Times are changing in the automotive industry. Whether you’re all-in for change or love the purring sound of your V8, governments worldwide have set goals to make our little green and blue planet last that bit longer for many more generations to come. Electric vehicles (EVs) or battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are an important part of this plan (especially in industrial and transport), and it is where we are seeing change for personal travel, on at least two and four wheels.
Personally, I am ready to embrace the ownership of an EV. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the acceleration when I first floored my 1.8L SEAT Leon Cupra R, the exhaust note of my old 3L Z4 Coupe, my 2L Audi TT Black Edition and the ‘pops’ of my current 2L Volkswagen Golf 7 GTI. But the automotive industry is ever-evolving and many brands are now focusing on making Plug-in Hybrids (PHEVs) and BEVs during this transition.
I am lucky enough to charge my future EV from home. I don’t have to travel far each day either, so EV range isn’t much of an issue for me unless I travel to airpots and for holidays away from home. Battery tech continues to improve each year, so this isn’t of any concern to me, especially with batteries in newer vehicles from the last 5 years.
Batteries’ future, such as solid-state batteries, sounds very exciting. Imagine spending 5-10 minutes charging an EV for a very small fraction of the cost of current petrol, in a car with a range of over 600km! This technology is already here right now, but for the average consumer, it will be a few years until these kinds of EVs roll out of dealerships.
As an admirer of both technology and cars, EVs are an exciting future, and in time all the haters of this change will eventually have to make this leap over the next two decades. At that time I would hope all their EV worries will be addressed and all the myths and fake news about EVs die off quickly. Worries about charging, infrastructure, range anxiety, price and general EV ownership woes will be a thing of the past. Yet, for me right now, I am ready to embrace it, so bring it on!
So here is the start of my journey to EV ownership. Where I say goodbye to my beloved Volkswagen Golf 7 GTI after over 7 years of happy driving and over 25 years of driving an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) car. In this series, I will be documenting my journey at key stages in the hope that this helps and encourages anyone also thinking of taking this ‘giant’ leap to EV ownership.
Are you ready? Let’s-a-go!
My EV Shortlist
So first of all, I am not a big fan of large saloons, SUVs and anything that is bigger than Euro-classified C-segment cars. I will be mostly focusing on B and C-segment classes of cars, or if you’re outside the UK/EU, that’s small to medium-sized cars. VW Golf size of cars. If you’re after your family wagon or mass people carrier, this journey may not be for you, but the journey itself may still be helpful, so keep on reading, please.
What Car?
I currently drive a Volkswagen Golf Mark 7 GTI and this is roughly the size I would be looking for in my first EV. I don’t mind the smaller crossovers or ‘small’ SUVs, these are also very similar in their size, so you’ll find these also on my short list below. Their length comes very close to my Golf so it would be wrong to not consider these too.
Having poured hours, days, weeks and months comparing countless car dealer websites, reading Facebook owner groups and looking at lease comparison websites for monthly costs I have come up with these EV brands – models – trims shortlist:
- Cupra – Born – v2 Standard
- Renault – Megane E-Tech – Iconic
- Volkswagen – ID.3 – Pro Match
- Peugeot – E-208 – GT
- Mini – Electric Cooper – SE
Some Alternatives & Considerations
- Volvo – EX30 – Extended Range Plus
- Smart #3 – Pro+
- Hyundai – Ioniq 5
- KIA – EV3 (Released October 2024)
- Renault – R5 (Coming Mid 2025 ish)
- Volkswagen – ID.2 GTI (Coming 2026 ish)
Most of these vehicles tick the boxes for me. Their 58-62kWh batteries have a summer range of at least 200-220 miles, which meets roughly the distance that I regularly need to make a return journey to airports and for destination journeys around the UK without the need to charge, or charge as often. There are some trims with extended-range batteries, like the 77kWh in the Cupra and ID.3, but their current prices are priced out of my budget (until the ID.3 very recently).
Currently, newer EVs also carry a premium cost, due to manufacturing, parts, materials required, location, limited appeal to the consumer and therefore stock. The Volvo EX30 has been out for a number of months and continues to remain high in lease prices vs EVs of similar specification. The Ioniq 5 is similar in size to the Golf but although it is very well spec’d, its style doesn’t resonate with me too well.
The KIA EV3 was released for orders in October 2024, and the VW ID.2 is a long way off until their release here in the UK, around 2025/26. But like the Volvo, I can’t see them being as reasonably priced as the other EVs on my shortlist. So my real concern is affordability, there’s only so much my Golf can sell for.
