Lexus Ux 300e

Electric cars are appealing in terms of running costs on two fronts. If you run one as a company driver you can save huge sums every month on Benefit In Kind, while private owners will also enjoy free VED, or ‘road tax’ as it’s commonly known. Also, if you are lucky enough to have off-street parking where you can install a home charging point and take advantage of cheap off-peak electricity tariffs you can ‘fuel’ your car for next to nothing.

It can get more expensive if you travel further afield and need to use public charging points. To help mitigate the faff this currently entails Lexus has a partnership with Digital Charging Solutions, meaning access to a huge network of charging points managed through a single app, payment card and account.

First you have to buy – or finance – the car, though, and here the UX300e is in interesting middle ground between the likes of the Kia Soul EV and Hyundai Kona Electric and the premium brands Lexus is more typically compared with. Partly because of the smaller battery it’s cheaper to buy than an Audi E-Tron, Mercedes-Benz EQC, Polestar 2, Jaguar I-Pace but, for the same reason, has significantly less range or performance. A closer comparison in terms of size and cost will be the fully electrified Volvo XC40 and forthcoming VW ID.4 when they arrive in the market.