Electric cars are generally more expensive than conventional petrol or diesel cars. Despite this, they present many savings opportunities, including exemptions from road tax and congestion charges and cheaper maintenance costs.
Electric drive trains can operate on fewer than 20 moving parts as opposed to internal combustion engines, which often need around 2,000 moving parts. Fewer parts mean fewer things can go wrong with your EV, and thus it is cheaper to maintain.
Of course, you still have to do some maintenance work like with a petrol car, such as ensuring your tyres are well maintained, checking if your brake discs are working and making sure there is no damage to your windscreen.
This article aims to provide a concise guide to electric car maintenance costs.
Generally, electric cars are cheaper to maintain than standard cars; the most expensive potential cost of EV maintenance is your battery, which could cost up to £10,000 to replace.
Despite that, most of the time, EV maintenance will be relatively cheap, as they use fewer moving parts and thus have fewer parts that can be damaged than a petrol car.
Generally, EVs cost around 30% less to service than a traditional car and can be as much as 50% cheaper to maintain. However, maintenance costs vary between makes and models.
Plug-in hybrids are generally cheaper to maintain than full-petrol or diesel cars. However, they are more expensive to maintain than fully-electric cars, as they still have many conventional car parts, such as exhausts, clutches and gearboxes, which will need to be maintained and can be costly.
While you should keep an eye on your electric car to ensure there are no problems, generally, you won’t have to put too much effort into maintaining your EV.
There are fewer parts in the vehicle than in a petrol car, so fewer things can go wrong. Plus, there are many routine maintenance costs for a petrol/diesel car, such as an oil change, that an EV doesn’t need.
Unless something dreadful happens, EVs are relatively easy to fix. Perhaps the biggest potential problem is that your battery could go flat and leave you on the side of the road. Allowing your battery to drain fully can damage its lifespan, but you shouldn’t run out of charge, as most EV batteries will warn you they’re running low.
In case you are ever out and about and your battery signals for you to go to a charging point, you should download Bonnet, our app, which allows you to access thousands of charging locations across the country at a discounted price. We have partners with charging points in every part of the UK, so you’ll always be close to a charger if you download our app.
Maintaining your EV is important, and you should try to schedule regular servicing as your electric car will still need to pass its MOT test.
Almost all EV manufacturers offer service plans for their electric cars. Much like a mobile phone contract, they are often paid monthly by drivers in return for regular servicing when they need it; these services are generally cheaper than servicing petrol cars. For example, the Renault Zoe’s service plan only costs £299 for three years and 30,000 miles.
While these service plans are useful and can help prolong your car, they don’t generally cover wear and tear items, such as brake components or windscreen wipers.
The frequency you get your car serviced depends on what model you own. Nissan recommends you give its Leaf a service after each 12,000 km, while Tesla advises that you inspect their cars every 16,000 - 20,000 km.
Regular servicings are good and will help you maintain your car’s performance, ensure the battery lasts as long as possible and save you from potentially expensive maintenance costs in the future.
The battery is the most expensive part of your EV – and you may need to replace it. How long a battery lasts depends on how you drive and the EV model you own. A good general rule of thumb is adding two years to the EV’s warranty and expecting the battery to last around that long.
A few examples of rough estimates for how long EVs might last would be that the Nissan Leaf and Jaguar I-Pace are expected to last around eight years, and the Tesla Model 3 is expected to last between 21 - 35 years.
As your EV ages, it will degrade with each charging cycle. At first, these degradations will be incremental, and you probably won’t notice any effect on your EV or its driving range. However, over time, these increments build up, and they will significantly impact your battery’s lifespan. EVs lose around 1 - 2% of their range yearly, so after just five years of use, you might lose around 10% of your entire battery.
If you don’t care too much about your driving range and can get by on a limited number of miles per charge, you should be able to function fine, and it won’t impede your life, except for the need to charge more regularly.
Your battery condition might never affect you, as many manufacturers expect their batteries to outlast the car they are in.
When you purchase your car, it will come with a warranty. Many manufacturers guarantee that if your EV falls below 80% in eight years and 100,000 miles of driving, they will replace it. The exact specifications of an EV’s warranty vary depending on your model and battery size.
