My EV Experience: 10,000 Miles With No Home Charger

As regular readers of this site will know, I’ve been super interested in electric cars for a long time, so I was excited to find last year that I could lease one through the Salary Sacrifice Scheme. This scheme makes it easy and affordable to lease a new car — including electric cars.

In my case, I arranged to lease a fully-electric Kia Soul just over a year ago. The car has a 280-mile range, which is more than sufficient for the vast majority of my journeys.

Having now travelled more than 10,000 miles in the Soul, I have to say that I really enjoy driving the car. It’s quiet, fast, and has all the features I could possibly want — including smart cruise control, regenerative braking and forward collision avoidance technology.

Although the car is more expensive to lease than a similar petrol or diesel car, I do make some welcome savings when it comes to fuel costs.

For example, despite not having a home charger installed (my property wasn’t suitable for this) I have found there to be plenty of public EV chargers available in the area where I live, just north of London. And many of these chargers are either low-cost or even free to use.

Recently, I did a rough calculation, and, on average, I pay around £5 per 100 miles to drive my electric car. With my previous petrol car, this would have been closer to £20 for the same mileage.

A decent saving, I’m sure you’d agree.

Of course, charging costs are only one of the favourable aspects of electric cars. It’s also nice to know that when driving around — particularly in town or city centres — that the vehicle is emitting zero exhaust fumes.

If you’ve previously considered going electric but were put off by the high costs of the vehicles or concerns about the charging network — I’d recommend you take another look. The cars are getting cheaper, ranges are increasing, and the public charging network is rapidly expanding and improving.

Personally, I love driving electric so much that I can’t see myself ever going back to a petrol or diesel car. And once you’ve got behind the wheel of an electric car – I think you’ll feel the same.

For discounts on popular EV charging networks such as InstaVolt, Osprey and Shell Recharge, please head over to our sister site EV Charging Discounts.

Craig J Todd – Freelance writer with a passion for tech, trends and simplicity.

Connect with Craig via Twitter.