A green revolution — Part 1
The car
Towards the tail-end of 2019 we had a bit of a ‘green’ moment. It started when my brother-in-law turned up in a plug-gable hybrid car. Personally, I don’t like hybrids, I think they’re a terrible idea, but that’s a whole other story. My wife really liked the idea of a car that doesn’t use any fossil fuels most of the time. My view was we have two petrol cars, we could get rid of the small one we use most of the time (it was a Fiat Panda) and keep the big one we use every now and again (a Volvo 940, now called “the smogmobile”). And we could replace the small car with an economically viable Electric Vehicle (EV, which we now have and we call “the smugmobile” — see what we did there? — but more on that in a bit).
That probably sounds rather lar-dee-dar to some of you who are probably thinking “EVs are really expensive, it’s all very well rich, middle class people talking about them” and so on. I’ve had similar comments from some of my friends. Well, I’ll admit I’m not exactly poor, but I’ve long been a subscriber to the school of bangernomics. I have literally never (and this is still true) bought a new car. Typically the cars I’ve bought have been at least ten years old before I got hold of them. Point being, I’m frugal when it comes to cars.
I’m telling you this, because the economics of EVs are important. People think they’re too expensive, but they’re really not. Let’s use our Panda as a model:
Because I’m a hopeless nerd, I keep a detailed spreadsheet of running costs of the cars we own. For that reason, I know exactly how much much the Fiat Panda cost us to run. It was €196 a month. That includes the €2,700 depreciation hit we took in the seven years we owned it and the insurance. I’m making this point, because I don’t think people realise how much running a car, even a modest, old car, really costs. This wasn’t a fancy car, when we bought it it was already seven years old — which, by the way, was already the newest car I’d ever bought — and we didn’t do a huge number of kilometres. €196 a month is quite a lot of money, but lots of people on low incomes who have to run a car are paying about that.
So this post is necessarily tied to France, because that’s where I live, but in a lot of countries — European, at least — the economics will be similar. Here in France the new Renault Zoé starts at €179 per month on a lease, including the batteries, if you put down an €8,000 deposit. Insurance is around €50 a month. “Fuel” for us, if we charge the car at our home, off peak, costs about €4 a “tank” (full charge giving me between 230 and 300 kilometres, depending on the temperature). So that’s a running cost of €237 a month. Alright, that’s €41 a month more, but it’s a brand new car.
And because it’s a brand new car, that means no servicing. For EVs it’s really no servicing. Literally zero. It means manufacturer’s warranty. Hell, over a 30,000 kilometre lease like I have I probably won’t even change the tyres or brake pads. It’s basically CaaS (Car as a Service). I pay my €229 a month plus some electricity and I have total peace of mind and a nice new car. A nice green new car. The smugmobile.
“Woah, back up”, you cry, “what about the €8,000 deposit??”
Fair point. So in France you get a €6,000 bonus for buying an electric car. That’s not means tested, it’s a flat rate. That leaves €2,000 left to cover. In our case, the Panda was sold for €1,800 so the gap was just €200. But what if your current car isn’t that valuable? What if you can’t find the €2,000? Most EU countries also have some kind of scrappage scheme or equivalent. In France, if you have a car over 20 years old you’ll get some money from the government for taking it off the road. If it’s a 20 year old diesel and you’re on a relatively low income, you can get up to €8,000 for scrapping it. Some friends of ours did exactly this, which changes everything!
Let’s recap, if you are a low income individual with a 20 year old diesel car to scrap, you can get €6,000 for buying an EV and up to €8,000 for scrapping your smoky old diesel. So suddenly you have your deposit covered, plus €6,000 in your pocket. Sure, your car is costing you €41 a month more but you have a 36 month lease and during that time you’ll spend €1,476 more than you would’ve done. Which means you’ll still have over €4,500 in the bank, once all’s said and done. At the end of your lease you’ll be better off if you put the money away, and you can consider what to do next. Hopefully by then EVs will be more normal, cheaper and there’ll be more options — second hand as well as new.
TL;DR, in France right now if you’re a low income individual with an old diesel car you will actually be financially better off if you trade it in for a brand new Renault Zoé on a 36 month lease. Me? I’m not low income and I got some money for my old car, so I’m paying a bit more for my car now. But I have no worries and a brand new, ecologically friendlier car. It’s still a win.