Below are a few battery warranty examples.
If battery cells aren’t working, you can repair them rather than replace the whole battery. However, battery repairs are very rare, and you probably won’t experience one.
Costs vary between manufacturers, and repairs will have to be done by the manufacturers directly. You should check if your warranty covers battery repairs.
Battery replacement isn’t something most drivers will have to deal with, as most batteries will outlive the car they come in. The cheapest way to get a replacement battery is to go to third parties who can fit used or refurbished batteries. Depending on battery capacities, you should expect to pay between £4,000 - £10,000 for a battery replacement.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a battery costs around £113 per kWh. Below are a few prices you might pay for a replacement battery, although the exact price might differ.
As battery replacement costs so much, you’ll probably want to prolong your battery life as much as possible to ensure you don’t have to fork out thousands of pounds.
Your battery uses more electricity if you overwork it, thus needing more regular charges and degrading your battery quicker. So try to avoid straining your battery whenever possible.
Below are a few simple tips which could help you extend your electric car’s battery life.
When you let your battery dwindle towards 0%, you don’t just risk leaving yourself stranded on the side of the road; you also damage the battery. So it’s a good idea to keep the battery comfortably above 0%.
It might sound counter-intuitive, but you should also try to avoid charging to 100%, as this can negatively affect your battery capacity and degrade it. Try to keep your battery in the 20 - 80% range; 10 - 90% isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Most modern electric cars have in-built systems that slow down your charge as it approaches 100% to keep your battery safe and not overworked, but you should still try to avoid doing it too often.
Don’t charge your battery every night just because you can; try to charge when you need to, as each charging cycle degrades your battery condition a little bit more.
Rapid charging is the fastest way to charge your electric car. Some chargers in the UK can charge your EV at 350 kWh. Rapid DC chargers can charge your car in just minutes compared to the hours it takes to charge your car at AC chargers.
However, while it might save you time charging, it will degrade your EV battery. High-voltage DC charging strains the battery much more than an AC charger does. If you use AC charging, you help your battery last much longer. Eight years of AC charging should give you around 10% more battery life than eight years of rapid charging.
If you’re unsure where your nearest AC chargers are, you should download Bonnet, which can locate chargers at any speed.
Accelerating and decelerating require more electricity than driving at a consistent speed, so you should avoid accelerating and maintain a consistent, manageable speed whenever possible.
Try to avoid going up steep inclines or on uneven roads. Drive as smoothly as possible, and you’ll get the most out of your EV.
While electric and petrol/diesel cars have differences, one thing they have in common is tyres, which wear and tear on an EV just as much as they do on a conventional car.
Keep an eye on your tyre pressure and maintain it at its recommended levels; if you’re unsure what those are, they are usually listed on a plate inside your EV’s door frame.
You can pump your tyres at home or at a petrol station. Having optimal tyre pressure means they’ll work perfectly and save you money on buying new tyres. However, having under-pressure tyres will reduce your car’s efficiency and having over-pressured ones will reduce their lifespan.
Even if you take all the precautions, your tyres will eventually wear out. Keep an eye on them for uneven tread wear, and replace worn-out tyres as soon as possible.
The exact cost of new tyres depends on their size and how common they are. Smaller common tyres are the cheapest ones on the market. To figure out the price of a new tyre, you should measure the width of the tread that meets the road, the thickness of the tyre and the wheel's diameter.
Input these measurements into tyre price comparison sites to find quotes.
Electric cars and petrol cars also share the same type of windscreens, so they are just as likely to chip with EVs as they are with conventional cars and use just as much wiper fluid.
Wipers and washer fluid should cost around £50; windscreens are more expensive to replace, and the exact price depends on the model. Before buying a new one, check if your car insurance covers windscreen damage.
Electric cars also have disc brakes, like petrol or diesel cars, which can break. To replace brake pads, discs and fluid, you should expect to pay around £250.
However, EV disc brakes are generally only used as an emergency backup to regenerative braking, so they probably won’t be used too often. Thus, they should outlive your EV, so you probably won’t have to replace them.
So which is cheaper to maintain? An electric car or a petrol car?
