Potential barriers to electric car ownership are decreasing daily
Your reader who wrote that he was a fan of electric cars but then worried that take-up would be low was incorrect on a number of assumptions.
You can get new electric cars for less the £20,000 now and second-hand for half that – his £45k statement is based on Tesla prices. Also, you do not need to spend £800 on a home charging point – I plug mine into an ordinary three-pin socket and charge overnight, I only need to do it once a week and with overnight tariffs for charging at 5p/kW, you can get a ‘full tank’ for £3.
I can also charge on the street – there are three lamp posts that have been upgraded to allow EV charging within 300m of my house or I can go to Tesco and charge there for free while I shop.
Repair costs are much lower than ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles as there are fewer moving parts – MG UK have schemes which cover all maintenance charges for their EVs starting at £5 a month and others are similar. For an ICE vehicle, that would not cover the cost of oil! It is for these reasons that one in four new cars in the UK were EVs at the end of 2020.
Can the national grid take it? We average 25-30Gw usage throughout the day but have capacity to produce 40Gw at peak
– so that leaves 15Gw spare for off-peak charging without adding to our generation capabilities. Recent announcements confirm that we plan to double our capacity in the years ahead, we have to if we are to get rid of all our gas boilers – so there is no need to worry, and next time you replace your car, test drive an electric one. You will be surprised how much easier to drive and nicer to be in than ICE vehicles they are.
Martin Silman Priory Crescent, Portsmouth