I have some exciting news, we’ve gone electric much faster than I was expecting!
I’m lucky to get a company car through work. Our previous company car, a Toyota Prius (Optimus (Prius) as we affectionately called it) was up for renewal in 6 months time so I was notified that I could look at ordering a replacement, but there was unexpected twist. Due to the long delivery times of EV’s and a big push towards a move towards EV’s my company had ordered several EV’s that were available straight away with no lead time. This meant I would need to make a decision whether to go electric much faster than I was expecting to.
Would an EV work for me?
The first question anyone should ask themselves is ‘would an EV work for me?’. It was something I asked myself 4 years ago before I chose the Prius. At the time the only full electric option was a electric Golf with a real world range of 120 miles on a full charge. At the time that range felt quite limiting for me so I went with the Prius (mild hybrid as the PHEV wasn’t an option available to me).
If you have off road parking and the ability to install an EV charger an EV should be considered. Even if you don’t have those then it’s still possible to charge via local charging network, but it’s just a bit more difficult to live with, and also more costly to charge.
To make an informed decision I needed to understand my actual daily mileage. Thankfully I have all of my mileage documented on spreadsheets (due to submitting monthly business mileage returns), it’s even down to odometer readings taken at the start and end of day. This gave me great data to analyse to understand my business mileage and in a way personal mileage over a month too.
My biggest concern was my daily business mileage as rapid charging whilst away from home could increase per mile costs beyond my companies reimbursement rate (currently 9p per mile n line with HMRC rates).
By knowing the maximum daily business mileage I could work out if an EV would have sufficient range, but also if I could replace those miles by recharging within an EV tariff’s low cost period each night.
My average daily business mileage was 69 miles. The average maximum daily business mileage was 130. The actual highest maximum daily business mileage recorded was 200 miles in one day.
What I really needed to understand how the Maximo business mileage I do a daily basis as I need to ensure I can charge only a5 home for business use. From the data I was able to work out the how much mileage I do as an overall percentage of days.
As can be seen in the table I do less than 75 miles per day 56% of the time. At 100 miles per day that’s 87% of the time. If I extended that to 150 miles that would cover 98% of business days.
Theoretically as long as I could ensure an EV range greater than 150 miles I could charge at home majority of the time and minimise expensive rapid charging during the day.
Home Charging
Charging at home is the cheapes5 option as there are many EV tariffs available that provide lower cost electricity in off peak periods. The issue is they all provide different low cost period durations and low cost period per kWh rates too so choosing the right tariff can be difficult and can be different for everyone.
Octopus Energy both Intelligent Octopus and Octopus Go tariffs available to EV owners. Intelligent Octopus provides 6 hours at 7.5p per kWh. Octopus Go provides 4 hours at 9.5p per kWh.
I calculated the cost of recharging an EV using between 3 and 10 hour recharge periods for Intelligent Octopus, Octopus Go and Octopus Flux to see how the cost differs for each tariff.
It was soon apparent Intelligent Octopus would provide the lowest cost tariff to charge an EV. Depending on the EVs efficiency Intelligent Octopus can provide 126-147 miles at a 6 hour recharge cost of just £3.15. That’s around 2p per mile.
As can be seen in the tables from a cost per mile basis it’s best to keep charging within the low cost periods as recharge costs rapidly increase the more higher cost period electricity is used.
If the recharge time was extended outside the low cost period by just one hour to 7 hours recharging the actual recharge cost would nearly double to £6.07. That extra cost is due to the extra hour using higher rate electricity at 41.65p per kWh.
Multiple recharges up to the maximum low cost period time over multiple days would be the most cost efficient method to recharge a larger kW requirement. This of course depends on whether it’s possible to do this depending on expected daily mileage over the next coming days.
Where possible its best to use Intelligent Octopus as it’s by far the cheapest tariff per mile. For me the 6 hour low period would also likely allow daily mileage to be replaced on a nightly basis too. Octopus Go could provide nearly 100 miles per day at only 2.7p per mile. Even charging outside the low cost 4 hour period of Octopus Go I’d still be below the business mileage reimbursement rate.
