Wednesday 27 February 2019

And I Could Drive One Thousand Miles

Two weeks into owning an electric car (Nissan Leaf 2018) and I've driven over 1000 miles. This is not unexpected as I have an 85 mile a day commute. On the first day of owning the car, I had definite range anxiety, but now I am relaxed and enjoying the experience.

I have not had to change my driving style too much, just reducing my speed a little on the motorway to about 70 mph :-) I'm not keen on driving and always see it as a waste of my time, but the Leaf has a nice feature called Pro Pilot that keeps me a safe distance from the car in front, at a maximum speed set by me and helps to keep you within the current lane. I make use of my time listening to audio books from Audible which makes the time spent driving feel more productive.

As expected, I have seen our home electricity use rise considerably. A daily charge takes about 5 hours at 7kWh. At a cost of 14p/kWh thats a cost of about £4.90 per day or about £25 for a weekly commute. Previously I was spending about £60 per week in diesel. As a way to keep the price of the electricity as low as possible, I have signed up with Ecotricity's EV tariff. This gives a reduced overnight tariff for owners of electric vehicles similar to economy 7.

For my next step I am going to perform a more in depth analysis of the cost differences between an EV and its diesel equivalent both in cost and emissions. I just need to capture a bit more data and find some time in my busy life.

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