Time to get plugged in to electric cars... and get moving
When it comes to distance, EVs give big bang for your buck compared to petrol, diesel or public transport
It’s definitely time to switch to an electric car. An electric vehicle (EV) will travel almost double the distance of a petrol or diesel car with a fiver’s worth of fuel, a study claims. And if you spend the same amount on a bus or train ticket, you’ll only travel a fifth of the mileage covered.
Electric power allows drivers to travel an extra 40 miles (64km) more than the closest competing transport type, according to new research by Carwow.
The findings also expose how pricey public transport is in Dublin compared to the UK.
A fiver sterling will get you 25 miles of bus transport in London – but only 14.5 miles in Dublin. (Although Edinburgh also performed poorly on 10.6 miles.)
The same outlay gets you 20 miles of train travel in the English capital, but only 14 miles in Dublin.
However, the main finding of the car-selling website’s research was the cost-per-mile performance of an average electric model on sale today, with one-in-five motorists thinking they’re pricier to run than other vehicle types.
To conduct the study, it used local electricity prices in Ireland and the UK to work out the price per kilowatt hour to charge a VW e-Golf’s batteries and then calculated the distance it could run before the battery went flat.
The bad news is that Dublin is on a par with pricey London for electricity with a range of 102 miles compared to 104 in Edinburgh.
Our petrol cars would travel a mile-and-a-half more, and diesel cars would travel two miles more, than their UK counterparts due in part to slightly cheaper fuel here.
But our public transport costs are woeful in comparison to London.
The car review website also worked out which electric cars are the most economical – with some surprising results.
The 2019 first edition Kia e-Niro and the 65kW Renault Zoe, which has been around since 2012, did 33.1 miles per (sterling) pound (mpp) of electricity you charge them up with. The standard range version of Tesla’s much-hyped Model 3 came in third place, and was found to do 32.3mpp.
By comparison, the most economical version of best-selling non-EV car the Ford Fiesta was found to do just 9.3mpp, making it potentially almost four times more expensive to run.
Many electric cars are pricier than their petrol or diesel rivals to buy despite a €5,000 Government grant on each one – and they can be more expensive to insure. The most popular in Ireland is the Nissan Leaf, which costs from €30k, while the allelectric Hyundai Kona will set you back €38,630 (compared to €21,495 for a petrol version).
Against that, motor tax is €120 a year, there is no Benefit-inKind tax on company cars while the self-employed can write off 100% of the cost in year one.
Range anxiety is another quibble but range is going up all the time. The Hyundai Kona electric has just been crowned the No.1 product of the year by consumer watchdog magazine
Which? with a ‘real’ (i.e. independently tested) range of 233 miles and a score of 76% in its tough assessment tests.
The magazine says where it ‘really impresses is driving range. Despite claims made by their respective makers, mainstream EVs such as the Nissan Leaf (69%) and VW e-golf (75%) manage only 124 miles on a full charge in our assessments’.
‘The Kona Electric isn’t just an excellent and affordable EV, it’s an excellent car full stop. That’s what makes it a game changer and our pick as the product of 2019,’ says Which?