Electric Vehicles (EVs) appear to be dividing opinion, and are perceived as either a necessary evil to help save our planet or a natural technological step forward. Depending on your viewpoint, they are either the future of motoring or an expensive alternative to fossil fuel burners.

There is no doubt that as the market stands at the moment, EVs are expensive. A Tesla 3 which is Tesla’s entry level model will cost around £43,000, having been reduced in price by around £8,000 earlier this year. Nearing the other end of the electric scale, a MINI Electric is priced around £32,000, while in the same MINI showroom a petrol driven MINI Cooper can be had from around £23,000.

With the current economic climate, few of us can afford to spend needlessly on an electric vehicle unless there was a reasonably fast return on our investment. That being the case we need to look at reducing the running cost of our latest mode of transport.

Firstly, it is important to choose a vehicle that suits your needs. Most of the higher price EVs have longer ranges, because they have larger batteries and this is in part, why they are more costly. Smaller EVs tend to have smaller batteries which are ideally suited to short range, urban driving. Some models offer a range of battery sizes so you can tailor the vehicle to best meet your needs. If you do most of your driving around the town or area where you live and return home every night, do you need the estimated 250 mile range of a Tesla 3, or would the Electric MINI’s 140 mile range be adequate? Bearing in mind that the ranges quoted by manufacturers are dependent on your travelling environment coupled with your driving style.

Also worth bearing in mind when choosing your electric vehicle is that batteries are heavy so the bigger the battery the heavier the vehicle. This means that more battery power is needed to move the vehicle, which will have an effect on the vehicles range if you are choosing the bigger battery if that is an option. Battery size is quoted as kilowatt hours (KwH) and it may be worth paying extra if long range is important to you so check the battery size to ensure you buy the best option for you.

Regenerative charging, is where short term circumstances like braking or decelerating by taking your foot off the accelerator, trigger the ability to push a small charge back into the battery, slightly extending the available range of the vehicle. This is more likely to occur in an urban environment, where stop, start driving is more common, whereas on a motorway, longer distances between braking and the use of cruise control, regenerative charging is less likely to occur.

On the other hand, heavy acceleration will drain the vehicle’s battery more quickly, in the same way as a conventionally fuelled vehicle will use more fuel. This is exaggerated by the use of “sport” or “performance” mode as opposed to selecting “economy” mode which will give the most out of your battery in terms of mileage. As an electric vehicle has no gearbox and therefore no gears, the faster the car travels, the faster the electric motor needs to turn in order generate that speed. This means that the faster you drive, the quicker you will drain the battery. When this fact is added to the regenerative charging during urban driving, it would appear that an EV’s range would benefit from urban driving as opposed to long distance motorway driving, whereas a petrol/diesel vehicle would deliver more miles per gallon on motorways than in towns.

Consider the amount of time and money Formula 1 teams put into developing the aerodynamics of their cars. They do this to try to cut down the drag on the car as it meets resistance from the flow of air over the vehicle. Likewise with an EV, big chunky, slab fronted cars will face much more resistance from the air than a sleek, streamlined vehicle, meaning that they will require much more power to push through the resistance of the air. This will use up more battery power and cut down the range of the car, so two cars with the same batteries will not necessarily have the same range, so rather than just the size of battery it is worth looking at the cars efficiency quoted as miles per kWh. This equates to judging a petrol/diesel fuelled car on miles per gallon rather than just the size of its fuel tank.

Most EVs also have a preconditioning function, which allows you to heat or cool the interior of the vehicle before you get in. It operates via either the infotainment system in the car or by an app on your smartphone and acts on pre-programed timings. It means an end to getting in to a freezing cold car having scrapped the windscreen and waiting for heat from the engine transfer to the heater, or stepping into something that resembles a sauna in the hotter months of the year. Just as importantly, it preheats or cools while the vehicle is still connected to the charger, so it takes the electricity from the mains, not the vehicle’s battery and allows you to leave home comfortable and in the knowledge that you still have a fully charged battery.

If you intend to travel a longer distance on unfamiliar roads, plan your route and make sure that you will be able to recharge your EV as and when required. It’s unwise to treat an EV battery like a fuel tank, where you would allow it to get close to empty then fill it to the brim. Little and often is the way ahead. If you are stopping on your journey, try to plug into a charger for a while and give your battery a quick boost. Not only does this lessen the chance of an uncomfortable end to your journey as you worry about your range, but it will lengthen the life of your battery in the longer term. EV batteries last longer if charged up by smaller, regular amounts and will rarely ever be fully charged as once they reach 80% of charge the rate of charge drops off substantially and becomes almost a trickle charge. This will not only lengthen your journey times but will make you very unpopular with other EV drivers waiting to charge. On that basis it is always wise to calculate your charge requirements based on 80% of the stated range of your vehicle rather than the full quoted distance.

If you are looking for help with any electrical issues, you may find some of these services useful: