Another long tow with an EV

Have a look at page 12 of the Tow Car of the Year supplement in the October club magazine. 

Bottom left - There are two Hyundai's in the 1500kg - 1700Kg bracket. One is £47,150 and one is £48,760. The electric one is cheaper...

Now - admittedly I cherry picked that particular pair from the line up, but that Ioniq 5 is only £2k more new than the Skoda Superb on the previous page. 

The simple fact is that all cars are expensive now, and yes EV's are more expensive in general, but in many cases, they will be cheaper to run over the course of their life. 

Over the last 16 months I have done about 20,000 miles in my EV - about 2000 towing. I think its cost about £1450 in electricity costs mixed roughly 1/4 public and 3/4 home. My previous diesel would have cost about £3,900 (at 160p a litre) for the same distance and towing mix. 

If you can charge at home, can put up with the faff of charging while towing, and can work with the towed weight, then an EV can probably be cheaper today - even without factoring in the residual value for the car - which right now is higher for EVs. 

But each to their own. If you don't fancy one, or it does not suit your purpose - don't get one. 

As & when we replace EmilysMum's car, we might very well consider an EV .... she drives very few miles a year, but there's no reason to replace her current car just to buy an EV. Charging it at home wouldn't be a problem. But I couldn't justify the cost of an EV that was capable of towing our caravan ..... I don't buy new cars, I let someone else take the initial depreciation.

I like the idea of EVs but don't think they are the complete answer to motoring/transport.

The batteries do make EVs heavy, in fact that's why they are heavy but if like ours the chassis is aluminium and the body is carbon fibre you have a circa 95% recyclable car that isn't going to fall apart for a v long-time. Some joints will go, bits of rubber will wear out etc but as there is no engine there's no weight from that. A big group of batteries is needed to propel the car for a maximum distance, greatly improving too since the first EVs emerged.

As said it's a choice people can now make.