Electric vehicles have low running costs as they have fewer moving parts for maintaining. Electric vehicles can also be more convenient than traditional vehicles. If you invest in a home charging point, you can simply plug in your vehicle and let it recharge while you’re at home. It can cost as little as £7.80 to fully charge an electric car from home and can even be free in some public car parks around the country. The cost of charging your electric car at home will depend on the model of your vehicle, the wattage of your home charger and the cost of your electricity rate. There are plenty of charging stations in around the country now. The power and cost of these machines vary according to their recharge speed, which generally tends to fall into three categories: Rapid chargers Typically rated from 43kW and found at motorway service stations, petrol stations and supermarkets. Takes 30-60 minutes to fully charge but is only compatible with rapid-charging function EVs. Fast chargers Rated at either 7kW or 22kW and can usually be found in car parks, supermarkets and leisure centres. Takes 3-4 hours to fully charge. Slow chargers Usually rated up to 3kW is mainly used to charge overnight at home or workplace. Takes 8-10 hours to fully charge.

A new report claims that electric vehicles are cheaper to own over a period of seven years than an equivalent car with a petrol or diesel engine because they are over £1,300 less expensive to run a year.

Electric vehicles have an average range of 197 miles. Electric Vehicle Database has a useful cheat sheet showing various models of electric vehicles and their ranges.

Over a quarter of the UK’s total CO2 emissions in 2019 came from transport, resulting in over 122MtCO2e being added to the atmosphere. Electric vehicles produce significantly less emissions than their petrol and diesel counterparts – a journey from London to Glasgow by the average petrol car emits 3.4 times the CO2e of an average electric car (including the emissions produced in electricity generation). These long journeys are made easier by the ever-improving infrastructure, and there are now over 22,000 public electric vehicle charging devices found across the UK.

Studies show that on average, most journeys we make every year are under five miles.
However, if you are planning a longer trip, fully electric vehicles have an average range of 197 miles, with many models able to go much further on a single charge. The average charging time can range from 30 minutes and up to more than 12 hours.
This all depends on the speed of the charging station and the size of the battery. Alternatively, rather than relying solely on an electric motor, hybrid electric vehicles offer a mixture of battery and petrol (or diesel) power. This makes them better for travelling long distances as you can switch to traditional fuels rather than having to find charge points to top up the battery. Long journeys are made easier by the ever-improving infrastructure, and there are now over 22,000 public electric vehicle charging devices found across the UK.

There are now over 22,000 charging points around the UK. The key is to plan ahead on long journeys if you need to top up charge, look for chargers in interesting places and check availability using a charge point map such as Zap-Map to avoid waiting.

Many manufacturers are researching how electric vehicle batteries can be repurposed once they’ve hit retirement age. One idea that’s proving to work well is repurposing electric vehicle batteries to power homes and buildings. However, there are no definitive answers as to what will happen to electric vehicle batteries once they’re no longer recyclable. The time that batteries spend in an electric vehicle is often just the beginning of their useful life. Once removed from a car, most batteries will still be fit for other demanding jobs like energy storage in the electricity network, or in the home – a growing area of demand. When batteries do reach the end of their working life, they’ll be recycled, which typically involves separating out valuable materials such as cobalt and lithium salts, stainless steel, copper, aluminium and plastic. At the moment, only about half of the materials in an EV battery pack are recycled, but with electric vehicles expected to undergo an explosion in popularity over the next decade or so, car manufacturers are looking to improve this. Volkswagen recently announced a pilot plant for battery recycling which will work towards a target of recycling 97% of battery components. In this process, batteries will be shredded, dried, then sieved to recover valuable materials that can be used to make new batteries.