Hidden Costs and Weight of owning an EV

[AndyH]

We’ve 600 miles under our belt of this current 800ish mile journey from Norfolk to Scotland to Northern Ireland and back to Norfolk and I’m deeply concerned about the hidden costs and impact on weight that we were not made aware of when we made our decision to purchase our beloved Ennie.

Our original journey to Scotland required a £17 recharge stop on the A1M, which included a Kentucky Fried Chicken meal. Then another £17 stop in Newcastle that required a Costa coffee and sticky cakes. The trip down to Cairnryan required a recharge in Garvin, for which I see no evidence of any deduction being made to my bank account, but this included 2 ice creams as we wandered around the harbour.

Things got worse in Northern Ireland. The majority of charges are 22kW and these are mostly free (of charge) to use! However, despite there being few EVs around, who is going to charge at home. with the current price of electricity, when you can pop out, leave your EV on a 22kW charger for a few hours for free? Hence, unoccupied chargers are quite difficult to find, although the ESB app is very good at providing the status of charge points. We decided, for a good top up, we’d use the (not free) Gridserve 50kW behind Ikea in Belfast for an £18 top up. BUT I didn’t budget for the additional £70 as a result of walking around Ikea with my wife! Our weight concerns were alleviated by avoiding the meat balls in the Ikea kitchen.

Now, in all my years of driving an ICE, never was I tempted by purchases of candles and herrings in Ikea, or have time for ice creams and sticky cakes while filling up at the pump. I really feel our sales person should have made us aware of these temptations, and contributed to a gym membership to offset the additional calories, as part of the sales procedure.

[Vasarolli]

[awi8]

Hilarious

[Goaty]

@AndyH - I feel your pain! We’ve discovered we can drive to London and back (70 miles) for about a fiver, including heavily reduced EV parking rates near the BBC….. which unfortunately is only a 5 minute walk from Oxford Street! This immediately cancels out any cost savings (and then some!) when Mrs Goaty and Little Miss Goaty hit the shops. They’ve nagged me to take them about 6 or 7 times since I got the Enyaq, now they know how ‘cheap’ it is to get there .

[Powerstar]

An insightful observation Sir!
Now that you highlight it I realise that coffee and cake consumption has increased significantly since going electric, I may need to add a column to my charging cost record to quantify refreshment costs and waist measurements over time!

[orrery]

Indeed. My consumption of millionaire's shortbread, rocky roads and Tatas Natas in Costa Coffee has increased significantly, and so has my waistline during the last 8 years of EV ownership.

[coom80]

Since getting the Enyaq, I’ve had 4 overnight city breaks having only had 1 in the previous 5 years. On each occasion, the boss has convinced me that a Premier Inn (or equivalent) is a better idea than trying to squeeze in a top up on route. Madness when I say it out loud, because we still had to top up somewhere on 3 of the 4 (1 we found a hotel with EV charging) but just a bit more leisurely (and expensive).

[IanEV]

The same happens in the world of ICE - Costco have made a billion dollar business from selling fuel for 5p ish cheaper a litre, offset by the £200 one tends to spend each time you just pop into the store to see what’s on offer

[AndyH]

An update before we leave the land of free charging at the end of this week. Yesterday 2.5 hours on the FoC 22kW charger. Ennie next to the white Tesla in the background below.

However, a very restrained lunch (except for my wife, who had an very nice glass of Sauvignon Blanc) cost £31, which included a 20% discount for the missing bacon in the BLT and missing salmon in the prawn and salmon open sandwich. Additional coffee at the end upped the cost to ensure we completed our full 'free' top up.

On the plus side, the Guinness 0.0 is very good and great for the designated driver! It is even getting very good reviews by the Norn Iron locals.

The final decision is whether to grab a full charge before heading for the Liverpool ferry on the free 22kW chargers or pay for the 60kW Gridserve charger, which would probably be the cheaper option - PROVIDING we go after Ikea has closed.

Great trip and hoping to get from Liverpool to Norfolk on a single 100% charge, which should be more than doable. Boy am I looking forward to paying for home charging again (and I hear it's been a bit warm while we've been away)

[AndyH]

We’ve finally returned to Norfolk after dealing with some very wet weather from Liverpool Birkenhead ferry. We disembarked with 75% SoC, leaving the M6 for the A50 before Stoke-On-Trent, had a 35 minute 50kWh charge in Uttoxeter and collected some essentials for home from Waitrose during this. We arrived home with roughly 40 miles to spare having driving 220 from the ferry - much of the cruising was between 60 and 70mph. The car now has just under 6500 miles on it, with this being an estimated 1150 miles journey (I didn’t record our leaving mileage or reset the long range figures, but this would be on the cautious side, it was probably more with local running around). Overall stats are:

£88.17 - Total electric costs using public chargers - suppressed due to the 88.593kWh of free charging using 22kWh chargers in Northern Ireland and the ‘free’ charge at Garvin.
265.745 kWh - total electricity used
13:50 hours Ennie was on charge over the 3 weeks on both fast and slow chargers - no home charging
221.21 kg - CO2 saved (according to the Shell recharge app)

At current petrol prices, I believe our Kodiaq would have cost at least £350 for the same journey and possibly more - particularly as we were laden for 3-weeks away for varied weather and added 3 large packs of Irish peat on the way back for some nostalgic winter fires.

Interestingly, we carried out some tests heading north on the A1M comparing consumption at 65mph and 70mph. Surprisingly, we found we got slightly better mileage driving at 70mph. There are other variables of course, but overall we decided to either drive at 60mph or below or 70mph, not in between the 2.

We have enjoyed every mile. We erred on the side of caution in terms of allowing the SoC to go too low, usually driving about 120 miles before taking a break and swap drivers.

We now have 12 iPhone apps for journey planning and charging, plus a couple of websites (Gridserve being one). We still haven’t come across an Ionity charger we can use our Powerpass on. Shell, BP and ESB having been the ones we used more than once. Zap-Map was our go to for finding and navigating to chargers, WattsUp was missing some and seemed to have problems locating our current position. ABRP was used, but it heated up my iPhone 13 Pro significantly and we usually relied on the Skoda navigation then turned to Zap-Map within CarPlay when needed.

I cannot emphasise how relaxed our Enyaq was to drive this distance, and despite the weather, which either rained or attempted to rain the whole way from Liverpool, I chose to drive the whole journey, which says it all.