8 questions to ask before buying an electric car

When you've spent years, decades even, driving a petrol or diesel car, and being very familiar with how it all works, then the thought of switching to an electric car can seem a bit daunting. New technology, batteries, charging cables...fires? New questions to ask and new myths to bust. So, here you go. Eight of them...

Why are electric cars so expensive?

The short answer is “new tech and batteries are expensive to make”. The tide is turning, though. As electric cars get more popular, carmakers are investing in ways of lowering production costs, especially for batteries. Some genuinely well-priced electric cars exist already, like the Dacia Spring, the MG4 and the Citroen e-C3. They cost a lot less to run than an equivalent petrol car, and there’s an ever-growing used EV market with some real bargains within it. On top of that, the new Labour government is being pressed to bring back incentives to help lower costs generally. It may well happen.

Will my electricity bill go sky high?

No. It will increase, but almost certainly by less than you think. And you’ll save far more money avoiding fuel than you'll spend on extra electricity – especially if you sign up to an electric car tariff, for cheap overnight charging. To give you an example, we’ve been running an Ora 03 electric car recently, and in June 2024 we spent £25 on electricity to do around 800 miles of driving. That would buy you about a third of a tank of petrol.

How do I get a home charger fitted?

A home charger is a unit designed specifically to charge an electric car quickly and safely using a standard home electricity supply. More on that here. This of course means that you ideally need to have a private driveway (although not necessarily) so that the unit can be fitted nearby. If you don’t, your options are more limited. More on that here. Assuming you do, it’s a classic case of shopping around for one you like the look of. Features and prices vary a little, but they all do basically the same thing, and it’ll cost around £1000 to have one installed.

Does the same plug work in all charging points?

Basically, yes. Thankfully, car charging cables are pretty much universal now, with a couple of easy-to-manage exceptions. We’ll spare you the detail, but a single ‘type 2’ cable will allow you to plug your car into the vast majority of charging points, including your home charger and rapid public charging points. Ultra rapid public charging points have a cable attached to them, which will plug directly into any electric car.

Can I drive and charge them in heavy rain?

A very common question with a very simple answer. Yes. Electric car batteries, their charging ports, and home charging units are all designed function properly in all weather conditions. The same principle applies to a car wash. You can take an EV through one of those too. We wouldn’t necessarily advise using an automated carwash if you care about your paintwork, but there’s no more danger than taking a petrol car through one.

Do they catch fire more than petrol cars?

No. The opposite, in fact. A media narrative has perpetuated about electric car fires, but the data tells a different story. There have been a few studies, including one by an American insurer that found 25 car fires per 100,000 EVs, compared to 1,530 for petrol cars. And a study in Sweden showed less than four fires per 100,000 EVs, compared to 68 including petrol, diesel and hybrid cars. Closer to home, the Bedfordshire Fire & Rescue service looked at car fire callouts in 2019 and found that 54 of them were for electric cars, and 1,898 of them for petrol or diesel. None of these stats say anything about how the fires started, either – arson accounts for a significant number of car fires. Electric cars aren’t simply bursting into flames.

Do the batteries last?

They do. It’s logical to think of an electric car battery like phone battery. Then think back to that ancient iPhone you had that could barely muster the energy to send a WhatsApp by the end. Thankfully, everything suggests that battery degradation in electric cars is so minimal as to be a non-issue, in reality. EV-maker Tesla has some good data on this, reporting in 2020 that its batteries held just 12 percent less charge after 200,000 miles, on average. Most electric car makers offer a ten-year/100,000-mile warranty on the battery, which includes agreeing to replace or restore the unit if it falls below 70% capacity.

Are they really as green as everyone says?

Once an electric car is out on the road, it’s a far greener way to travel than in a vehicle that’s burning fuel; electric cars produce absolutely no tailpipe emissions. Of course, the whole-life picture is a little more complicated, because carbon is emitted in the mining of the battery materials, and during the production and export of the cars themselves. Government data shows that the lifecycle emissions of electric cars is already around one-third of an equivalent petrol car's on average. And it's getting lower all the time, as carmakers work on ways of lowering emissions throughout the production process. One of the carmakers willing to publish the so-called ‘well-to-wheel’ emissions of its cars is Volvo. It compared the emissions of a petrol XC40 SUV against the similarly sized electric EX30. It found that at the 124,000-mile mark, the electric car had produced 60 percent fewer total CO2 emissions than the petrol car. This doesn’t account for the other noxious gasses produced by a fuel car during use, either.