Yes it’s cheap, but is it REALLY so easy to r un an electric car?
AS car giant Nissan is rebuked by the Advertising Standards Authority for exaggerating how quickly its Leaf electric car can be charged, TOBY WALNE takes one on the road to see for himself if battery power really does make sense.
THE number of electric cars on our roads is soaring. They now account for one in 20 new sales. Although there are 180,000 plug- in electric cars on Britain’s roads – up from just 5,000 five years ago – the number is insignificant compared with the 30 million petrol and diesel ones.
The biggest stumbling block is price. For example, you can pay an additional £10,000 to own an electric version of a new £ 20,000 Volkswagen Golf.
Yet with the cost of filling up a 55-litre petrol or diesel tank now at least £70 the thought of paying just a few pounds to run an electric car is tempting.
Living in rural Hertfordshire five miles outside Bishop’s Stortford means a reliable car is vital. Sadly, my 50-year-old Sunbeam Alpine is anything but – and drinks a gallon of petrol every 25 miles.
The latest Nissan Leaf Tekna is three times the value of my Sunbeam at almost £30,000. Yet a Government subsidy encouraging people to go green knocks £4,500 off this, though this will fall to £3,500 in November. The electric car also avoids road tax – usually £140 a year. But what really catches the eye is the cost of recharging. It is £3.50 for 160 miles of driving – 25 miles costs about 50p, compared with £6 in my Sunbeam.
The electric car also offers reliability and comfort. As if electricity was not futuristic enough, it is packed full of high-tech gadgets – it can park itself, brake using Formula One technology and self-steer down the motorway.
But where do I get the power to drive it? There are currently 8,500 petrol stations in Britain. In contrast, there are only 5,000 public electric charging locations and finding one is not always easy – and recharging can take several hours.
A charging point at home is vital. You need an off-road parking spot and about £1,000 for a charger such as the Konnect model provided by Andersen for my trial. The price includes a £500 Government Office for Low Emission Vehicles grant as an encouragement to purchase.
The charger includes a heavy duty round plug on a lead that fits neatly into one of two socket options under the bonnet and offers a full charge in six hours – ideal for overnight use. It also includes a handy app downloaded on to my phone with a timer and tells me when a car is fully topped up. Home charging using the domestic electricity supply can cost a third less than public pay-as-you-use facilities.
Pulling away for the first time is unnerving. It feels like the engine is not on, but that magic power under the bonnet has bags of get up and go.
Finding a charge point away from home is essential for a long journey so a smartphone app, such as the free Zip-Map, is a vital tool.
The closest ‘rapid’ charge point to my home is six miles away at the Birchanger service station on the M11. Only one of the four bays is free. I must download yet another free app – from Ecotricity – before helping myself to electricity and it can take money directly from my bank account. But scanning a code on my smart phone results in the receipt of a message: ‘Sorry. This pump is currently out of order.’ Electric cab driver Paul tells me that if I plug in, it currently pumps out power for free. He estimates this has saved me £5. I spend the next half hour reading a book – topping up my battery. Being impatient, the minutes seem to drag on.
A return trip to my mother in Rutland is 160 miles – and according to the guidance I have just enough electric juice to get there and back.
I am not a cautious driver and there are traffic jams on the M11 and along the A14, but I am surprised that by the time I arrive at my mother’s, the gauge tells me there is only a dozen miles of charge left. It means I used almost twice as much power as expected. After a pub lunch, using my app I find a Polar charger behind a hotel in Uppingham. It requires a contactless key to allow me to use it. Thankfully, I have one attached to my car’s keyring.
Without it I would probably have been stranded. I wave the small plastic rectangle over the charging point reader and it recognises me and gives access to electricity. But the convenience comes at a cost – £7.85 a month.
After an hour of hanging about, it gives me sufficient electricity for just 20 miles of driving. That allows me to crawl to the Peterborough Extra service station off the A1(M). Here, an Ecotricity pump charges the car to 75 per cent capacity in 45 minutes before automatically cutting me off to ensure I do not hog one of four chargers in constant demand. It gets me home with 30 miles to spare. The experience teaches me that you must carefully plan a route – ideally finding fast chargers along the way – and be prepared to sit around at service stations.
Also, I learn not to trust the car maker’s claims about how long recharging takes – a point confirmed last week by the Advertising Standards Authority.
I spend around £2,000 a year in petrol. An electric car charged mostly at home might cost £175 a year, though with my driving style £400 is more likely.
But at least an electric car is not destroying the planet? Not strictly so. Steven Day, co- f ounder of energy saving app Pure Planet, warns: ‘Most people use carbonbased electricity to charge a car. Signing up to a supplier offering renewable energy i s a way t o solve this problem.’