So let’s look at how I’m going to afford this…
Buying an EV without the BIG hit on the wallet
As of August 2024, the price of a new small to medium-sized EV is insanely high and is way out of most people’s budgets for a new car. The depreciation on an EV right now is too great (some reaching over 50% in years 1-2!), so I wouldn’t advise buying an EV outright, it would be financial suicide!
Unless you’re looking to write a new EV purchase off as a business expense, it would be my advice to go either the PCP route or a better option is to lease a new car. With plenty of dealers offering 0% PCP deals, you can be driving a new EV in a matter of months (if not weeks) with a great monthly PCP deal.
Leasing is another option to spread out the cost, but you will never actually own the vehicle. So this isn’t a popular route for the general consumer until you look at doing it as a business or work-related cost/expense. Only then a lease is a good option. In the UK right now, 100% of an EV lease can be claimed as a business expense if 100% of its use is used for the business. Similar to leasing, is company car tax, or benefit-in-kind. If you’re employed you can also explore the Salary Sacrifice Scheme, which offsets some of your monthly pay towards what is practically a lease of a new EV. Both of these are not on my own personal radar, so hit Google or sites like The Electric Car Scheme (a helpful unaffiliated link I found) as well as GOV websites in the UK if you wish to explore this area further.
If I were personally paying for this, I would be looking at second-hand EVs. There are many EVs selling with just a few miles on the clock or have £1000s cut from them after just coming out of a 2-3 year lease deal. This means BIG savings for you, the second owner. Head over to second-hand car websites like AutoTrader or CarWow and browse what’s on offer.
As a sole trader myself, making a lot of my content in the car, I will be looking at a business lease and putting a high percentage of use down of the monthly cost as a business expense. In some months, it can be up to 90-100% so in the first year alone this is a no-brainer for me, and maybe you too if you are working for yourself and working out of your own car.
Disclaimer: My views are purely my own. I am not a financial advisor or car finance professional and am therefore not qualified to give any kind of financial advice, you must make your own financial decisions. Always seek professional advice before entering a finance arrangement of any kind and seriously consider your financial position and the long-term affordability of any deal that you may enter into.
My EV Budget & Leasing
My budget is around £4,000-5,000 per year (inc VAT), so I worked out that a business lease of around £266 ex VAT is the holy grail, stretching to around or just over £300 ex VAT at a push. Finding an EV from my shortlist above at this price range has been difficult, but more recently, a few models have come close, with a select few coming even lower than this budget. So in time, this will soon be more frequent, more so later this year when EV costs are said to plummet with annual sales yet to be unreached.
I’ve been closely monitoring business lease comparison sites leasing.com, leaseloco.com, Gridserve, and a few direct leasing companies every month, closely comparing my above-shortlisted EVs. The lease has to fit at 5,000 annual mileage, 6 months upfront initial deposit, and a 2-year lease period. The upfront payment and lease period greatly inflates the overall monthly price you pay. I wanted a deposit that had a swallowable first payment but also helped keep monthly costs low, 6 months felt like a good middle sweet spot.
Car Insurance is another factor worth considering when buying a new EV. Electric cars currently carry a small premium over ICE cars, not much but it is still usually more than an equivalent ICE car. Go through your chosen shortlist and do a price comparison for insuring the vehicle. You might be surprised at the outcome and this may also sway your shortlist or help shave off a few condenders.
Tips For Leasing Your First Car
Lease prices vary per day and per broker, so it pays to shop around and add yourself to price alerts on the mentioned websites. Some brokers offer vehicles for much less or vehicles in stock that come with longer waiting times because they are factory orders. Also, the newer the vehicle, the higher the cost will be. For example, the Volvo EX30 would have been a great contender for me, but it’s so new that its lease value is off the charts and will be for several months before it settles down to reflect its competitors.
The future models I listed above will also suffer from this trait. So I plan to lease for two years, see how the market settles for other vehicles, as well as monitor battery technology news for upcoming vehicles and create a new shortlist for when my current EV lease matures in two years.
Some brands also change their spec from time to time, phasing out older trim lines for cheaper. Car facelifts are released every other year or every four or so years, and again this reduces prices as older models are sold off cheaper. The ID.3 and e-208 have all just had their facelift models released in 2024, with the Born and Megane receiving a hardware upgrade this year and a proper facelift is likely next year. It’s also worth mentioning that you should monitor trim levels that weren’t first out of your price range, as stock grows for a particular trim, the prices reduce to sell this overspill off, resulting in a much greater configured EV for your monthly cost.
