The problems with an electric car

I reproduce today the views of an EV car owner sent to me recently. He agreed I could  share this with you. As it reveals this is someone who bought into the green  idea and wanted the EV to work for him. Experience was very disappointing. I have shortened and anonymised it:

“Some 5 months ago I was in a position to change my Petrol vehicle (Peugeot 3008) for an electric one. Unfortunately the 3008 has only just been released as a Hybrid and the full EV is not due until later next year (2024). As a result of this I was obliged to go to the E2008 which is a smaller vehicle. Despite this the E2008 was considerably more expensive than the petrol 3008.

The cost of a home charger was nearly £1000 extra to have installed. Even the domestic “granny” charger was another £250 to charge at home until a home charger could be installed.

I try to have “green thoughts” about the environment where possible and use Solar Panels and have recently installed a Combi Boiler.

However after using the Electric car for 5 months I have reverted back to a petrol driven model due to the following reasons.

My wife and I had range anxiety. Most manufacturers quote a range of in excess 200 miles. In practice the best I could get was about 150 miles in fair weather. With the recent cold weather I found that range could drop down to as little as 110 miles.

We had to make a number of trips to towns  about 120 miles away  and required a charge on the way home. Of the 5 trips we made we found that none of the high speed type were working, after trying 5 different chargers we finally found a charger which was at a hotel. When we arrived at the hotel the charger was in use and the guy had only just started charging so we knew it would be about an hours wait. Also there is no queueing spaces so we had to double park until the space became free.

On our most recent trip away I wanted to use one of the regular chargers only to find there were already 3 cars waiting to use the one charger.  This would have meant waiting up to 3 hours before I could connect.

I also had a friend visit from Slovakia and we decided to take her out shopping by car. We knew that it would be risky trying to complete the journey without recharging on the way home. We tried 5 different chargers and found that they were not working.

We decided that the only way was to hope for the best and try to get home without the charge and made it home with just 11 miles spare and no reserve having turned off the heater on the way home to save energy.

On these occasions we were in contact with the Network Operators who tried to be helpful but could only suggest using low power chargers at supermarkets which could mean a stay of 7 hours, plus the devices have a maximum stay time of 2 to 3 hours without a penalty of £100-150 for an overstay.

(He gave up on the EV )

Unfortunately I lost about 30% in the trade in of my electric vehicle after just 5 months and had to pay a premium of about 20% in buying a 2 year old petrol model.

Reply: This explains why EVs are a hard sell to non fleet buyers. The motor industry has here lost a customer who bought into the idea but was thwarted by the costs of the product and the difficulties of recharging when away from home.