16 months living with an EV - my honest experience

Man of Honour
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25 Oct 2002
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Hampshire
Is the garage in a block or something?

Yeah it sits under a coach house and there is a house, passageway and another garage in between our house and it. Sort of like this:

Code:
Our_House|Neighbour|Coachhoooooooooooooooouse|
Our_House|Neighbour|    |Nei_garage|Our_garage|

Bit in the the middle is a passageway to drive into the garage complex from the street. Because the Neighbour's house is sort of next to their garage except for the passageway into the garage courtyard they were able to run power to the garage via some sort of shielded cable. Not an option for us without encroaching on other's property. I imagine as there's a residence above the garage there is some sort of H&S considerations as well.

At the time we bought the house (2008) I really wasn't that bothered about having power to the garage as I've never lived anywhere that had electric in the garage, it would be used either for parking the car or storing junk.

Don't really have enough space at the front of the house to convert the front garden to a driveway either, it's not set far enough back from pavement.
 
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Caporegime
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20 Jan 2005
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Co Durham
Wow if I'm reading that right, £6800 to lease the car for 16 months. During which you've covered just over 7000 miles.

Nearly a pound a mile. You must be well off to afford that!

My gf has a lease Merc C220 estate and she has done precisely 2 miles since February 2020 at an annual lease cost of £5,532 so £2,766 per mile. Thats covid for you.
 
Caporegime
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Co Durham
No thats crazy a car should be driven 10 miles per week just to keep the battery, fluid etc moving, presuming its not fully electric ?

She probably should have. She got called in for her covid jab the other week and the battery was so flat it wouldnt charge and needed a new battery.,

But even if she had done what you suggested that would have been only 520 miles in a year so still £10.64 per mile plus insurance.

Point is that covid has messed with peoples mileages a lot this last year. She was doing between 20k and 30k per annum before covid hit. Everything work wise has been teams/zoom meetings since.

To be fair its a lease car and due for replacement later this year and is on a full maintenance lease so she really doesnt car if the car ends up buggered because of it.
 
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Permabanned
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UK
Does create a bit of a minefield for the used car market going forward. Plenty of people have cars sat about all year and will sell them at some point. Prolly have to check the mileage per year somehow.
 
Caporegime
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20 Jan 2005
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Co Durham
Does create a bit of a minefield for the used car market going forward. Plenty of people have cars sat about all year and will sell them at some point. Prolly have to check the mileage per year somehow.

difficult with lease cars as no MOTs. I suppose you can check the service book. Hers will have something like 26000 1st year service and 26002 as the second year service!
 
Associate
OP
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North West England
On a similar note there will start to be a lot of used EV's as people's 2/3/4 year leases come to an end - probably with much lower mileage than they would have had without Covid.

For example I'd expected my 4 year lease would go back at the end of 2023 with about 60k on it. Now it'll probably be more like 40k.

Given lots of people will look to buy 2/3 year old cars, the 2nd hand EV marked is potentially going to go from there being little to choose from, to a significant choice for used buyers.
 
Associate
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I thought I was being clever setting low annual mileage as the excess mileage rate meant the reduction in monthly payments would be more than any excess I'd have to pay based on how many miles I've driven per year in the past.

Since November'19 I've still no reached 4000 miles.
 
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