👋 Meet Harrison
“I decided to go electric even before I started learning to drive. I’ve never driven a petrol or diesel and don’t expect to.”
🚙 Drives: Renault Zoe
📍 Lives: Hove
🔌 Charges: Mostly at home
🚘 I drive to college several times a week.
I quickly realised that I could save a lot of money by going electric as charging is a lot cheaper than buying fuel.
When I turned 16 and started thinking about learning to drive, I began saving any cash I earnt for my first EV. One morning when I went onto Gumtree, I saw a Renault Zoe EV for sale just down the road and using my savings from my part-time job I decided to buy it there and then despite not having yet passed my driving test. It cost me £5,000 second hand.
🎉 Since passing my test I have loved every minute in my Zoe and my friends have been impressed by it too.
It looks like a normal, new car and has everything you need from Bluetooth to a decent Satnav. It is better looking than a lot of the other EVs out there. The savings are incredible and not just on the charging side. For example, I don’t have to pay for the car park at College in Brighton.
⚡ Charging has not been an issue so far and it takes about 15-20 minutes to charge on a rapid charger.
Charging has not been an issue so far and it takes about 15-20 minutes to charge on a rapid charger. On a drive from Hove to Birmingham I charged three times on the way there and twice on the way back. I look at Zap Map (an app for locating charge points) and it tells me where to charge and when. I’ve only been let down by a charger once.
I regularly drive the Zoe with less than 20 miles range. It doesn’t worry me as I can charge anywhere in Brighton and the car has a decent range of about 80 miles in summer and 60-70 miles in a cold winter.
🔌 I mostly charge the Zoe at home using Octopus Energy’s agile tariff.
It has been brilliant as I can often charge the car for nothing due to the flexible tariff that sometimes pays us as a family to use the renewable energy from the grid. The whole family is now hooked on EVs and renewable energy. Helping the planet is a brilliant benefit on top of everything else.
I was the first in his family to own an EV, and my Mum now drives an MG ZS EV. My Dad has just bought a new Nissan LEAF!
