Buying an EV as your first car
Hi I’m Richard from Electric classic cars and this is my 1969 VW crew cab it’s my daily driver and this is a teenager it’s 2:00 in the afternoon he’s just got up and had his breakfast and standing next to him is his daily driver and that’s what this episode is all
About choosing his first car whether or not it was going to be electric or petrol and the costs associated with that now my first car back in the day was a 1968 VW Beal no safety features whatsoever and that’s not what I really wanted for my son I wanted a bit more
Safety airbags modern car ABS Etc um and there were some other preferences as well like 30,000 milish secondhand now you quite fancied the Renault Zoe from the off didn’t you yeah so Oliver’s preference from the off was an electric Rena Zoe I was concerned it was going to be a
Little bit too pricey H I was preferring some what what’s your cars your mates normally have nor Ford Fiesta Ford Fiesta there you go the standard go-to car for most people have just passed their test is something like Ford Fiesta so that’s what we’re going to do in this
Episode we’re going to Crunch those numbers that I crunched when I was comparing the electric Rena Zoey to the Ford Fiesta and came to quite a surprising conclusion now there’s a number of criteria I to take into consideration when buying your first car number one is
The cost now this was 6,300 quid it’s a 2017 Rena Zoey 40 kwh battery pack and that’s the first year the 40 Kow battery pack came out so if you want the cheapest Rena Zoe of that type 2017 will probably be the year that you’ll be looking at now when we’re considering a
Comparative the Ford Fiesta is also a crossover because 2017 is when the new shape came out for that then as well and there’s a 1.1 L Ford Fiesta same power same na 60 Five Doors Etc that we compared it against and the cheapest we could find on auto trader today for one
Of those at 30,000 miles as well same amount of Miles as this was 8,500 quid and that was surprising I thought the Ford Fiesta would be cheaper than this but when you compare an Apples to Apples that Ford Fiesta was more expensive than the electric Renault Zoey so we’ve
Established a Ford Fiesta is a very good comparative to this Renault Zoey but let’s talk about the cost of ownership so first on that list would be tax now who out there remembers these things tax discs I know you do Tim you’re that old all of it behind him is’s going what’s
That I got to say for a teenager I’m quite impressed with how tidy it is in here cuz back in the day when me and Tim were teenagers back when things were black and white our cars were not this tidy were they Tim I don’t know I don’t agree I was just
Having to go with him for the fact it wasn’t very clean inside out yeah M sad mate my C was filthy but anyway you met my dad hav’t you yeah that’s true back back to the uh cost of ownership so Road tax now Road tax this year on electric
Vehicles is free but that’s going to end according to the budget and uh it’s not really clear I don’t think what it’s going to be for electric cars next year so taking worst case scenario the Ford Fiesta is 180 quid a year tax so for our cost comparative I’ve gone year one is
Free for this but 180 quid for the Ford Fiesta and I’m just going to assume that worst case scenario the renao is going to be the same taxes their Ford Fiesta for year two and year three so as far as Road tax is concerned over a course of
Threeyear cost of ownership I’m going to say that the Rena Zoe is just 180 quid cheaper right let’s talk about fuel next so for the Rena Zoey oh actually let’s set the scene first so it’s 3 years cost of ownership uh we’ve taken an average
Of 10,000 m per year so that’s 30,000 M total over 3 years now starting with the Rena Zoey the efficiency of this is around about about 3.7 m per Kow hour so I’m going to have to get the numbers out cuz I’m never going to remember all these numbers so
3.7 m per Kow hour uh to do 30,000 Mi we figured out that’s 2,700 Kil hours you’ll need now when it comes to the cost we at home charge up at nighttime always black and white it’s a lore at our house you have to charge
Up at night on the cheap rate which is 7.5 P per kilow hour so we’ve assumed uh based off historical like um evidence if you like of my wife’s Tesla she’s had for a few years 90% of charging happens at home 10% is with public charging and
We’ve taken 65 P per kilow hour as an average for public charges so with all that taken into account the cost to fuel this up for the next three years and do 30,000 mil will be £ 1,074 the fiesta so this is a Ford Fiesta 1.1 2017 model the book miles per gallon
Efficiency is 64 miles per gallon pretty good and to do 30,000 mil that means you’ll need 710 L of fuel which on average today is145 per liter of fuel I had to ask Tim that because I have no idea so when you take all that into account the cost of
Fuel for the the next three years in the fiesta to do 30,000 mil would be 3,90 quid so essentially 2 Grand more in fuel for the fiesta than the Reno Zoey right so that’s fuel next is insurance now insurance has been going up dramatically recently and it’s quite
Scary how much the insurance costs for a firsttime driver like Oliver so what we’ve got are numbers for me being insured in this car having Oliver as a name driver and Insurance Group this is 16 the fiesta is five so you’d be expecting the insurance to be a lot