Well, there is an obvious winner: the electric car. Although it has much higher upfront costs, its low maintenance costs make it a great buy. It has much fewer moving parts that might need replacing.
The only major expense could be if the battery pack fails. However, most have long warranties, and drivers should expect them to last at least eight years.
Electric cars are much cheaper to fill up than pricy petrol cars and around half as expensive to run.
The cheapest place to charge your EV is at home, but many public charging stations offer affordable tariffs.
The more you know about your electric car, the more you can get out of it. EV maintenance costs being lower than petrol cars is a big financial benefit of electric cars. Another major financial difference is the low cost of charging compared to the price of petrol and diesel.
As EVs get more popular, there is more public charging infrastructure being introduced each day. There are so many networks that it can be hard to decide where to charge. Each network seems to need you to download their app and purchase a network membership just to use one charging point.
You’ll probably have to download new apps to charge everywhere you go. Downloading separate apps can quickly clutter your phone, and paying for multiple memberships can make charging a stressful, expensive thing to do.
That’s where Bonnet comes in. Bonnet is our app that allows drivers to connect to 17+ charging networks with just one app download. Our partners have charging points across the country at every speed, price and location imaginable.
If you’re looking to cut down on your charging bill, we have a membership option named Bonnet Boosts, which can help EV drivers save up to 15% off all their charging within our public charging network. Bonnet Boosts is the ideal way to charge at public charging stations.
If you want to make public charging stress-free and cheaper, you should download Bonnet today.
Generally, it is cheaper to maintain an electric car than a petrol car. Maintenance costs can be as much as 50% less with an EV. The most expensive thing to maintain is your battery, which can cost thousands to replace.
Maintaining an electric car is much easier than maintaining a petrol car. This is because an electric car has many more moving pieces than an EV. An electric drive train can work with less than 20 moving parts, whereas an internal combustion engine might need around 2,000 working pieces.
It is recommended that you service your EV annually to ensure it is running optimally and is experiencing no issues. Nissan recommends you service the Nissan Leaf every 12,000 km.
Electric cars are generally more expensive than conventional petrol or diesel cars. Despite this, they present many savings opportunities, including exemptions from road tax and congestion charges and cheaper maintenance costs.
Electric drive trains can operate on fewer than 20 moving parts as opposed to internal combustion engines, which often need around 2,000 moving parts. Fewer parts mean fewer things can go wrong with your EV, and thus it is cheaper to maintain.
Of course, you still have to do some maintenance work like with a petrol car, such as ensuring your tyres are well maintained, checking if your brake discs are working and making sure there is no damage to your windscreen.
This article aims to provide a concise guide to electric car maintenance costs.
Generally, electric cars are cheaper to maintain than standard cars; the most expensive potential cost of EV maintenance is your battery, which could cost up to £10,000 to replace.
Despite that, most of the time, EV maintenance will be relatively cheap, as they use fewer moving parts and thus have fewer parts that can be damaged than a petrol car.
Generally, EVs cost around 30% less to service than a traditional car and can be as much as 50% cheaper to maintain. However, maintenance costs vary between makes and models.
Plug-in hybrids are generally cheaper to maintain than full-petrol or diesel cars. However, they are more expensive to maintain than fully-electric cars, as they still have many conventional car parts, such as exhausts, clutches and gearboxes, which will need to be maintained and can be costly.
While you should keep an eye on your electric car to ensure there are no problems, generally, you won’t have to put too much effort into maintaining your EV.
There are fewer parts in the vehicle than in a petrol car, so fewer things can go wrong. Plus, there are many routine maintenance costs for a petrol/diesel car, such as an oil change, that an EV doesn’t need.
Unless something dreadful happens, EVs are relatively easy to fix. Perhaps the biggest potential problem is that your battery could go flat and leave you on the side of the road. Allowing your battery to drain fully can damage its lifespan, but you shouldn’t run out of charge, as most EV batteries will warn you they’re running low.
In case you are ever out and about and your battery signals for you to go to a charging point, you should download Bonnet, our app, which allows you to access thousands of charging locations across the country at a discounted price. We have partners with charging points in every part of the UK, so you’ll always be close to a charger if you download our app.
Maintaining your EV is important, and you should try to schedule regular servicing as your electric car will still need to pass its MOT test.
