I currently drive a petrol VW T-Cross and I do love the car, but I’m seriously considering making the change to electric because of the price of petrol and the fact that I commute to Dublin every day. My average commute in the car is about 130km each day and up to 650km each week and the cost of putting petrol in is about €50-€70 a week or every few days, depending on driving. I’m wondering would an electric car be cheaper to run than a petrol or diesel car? I was looking at a hybrid, but I don’t know if it’ll suit. If I make the change, what’s the main thing I need to look out for when buying electric and is the battery more important or range? What would be the best reasonable electric car for motorway driving? I spend most of my time driving on the motorway. From R Mc, Co Louth
Let’s start by nominating some potential cars for you. You’ve asked what the best electric car for motorway driving is, and the answer to that question is the Hyundai Ioniq 6. It’s low and sleek, which is better by far for 120km/h cruising, and its big battery gives you a potential real-world 500km range at motorway speeds.
Now, as a new car, the Ioniq 6 costs from €42,085, which might be a bit expensive if you’re trading out of your (much more compact) T-Cross, but we’ve seen second-hand versions, on sale from Hyundai main dealers, for about €30,000, so you can get one much more affordably.
Let’s assume you get that 500km out of an Ioniq 6 each time you charge it up, which is not unrealistic. Let’s further assume – and this is possibly the most important bit – that you have a driveway or other off-street parking at home where you can install a home car charger.
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Another assumption – that you’re on an electricity supply tariff that gives you a good night rate price. We’ll use Electric Ireland’s Home Electric + Night Boost package as an example, but obviously other plans are available, and it’s a good idea to shop around.
With all that in mind, the Ioniq 6’s 77kWh battery will take a nice, neat 10 hours and 30 minutes to charge from fully flat on a home 7.4kW charger. You probably won’t do that, though – mostly, you’ll probably plug in when you have about a 10-15 per cent charge left in the battery, meaning you need to add 65.45kWh overnight for a full charge.
So, let’s start that 10½-hour charging session at 11pm, when Electric Ireland’s rate per kWh dips from a daytime 37 cents to a night rate 18.54 cents. Between 11pm and 2am, you’ll add 22.2kWh to the battery, at a cost of €4.11. Then, the rate further reduces to 10.88 cents per kWh between 2am and 4am, so you add the next 14.8kWh for €1.61. Then the rate goes back up to 18.54c until 8am, so that’s 29.6kWh at a cost of €12, bringing us to a full charge.
That’s a total overnight cost of €17.72 for a presumed 500km. You say you cover 650km per week, so let’s allow 750km just for safety’s sake and to give us a little battery buffer for cold weather, which means an extra €8 or thereabouts worth of home charging.
So, your weekly fuel cost has gone from €50-€70 for petrol to about €25. So each daily 130km drive is costing you about €6.50.
Of course, these are just notional figures. You might do better if you can get a cheaper home electricity rate, or if you’re even better than we are at squeezing range out of the Hyundai.
You may also do worse, but these are figures that illustrate just how much you can potentially save on running costs by switching to electric.
Of course, there is a cost when it comes to installing a home charger – usually that adds up to about €1,000 once grants are included – but you can potentially save even more money in the longer run by installing solar panels and using your car’s battery as a home storage battery during the day, depending on your schedule.
Now, it must also be said that the Hyundai Ioniq 6 isn’t everyone’s cup of tea from a styling point of view, so for long motorway drives you might also consider the Volkswagen ID.7 (which should stretch to 450km- 500km in the same circumstances), or the long-range, rear-wheel drive version of the Polestar 2 – which is one of our favourite EVs and can pretty well match the sleek Hyundai for real-world range.
When buying electric, especially second-hand, the critical thing to inspect is the battery. Any reliable car dealer will be able to present you with a battery health report when you’re looking at a potential purchase, and if one isn’t available then we’d suggest simply walking away and looking for something else.
Again, the Hyundai is in a strong position here, thanks to its generous unlimited-mileage five-year warranty and its eight-year 160,000km battery warranty.
Would a hybrid be a good stepping stone? Potentially so, but you wouldn’t be saving much money. A Toyota Yaris Cross is similar in size to your VW T-Cross, and it should be a bit more economical – 4.5 litres per 100km in real-world driving is not impossible – but even then the overall saving will be relatively small, and you may end up paying more to trade in and buy the Toyota than you will actually save in petrol costs.
