.  If I only ever charged during these hours my annual electricity cost would be £375 per year: (Approx. 100miles=25KWH = £1.25.  Therefore 30,000miles = £375). In practice we sometimes need more miles and the Tes uses more electricity than the Zoe, so my annual cost is probably about £500. Leasing the electric cars is much cheaper than owning the petrol ones, when all the costs are considered.

 

We have never used a public charging point as we’ve never driven over 300 miles in a day. If we did they can cost 30p/KWH or more, but can charge at much more rapid rates. 150KWH chargers add about 100miles every 10 minutes (£7.50) and even more rapid chargers are and will become available.

 

Going forward you will be able to use your car battery in a more versatile way, lowering your costs, helping to balance the grid and help in the climate change fight. For example, vehicle to grid technologies will allow your energy supplier to take energy from your battery and supply power to the grid when demand is strongest and electricity is at its most expensive (and least green).  These virtual power plants and the ability to shift demand from peak times to non-peak times and whenever the sun shines/wind blows are a key part of the energy transition and will save you money.

 

 

Rupert Watson

 

 

30.06.2021