Bottom line, EVs are definitely not the preserve of the wealthy at all. Benefits will vary from country to country, but most people can afford them if they take advantage of the schemes in place. And EVs are categorically better for the environment than “normal” cars. Even better if you sign up for an energy provider that only invests in renewables (French market link).
Economics aside, some practical points. For one, the Zoé is bigger than the Panda was. It’s even more spacious than the traditional fuel equivalent from Renault, the Clio. Secondly, we are absolutely not finding range is an issue. We have the previous generation Zoé, which doesn’t have a quick charge port — the new ones do, which means you can charge them up again while you take a coffee break. In any case, it’s totally a viable option. Thirdly, we have no worries about expensive batteries, because they’re leased and they’re under manufacturer’s warranty the entire time we’ll have the car. And finally, EVs are a lot of fun! The torque is amazing, the weight distribution is brilliant (batteries put all the weight in the bottom of the car and in the middle, like a mid-engine sports car) and the whole experience is just so smooth.
You can read my full review of our Renault Zoé here.
An addition on charging
It was tweeted that I omitted the cost of installing a home wall charger, and that these are expensive. This is a fair comment, but here’s the TL;DR — the vast majority of people don’t need one.
The long version ended up being longer than I intended, but it’s worth exploring, so here goes…
The Zoé comes with a charger that works with a normal mains electrical socket. It’s slow as hell (about 10 hours for a 20 kWh charge) but it works just fine. Some even say it’s better for the battery, I’ve no idea if that’s urban legend or not. The Renault-provided home charger can charge faster, if the socket it’s plugged into is properly installed, the instruction booklet it comes with tells you as much.
Some friends of ours who are, I don’t think they’d mind me saying, a relatively low income family have got a Zoé and decided to see how fast they could get their EV to charge without a high-power wall box. She commutes daily to Nîmes (well, did, and will again once the lockdown is over) and uses about 15kWh of their 40kWh battery for the round trip (worth noting the new ones are more efficient and 52kWh). A bit more ducking about, shopping, fetching kids, etc. and they maybe use half of the battery, though usually not even.
They installed a high-efficiency normal wall socket called the Green’up, on a dedicated high-amperage circuit breaker. The bits cost them about €100, he installed it himself but it would’ve been about 5 minutes work for an electrician anyway. Their charge time is now somewhere around 5 or 6 hours a night, roughly twice as fast as a normal socket. This isn’t magic, it’s just the result of giving the car a direct line to the meter, instead of sharing its current draw with a load of other stuff that throttles the delivery.
The Zoé has a built in timer feature you can set for off-peak electricity, so they come home, plug in and at 11pm the car starts charging itself. Typically by 5am at the latest it’s fully charged. No expensive wall mounted charger required, perfectly acceptable charging time.
There’s another really important point here. They do easily 100 miles a day in their Zoé, but most people don’t do anything like that mileage. The EU did a big study into this, the average daily driven distances by country are on page 63 of this document, and 40 miles is more accurate for a UK driver. They’re French, where the average is more like 55 miles, but they still do double that! We don’t even have a Green’up, our charges are slow, but we probably charge about once a week and have off-peak pricing on the weekend, so we just leave it plugged in all Sunday. Anyway, the point is even if you’re doing an average of 40 miles a day, or even 60 miles in France, then you can easily charge your car overnight with the charger Renault include and a normal wall socket in your house.
There is a question of having a space where you can charge your EV. I live in a rural area, so most people, regardless of income, have some space next to their house where they can park and plug in an EV. That’s clearly not going to be the case if you’re curb parking or live in an apartment without a garage, so there is that aspect. But then if I lived in London still I wouldn’t have a car at all, so it would be a moot point.
Finally, the tweeter, Mike, pointed out there’s a £500 grant in the UK for fitting a wall socket, if you really need/want one. It doesn’t cover the cost, but it helps. In France there’s a tax credit of €300, so it’s a bit less generous and you’ll only get it the year after. But it doesn’t really matter, as most people don’t need a wall box. Most people don’t need anything, but if you, like our friends, need a slightly quicker charge due to your daily mileage then the Green’up, which properly installed charges a 2nd gen Zoé in 10 to 12 hours from empty, can be installed for about €150.
The next instalment has been written, it’s all about our new air source heat pump. Remember, this stuff is not just green, it’s economically solid. For everyone. Read on…
There’s also a follow-up on the Zoé after 6 months of ownership.
