My First Month With an EV

06 Mar 2024 | ~4 minute read

I recently bought my first electric vehicle (EV). It has been an interesting adjustment, but am I glad I switched from diesel?

I've been thinking about getting an EV for a while now, but the whole range anxiety thing, coupled with the high cost of purchasing an EV, has always put me off.

When we moved to Wales, I decided that I needed a 4x4, because, you know, countryside. So I bought a gas guzzling Land Rover to get me around.

Turns out that although the Land Rover was very nice to drive, with the exception of the odd snowy day, I didn't really need it.

So a couple months ago I sat down and decided to do some back-of-a-beer-mat maths to see if it would be cost effective to switch to an EV.

The cost

I'm very fortunate to earn a good salary. I know I can afford an EV, but I'm cheap. A few years ago I treated myself to a very nice car (a Mercedes GLC 300), but it was so expensive to run and quite frankly, a waste. I could afford it, but it felt like I was just throwing money down the drain for the sake of a nice car. So I got rid of it.

In this EV endeavour, I didn't want to make that mistake again. I didn't want to end up paying £40,000+ on a car, just to resent it in the future.

With road tax, diesel and general running costs, I (conservatively) estimated that the Land Rover was costing me £250/month. So that was my target and I started shopping around.

I didn't want to get an old, second hand, one with lots of mileage and crappy range. But I also didn't want to take out a second mortgage to pay for the bloody car.

Then I discovered MG EV's.

These are still expensive, but they have recently gone through a refresh and nearly-new cars are going for a bit of a steal. They also get great reviews, so after lots of shopping around, I found a nice 18 month old EV 5 with 9,000 miles on the clock, for £17,000.

Yes, it's not the prettiest thing in the world, but I quite like its charm. I also really dislike the new trend of making EV's look like space ships. I like cars to look like...cars.

Running the EV

I've had my plucky little MG for a month now and I'm yet to charge it fully at home (I charged it for a couple hours when I first took delivery). We have chargers in work, and I can easily run the car for a week on a single charge. So I've already saved a month's worth of diesel (around £180).

The road tax was also due on the Land Rover, that would have been £700 for the year. On EV's the road tax is currently free. So there's another £700 I've saved.

The insurance was cheaper, and servicing is a fraction of the cost because the MG doesn't have an internal combustion engine. So no oils, filters, spark plugs etc. to replace.

All in all, with the finance for the MG, it's costing around £140/month to run.

What's it like to drive?

In short, very nice. Most of my driving is to and from the office, then running around after the kids during evenings and weekends.

Even in the cold weather, I'm easily getting 3kw/mile, which equates to around 190 miles per charge. In this cold weather, that's pretty impressive. And by charging in the office once a week, I'm yet to have the charge drop below 25%, so there's no range anxiety.

The performance is also really good. There's no engine to spin up, so you get all the power immediately. I'm no speed demon, but it's nice having a bit of power on tap when you need it, for things like overtakes.

Another thing I really like is that heating the car during these cold mornings is immediate, as there's no engine to warm up. That was a very nice bonus!

The car has all the usual things - "vegan leather" seats, Apple CarPlay / Android Auto, sat nav, air con, yadda yadda yadda. For £17,000 I'm really happy and I think I'm an EV convert.

We're getting a 7kw charger installed at home soon. When that happens, I'll be able to charge my car overnight for around £8, assuming this would get me 200 miles on average, the equivalent on the Land Rover would have cost me £50. Given that a lot of my charging will be at work, regardless of my charger at home, that's going to be a huge saving over time.

My wife has a relatively new Kia SUV, but when we come to replace that, we will definitely be looking at another EV. Maybe even another MG.

If you're thinking about getting an EV, and you don't do mega miles up and down the motorway, I'd say go for it. It's very cheap motoring, and I have no regrets.

• HomeLife