Hybrid and Electric Cars

If you have a suitable garage or driveaway, most EV drivers will charge their cars at home overnight on an off-peak tariff. This is the way to maximise your ‘fuel’ savings. If you can't charge at home, it's still possible to lease an electric car and charge up in public effectively.

If you are out and about, there are now plenty of places for a quick charging top-up. For example, new charging points are being installed all the time at supermarkets, restaurants, shopping centres, gyms, carparks, B&Bs, hotels, etc. Some of these ‘destination’ chargers are free; with others you have to pay for the time you charge.

For longer trips, where the range of your electric car is not enough to get you there in one go, you can stop at motorway service stations to charge. These charging points are heavy-duty and known as ‘rapid chargers’. Generally you charge for 20-45 minutes and then get back on the road. Rapid charging stations are run by a variety of national networks including Instavolt, Tesla and Osprey. Many now have contactless payment, making the whole process very straightforward. You can find your nearest public charging point via this helpful map: https://www.zap-map.com/live/.

Nearly all modern electric cars now come with batteries that will comfortably outlast the useful lifetime of the car itself. The batteries will suffer some degradation over time - in other words, your range when you first get the car will be less than after a few years of driving.

The only serious problem that electric cars can run into is if the battery needs replacing, but this is now very rare. For complete peace of mind, the opportunity to avoid the cost of a replacement battery is a significant benefit of leasing a brand-new electric car (compared with buying). Given that all our contracts include the manufacturer’s full warranty, even if the worst did happen and the battery needed replacing, you would be covered under warranty and the battery replaced free of charge. Electric car battery warranties are typically for 8 years.

Leasing a green vehicle can be both a significantly lower risk and lighter-on-the-pocket option than buying. Because the green car phenomenon has only taken root in the last few years, just how these vehicles will hold their value remains somewhat unknown. With leasing, however, this risk is removed because at the end of your contract the market value is not your concern. You simply hand back the keys and are free to select and drive your next new green car with all the very latest features on offer at that point.

Moreover, leasing green also means you’ll always be driving a brand-new car with a brand-new battery, so the threat of any critical faults is highly unlikely. In addition, if you lease, you’ll benefit from the sheer speed of innovation inherent in the EV car market, meaning you won’t be left with an out-dated model that has been superseded by better technology.

Fully electric cars (BEVs) typically have a battery range of between 150 to 300 miles, depending on which model you choose. So if your daily commute is less than 100 miles, any modern EV will meet your needs with room to spare. For those longer trips – where your car’s maximum range on a single charge is less than your trip distance – you will need to stop and charge.

In a Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV), which has both a battery and a petrol/diesel engine, you can travel the first 20-40 miles running on battery power alone. After that the internal combustion engine takes over and you complete your journey burning petrol or diesel. Don’t forget to charge your PHEV battery at home each night to enjoy those initial, battery-only, emissions-free miles every day.

As long as your electric car can be plugged in to charge, you can benefit from very low cost motoring in an EV, as electricity is much cheaper than petrol or diesel.

The biggest savings come from fully electric cars known as BEVs. They have large batteries which you can fill full of low-cost, off-peak electricity. On the right electricity tariff, you can cut your fuel bill by up to 80%.

The next biggest fuel savings can be achieved in plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) which have a smaller battery, plus a petrol or diesel engine. However, you have to be smart and pro-active to lower your fuel costs in a PHEV.

Your PHEV battery may be full of cheap electricity in the morning, but the battery-only range is typically 20-40 miles. If you don’t recharge your battery every night, you will find yourself driving on more expensive petrol or diesel all of the time.

Hybrids which you can’t plug in, known as HEVs or self-charging hybrids, can’t benefit from cheap electricity. You will be paying high petrol / diesel pump prices as usual.

All cars, whether electric or otherwise, have to be built in factories using raw materials. As such, they all come with an ‘embodied carbon’ footprint. In other words, CO₂ has been emitted during the manufacturing process. Battery electric cars come out of the factory with a higher carbon footprint than traditional international combustion engine cars. This is due to the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs. However, for every month of driving on electricity – rather than petrol or diesel – you ‘repay’ this carbon debt.

Once the whole carbon deficit has been paid back, your electric car is then much more environmentally friendly than a petrol or diesel car. You can speed up this carbon repayment process by charging your car with electricity from renewable sources. Either have solar panels installed at home, or choose a 100% green tariff from your electricity supplier, or do both.

The government currently subsidises the cost of fully electric cars (BEVs) by £2,500. This is for all BEVs under £35,000. In addition, there is a £350 grant when you install a dedicated charging point at home. If you have a BEV as a company car, there is 1% Benefit in Kind (BiK) tax in the 2021/22 tax year. In the following year, the BiK tax only goes up to 2%, so still very low.

No wonder electric cars are now becoming very popular company car leases. Fully electric cars pay no road tax and can access Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) for free. There are even more financial and tax advantages for EVs – speak to one of our consultants for further details.

There are many advantages to leasing an electric car. First, you get to drive a brand new, environmentally-friendly car. Second, as electric cars are developing so fast, you always have the latest EV technology, coupled with better range, safety, and performance. Third, an electric car lease removes any concerns over reliability and servicing associated with older cars. Fourth, you enjoy the peace of mind from fixed monthly payments and the ability to hand your car back – hassle free – at the end of the contract and move on to the latest electric car model.