Higher on this compared to the fiesta but what are the numbers well the numbers are 2,200 quid a year for the Renault Zoe and £ 1,877 a year for the Ford Fiesta which means over the course of three years 6,600 quid for the Reno Zoey or
5,631 quid for the Ford Fiesta so just under a grand difference there and the Reno Zoey is more expensive but just to give you an idea as how much more money you have to pay in insurance for somebody like me or or me with my son as
A name driver the Reno Zoe was 2,200 quid for me uh to get insured on it with Oliver as a name driver but if it was just me it would be 250 quid that’s like nearly 10 times less that’s nuts right next comes depreciation and this was the
One that was worrying me because reading all these news stories about EV depreciation and stuff it was concerning but when you look into the numbers it’s quite surprising so how do we crunch these numbers well I went on to AutoTrader because we can’t you know magically go into the future and see
What the car prices are going to do in 3 years time so what I did did is I took a six-year-old version so not a 2017 but a 2014 Renault Zoe and Ford Fiesta and I added 30,000 Mi onto the clock so what we were looking for is how much is a
2014 Renault Zoe with 60,000 mil on the clock and the cheapest one we found was 4,175 quid which means that uh take off the original purchase price of this which is 6,300 quid that means depreciation estimate because that’s what it is is 2,125 quid but when we did the same for
The fiesta the cheapest one we could find there was 4,690 quid which meant the depreciation was 3,800 quid so the depreciation on Fiesta is quite substantially a lot more than the depreciation on the electric Renault Zoe is that a surprise to you guys out there cuz it was to
Me right so those are all the considerations and all the numbers but let’s get in the warm now and total them all up on the board so in conclusion then I’ve drawn up this cost Matrix here so you can see what the scores of the doors are and we’ll start off with cost
So Rena Zoe cost and Fiesta cost that meant that the difference is 2,200 quids the Rena Zoe works out 2,200 quid cheap don’t forget that’s a 2017 car uh 30,000 M on the clock and then all of these numbers here are based off threeyear ownership 30,000 mil so the fuel again
Reno Zoe ends up being two Grands cheaper uh tax now I should say tax is free this year for EVS but next year they’re going to take that away so I’ve take Taking worst case scenario for year two and year three on the renoo is going
To be the same as the fiesta I don’t know if it will be the same or slightly less but I’ve taken worst case scenario so that it works out 180 quid cheaper for the tax not that much really depreciation was surprise for me if you believe all the media you think oh
Electric vehicle after you know so many years goes down to next to nothing Well actually the Reno Zoey worked out less depreciation than the fiesta so again the Rena Zoe 1,685 quids cheaper than the fiesta insurance was more expensive though because the insurance group on the Zoe
Was higher so that worked out in the Fiesta’s favor 969 quid more expensive for the Reno zoy so when you take all that into account the cost of ownership over 3 years the Rena Zoe actually ends up nearly three grand cheaper over 3 years than that 1.1
L petrol Fiesta and if you take into account the cost to buy the car in the first place then it works out five grand cheaper for the Reno Zoey versus the petrol Fiesta is that a surprise for you cuz if I’m honest that’s more than I expected I was expecting to be around
About on par because I thought well depreciation might be more for the EV the fuel will be less ex I thought they’d all balance out I didn’t expect it to be that high so was that a surprise to you guys out there so there
You go now I think you can get an idea why Oliver is in a Renault Zoey because compared to his mates in the Ford Fiesta this is saving him three grand every 3 years and in fact if you take into a consideration the purchase price it’s
More like five grand over 3 years he’s saving but more importantly is the car right for you what do you reckon with it yeah it’s pretty good decent car acceleration is good it’s a nippy car it’s a nippy car that’s not something I really want to hear as a first car for
My son in fact that reminds me after a few weeks of driving uh when I was younger I managed to roll my car so I better just check there’s no that was your mom’s car wasn’t it yeah that was my mom’s car thank you for reminding me
There I rolled my mom’s car two weeks after I pass mat test but so far so good with Oliver’s Reno Zoe in fact I’ve just remembered your first Caron was a Ford Escort Mark 2 1.3 l 1.3 l and you used to call it the beast but everybody else
Used to call it the shed so question to you guys out there what was your first car cuz I bet it wasn’t electric car was it my first car was a 1968 VW Beatle which are still owned today and on that note I hope you enjoyed this episode and we’ll see you
On the next One
We are entering in a era where the first car will be an electric car for more and more new drivers.
In this episode we crunch the numbers and compare an electric Renault Zoe against the most popular petrol car for new drivers, the Ford Fiesta 1.1L.
We take into account the purchase price, cost for insurance, tax and fuel. We even do a rough calculation for the amount of depreciation one should expect over 3 years and 30, 000 miles for such cars. I think most would be surprised which comes out cheapest and by how much.
