September 2022
The news media including the Government, the AA & RAC blaze headlines claiming that we all must scrap our internal combustion engines cars and change to Electric Vehicles in the next few years. It may be in the Governments interest but is it in yours, especially as we’re now threatened with massive electricity price rises!
I picked up this ‘well crafted’ article on Facebook: www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-11148861/Is-cheaper-run-electric-car-petrol-energy-prices-rising.html
Now that articles writer does their utmost best to convince us that EV’s are still value for money, but then they only speculate on the next energy price cap scheduled for January 2023 and more importantly ignore the purchase price differential between an EV and its ICE equivalent which is actually huge and very significant.
Manufacturers try to justify the humungous pricing differential by adding a few extra toys and styling additions, but basically, they are just making excess money at your expense.
Examples: Followers of Fuelcard Frank’s Blogs will have seen the cost differentials for leasing and running similar EV & ICE vans and cars and that the ICE vehicles are always cheaper to run, (*look back on earlier Blogs for details). What about if you buy them instead, surely that extra purchase price can be justified?
Well, if you’d rather buy than lease, let’s review a couple, say a new Jaguar
i-Pace instead of an F-Pace
You’ll have to cough up an extra £21000 for the i-Pace EV. Ah, I hear you say, but you’ll have no diesel costs or Road Tax, and if it’s a Company Car the BIK is considerably lower. Well, have a look at the aforementioned article and you’ll see that whilst you may make a saving on the running cost, and even that may soon disappear, you’ve still paid £21000 more to buy it in the first place, and that’s £21000 you’ll never see again!
If you keep those two cars for 4 years and do 40,000 miles in each that £21000 differential has reduced to £14000 according to vehicles presently for sale on Autotrader so you’ll have lost a further £7000 by buying the i-Pace.
As a bonus you’ll only have to refill the F-Pace with diesel about every 500 miles. You’ll struggle to get 300 miles from the i-Pace EV between fill ups, and each refill takes so much more time and you’re stuck at some awful service station, which normally you wouldn’t choose to stay at, for the duration!
I’m not picking on Jaguars here as the figures are similar for all car brands, even those that only make EV’s. As it happens Jaguars are one of my favourite car brands, I’ve owned five of them over previous years and will no doubt buy them again in the future, but perhaps not an i-Pace!
By Fuelcard Frank
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