The issue with Intelligent Octopus is that it’s not available on many models. Whilst the brands below are said to be compatible when checking individual models like the Kia EV6 I found out at the time that model wasn’t compatible even though Kia was (I’ve since received an email saying it’s been added since).
Any EV model would be compatible with Inteligent Octopus if an Ohme charger was installed.
Solar and EV’s
The disadvantage of Octopus EV tariffs is that SEG export rates have to drop to just 4.1p. This is because Octopus Outgoing 15p per kWh export rate isn’t available to you if you have an EV tariff.
Whilst this is annoying that your export income would drop considerably one way to combat this would be by putting as much excess solar generation into an EV as possible. Its effectively a 41.65p per kWh saving as you’d otherwise be importing higher cost electricity during the day to charge an EV. It would also make sense to install a home battery (which I’d ordered before the EV change came up) as this would reduce excess solar generation being exported at such low cost of 4.1p per kWh which could be stored and used later rather than importing electricity later at a much higher cost electricity of 41.65p per kWh in the evening/night.
To send only excess solar generation to an EV you need a suitable EV charger as not all EV chargers can do this. One suitable EV charger is the Myenergi Zappi. Sadly the Zappi EV charger isn’t currently compatible with Intelligent Octopus, but I’ve heard rumours it could potentially be added soon (fingers crossed).
What EV did I choose?
To decide I first made a list of my key requirements in priority order:
1/ High efficiency
2/ Range of circa 200 miles on a single charge
3/ Intelligent Octopus compatibility (if possible, but not to the detriment of points 1 & 2)
From the list I had available I watched many YouTube reviews, and read many online reviews before making a decision. I soon discounted a few models on the basis of efficiency (miles per kWh). This is one key aspect that I think is often overlooked on the basis of range being the most important factor. My reader has found models may have had the range I wanted but this was generally only possible due to a higher capacity battery. To me higher efficiency was more important to ensure suitable range (I did previously drive a Prius!) than battery capacity increasing range. Higher efficiency means less electricity is used per mile travelled, which in turn is both better for the environment and your wallet. Higher capacity batteries also means increased weight, which decreases efficiency and low efficiency decreases range in a downward spiral.
I soon whittled it down to the Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5 as both had good efficiency and the required range. At the time of choosing neither EV’s were Intelligent Octopus compatible. After test driving both I chose the Hyundai Ioniq 5 73kW model. Whilst they are quite similar (they are built using the same EV base) the Hyundai Ioniq 5 just felt light and airy inside compared to the EV6. I’m also a big fan of the retro/futuristic styling of the Ioniq 5 too. To me it just looks like how an electric vehicle should look.
What tariff will we use?
Moving away from Octopus Flux will be a big decision as up to now the higher export rates have worked out very well for solar system. An EV and home battery are both huge changes that will likely both affect how we utilise our solar system.
I suspect once both the home battery and EV charger are installed our exported solar will drop, so it will be a case of working out whether staying on Flux with its higher export rate but higher kWh unit rates will work out cheaper than a lower kWh EV tariff rate but lower SEG export rate. Initially I plan to stay on Octopus Flux to assess its monthly cost over summer but I suspect due to my high mileage I will move to Octopus Go for the low cost period rate. The high cost rate of 41.65p should not be an issue once the home battery is installed as we should be nearly self sufficient via stored solar generation and the ability to charge the home battery at 9.5p per kWh during low solar periods in winter. If the Myenergi Zappi EV charger does become Intelligent Octopus compatible I will likely look to move across to Intelligent Octopus due to the longer 6 hour low cost period at low cost of 7.5p per kWh. I will also need to research whether there are higher SEG export rates available to me from other suppliers too.
Cover Photo by Ernest Ojeh on Unsplash.