February Magazine - Nick Lomas EVs

I started to read the Nick Lomas' article published in this month’s magazine regarding the transition towards electric vehicles with scepticism at first. Having owned two electric vehicles for over 4 years, I have seen so much biased reporting by ill informed journalists or in journals with “other” agendas that are clearly out to recredit EVs, that I thought here we go again.

So it started off well, then I got to the bombshell. The article states that running costs are lower and implies that, this will go a long way to offset the initial costs of purchase.  Very true, in my case, the cost of the lease and low charging costs mean that I can run an EV for much less than that of a comparable petrol or diesel car. Then he states that it costs £20 to charge “at home”!  Where on earth did he get that figure from? Well done he just may have alienated thousands of potential people thinking about converting to an EV.

Please find below the true cost of charging at home on an Economy 7 tariff

KIA SOUL EV (30KWh battery). To charge from 50% to 100%  will give a total range of 130 miles in summer, 100 miles in winter)

DAY RATE £2.47 plus vat @5%

NIGHT RATE £1.59 plus vat @5%

The latest KIA SOUL EV, (64KWh battery) for comparison will do more than twice the range, so to charge from 50% to 100% :-

DAY RATE £5.28 plus vat @5%

NIGHT RATE £2.97 plus vat @5%

I have Economy 7 tariff and additionally I have solar panels, so when the sun is shining, any excess electricity goes in to my car. So I can charge for free sometimes. Even at Public chargers that charge 30p per KW, I’ve never got anywhere near paying £20. Last year I did 10k miles for less than £300.

So to allow people to make informed decisions,  could you please add a correction in next month's magazine.

 David Bell

Moved from the Story Section