As I said, with this technology being so new, it would be crazy to buy an EV outright. A lease, PCP, contract hire etc. all seem the best step forward right now until the technology settles, and improves. There will also be a better suite of vehicle options available from all the brand makers out there, including the influx of eastern brands entering the market that’s currently shaking up the legacy makers right now.
EV Test Driving
So with my shortlist made and budget range locked in, it’s time to get behind the wheel of each EV for a test drive!
To arrange a test drive, visit each of the brand’s websites and look for a test drive button to click through to and enter your details. A dealer will reach out within hours or days to arrange a test drive of your chosen car.
If you’re testing a few cars, try to fit it all in one week, so that your likes and dislikes of each car are still fresh in your memory. Testing will certainly whittle out a few that you don’t like and you can focus on the ones that you do like. Even consider retesting the ones you need more time in to play around with the infotainment system, parking, or driven them in locations and times where you didn’t get to drive them in the last test. An EV is a big investment of money so it’s best you pick the right one for you.
Where possible, try and tell the dealer what the exact spec of the vehicle you’re interested in. Most demo cars are usually the expensive top-spec trim and some dealers may not have lower-spec trims, and this can leave you with a false impression of what you could be buying. So if the trim of the test vehicle is different, on the test day ask which trim you are driving and ask the dealer what the differences are between the trim you are test driving and the trim that your budget allows for. They may be able to supply or show you a spec comparison table.
After test driving, you should get an idea of what is the best car for you. For me, I soon realised that the B-segment EVs I tested were far too small and impractical for me. So I immediately removed the Mini Cooper SE and Peugeot e-208 from my list. Both were great ‘city cars’ to drive when there isn’t a need for carrying rear passengers or big bulky items in the boot, but for me, I needed both of these, so a C-segment class vehicle would be a much better fit.
Due to insurance reasons (and a few stolen vehicles!), Cupra only allowed 30 minutes with a rep sitting in the car beside me, whilst every other dealer had no problem offering solo drives for up to an hour. You can choose to have someone with you to explain any technical questions or how to drive or use the car’s features, but if you’re tech-savvy like me, then driving on your own is more enjoyable and comfortable.
Personally, I found one hour is still not enough, but I recommend that you look on Google Maps where the dealer that you’ll be visiting and try to plot a route that will take the test car around city/town streets, in the country lanes, and fast on the motorway. Most dealers are on the edges of towns, so ticking all three should be possible within an hour. Send this route to your phone so it’s ready to use when you first get going in the car and you’re not wasting the hour setting this up in the car.
This will give you a feel of all road types and how the car handles each of them. Any areas you didn’t get to, you could try again in another booked test drive. Testing all three road types is important, especially fast roads where you can only test wind noise at speed, cornering and turning in city streets, and weaving between fast bends on country roads.
Try to play around with driving modes and regenerative braking. These are two key areas in which EVs differ from ICE cars. Fast and more responsive Sport modes will act crazy when you put your foot down if you’re not used to a fast-accelerating vehicle. Front-wheel cars will have some torque steer under this amount of load, so be careful with standstill acceleration at lights and more so when pulling out of junctions at speed. You’ll find rear-wheel drive EVs will have better control at this. Try different driving modes to get a feel of how each one alters the behaviour of the car. Also, find wheel turning adjustment settings if the EV has them to lighten or reduce the sensitivity of the weight of the steering wheel.
Before you hand the keys back to the dealer, jump into the back seats to see how adults fit in the back while the front seat is still set to your position. Get a feel of the back seats; is it comfortable for you? Then head outside to check the boot, how it opens and will the size of the boot space be suitable for your needs. If you have time, jump in the front passenger seat to get a feel of how comfortable that will be for your passengers. Many EVs also have what is commonly known as a frunk or froot. This is a smaller storage compartment under the front bonnet. Some cars require two pulls of the release lever to open them and you can see if it has one and how big of a usable space it has. Many are small and only have enough size for tools or a place to stow the charging cable in.
Next Steps
With all the cars tested, you’ll have a better idea of which EV is for you. Going forward, you can next arrange purchase deals with dealers or visit brokers to get the best deal for you and that may also include part exchanging or selling your current car privately. Something I also want to touch on in a separate article.
Good luck with your search. Tune in on the next part of my journey, where I’ll go over my chosen vehicle after all the test driving I have done, the process of purchasing it, through to delivery of my shiny new EV!
