👋 Meet Warren
“I’m hugely into cars and have been all my life. I was always a massive petrolhead and we recently bought a Kia e-Niro – it’s been fantastic!”
🚙 Drives: Kia e-Niro
📍 Lives: Shoreham-by-Sea
🔌 Charges: Using public chargers, and a home charger
💷 The lease on our first EV was £118 per month - much cheaper our previous monthly petrol bill alone
My wife and I ordered a Renault Zoe EV in 2015. The cost savings were unbelievable. We worked out that the £118 monthly leasehold cost of the Renault Zoe was much less than the monthly petrol bill for the Ford Fiesta that we’d previously owned. Renault also gave us an electric wall charger for free, which made recharging the vehicle simple.
Last April we bought a Kia e-Niro – it’s been fantastic and is an excellent family car.
🔌 The charging infrastructure has improved massively in recent years.
The long distance range of the KIA is a real plus. Indeed, the car has a far longer range then we do as a family. Stopping to rest, feed, and water us often takes longer then the car needs to change.
There are chargers popping up everywhere, at shopping centres and at service stations. Even the ferries across to Ireland now have chargers, which makes a big difference when you are going abroad on a long drive. Plugging the car for a recharge from 20% to 80% takes 40-50 minutes and the infrastructure is improving daily. With faster chargers the top up time on newer cars will be even quicker.
🌍 We drove 10,000 miles in the first six months with no worries about range.
It is just not something I stress about. Over the first year we drove to Ireland twice and covered 2,000 miles last summer, mainly in one trip to Devon and Cornwall and back through Wiltshire and London before heading back to Sussex. It was not even difficult in winter when the car was weighted down with two adults, a child, a dog and all our Christmas baggage.
With charging hubs starting to appear, such as in Milton Keynes and the new one opening in Essex, there is now a growing number of rapid chargers within a few miles of each other. It’s easy to find chargers via a plethora of apps, and you can plan your routes very easily with apps and tools online. For example, we are planning on driving to Harry Potter World next year, and as we know there are chargers there, we do not have to plan a change in the journey. We will just drive there, plug in while we visit, and then unplug and drive home.
💁♂️ The local EV groups are amazing!
I’m proud to say that I’m part of a growing community of EV enthusiasts, which I’ve become part of and enjoy very much. They know the best charge point installers, the best charging points, and the right dealers in every part of the country. We try to help each other out with tips and information about owning an EV and there are countless examples of EV enthusiasts offering their driveways for other EV drivers to charge their vehicles.
While in lockdown I helped create Electric Vehicle Association England (EVA England) and we want to make it as easy as possible for others to become EV drivers by being a voice to promote EVs and their environmental and health benefits.