Almost all EV manufacturers offer service plans for their electric cars. Much like a mobile phone contract, they are often paid monthly by drivers in return for regular servicing when they need it; these services are generally cheaper than servicing petrol cars. For example, the Renault Zoe’s service plan only costs £299 for three years and 30,000 miles.
While these service plans are useful and can help prolong your car, they don’t generally cover wear and tear items, such as brake components or windscreen wipers.
The frequency you get your car serviced depends on what model you own. Nissan recommends you give its Leaf a service after each 12,000 km, while Tesla advises that you inspect their cars every 16,000 - 20,000 km.
Regular servicings are good and will help you maintain your car’s performance, ensure the battery lasts as long as possible and save you from potentially expensive maintenance costs in the future.
The battery is the most expensive part of your EV – and you may need to replace it. How long a battery lasts depends on how you drive and the EV model you own. A good general rule of thumb is adding two years to the EV’s warranty and expecting the battery to last around that long.
A few examples of rough estimates for how long EVs might last would be that the Nissan Leaf and Jaguar I-Pace are expected to last around eight years, and the Tesla Model 3 is expected to last between 21 - 35 years.
As your EV ages, it will degrade with each charging cycle. At first, these degradations will be incremental, and you probably won’t notice any effect on your EV or its driving range. However, over time, these increments build up, and they will significantly impact your battery’s lifespan. EVs lose around 1 - 2% of their range yearly, so after just five years of use, you might lose around 10% of your entire battery.
If you don’t care too much about your driving range and can get by on a limited number of miles per charge, you should be able to function fine, and it won’t impede your life, except for the need to charge more regularly.
Your battery condition might never affect you, as many manufacturers expect their batteries to outlast the car they are in.
When you purchase your car, it will come with a warranty. Many manufacturers guarantee that if your EV falls below 80% in eight years and 100,000 miles of driving, they will replace it. The exact specifications of an EV’s warranty vary depending on your model and battery size.
Below are a few battery warranty examples.
If battery cells aren’t working, you can repair them rather than replace the whole battery. However, battery repairs are very rare, and you probably won’t experience one.
Costs vary between manufacturers, and repairs will have to be done by the manufacturers directly. You should check if your warranty covers battery repairs.
Battery replacement isn’t something most drivers will have to deal with, as most batteries will outlive the car they come in. The cheapest way to get a replacement battery is to go to third parties who can fit used or refurbished batteries. Depending on battery capacities, you should expect to pay between £4,000 - £10,000 for a battery replacement.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a battery costs around £113 per kWh. Below are a few prices you might pay for a replacement battery, although the exact price might differ.
As battery replacement costs so much, you’ll probably want to prolong your battery life as much as possible to ensure you don’t have to fork out thousands of pounds.
Your battery uses more electricity if you overwork it, thus needing more regular charges and degrading your battery quicker. So try to avoid straining your battery whenever possible.
Below are a few simple tips which could help you extend your electric car’s battery life.
When you let your battery dwindle towards 0%, you don’t just risk leaving yourself stranded on the side of the road; you also damage the battery. So it’s a good idea to keep the battery comfortably above 0%.
It might sound counter-intuitive, but you should also try to avoid charging to 100%, as this can negatively affect your battery capacity and degrade it. Try to keep your battery in the 20 - 80% range; 10 - 90% isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Most modern electric cars have in-built systems that slow down your charge as it approaches 100% to keep your battery safe and not overworked, but you should still try to avoid doing it too often.
Don’t charge your battery every night just because you can; try to charge when you need to, as each charging cycle degrades your battery condition a little bit more.
Rapid charging is the fastest way to charge your electric car. Some chargers in the UK can charge your EV at 350 kWh. Rapid DC chargers can charge your car in just minutes compared to the hours it takes to charge your car at AC chargers.
However, while it might save you time charging, it will degrade your EV battery. High-voltage DC charging strains the battery much more than an AC charger does. If you use AC charging, you help your battery last much longer. Eight years of AC charging should give you around 10% more battery life than eight years of rapid charging.
If you’re unsure where your nearest AC chargers are, you should download Bonnet, which can locate chargers at any speed.
Accelerating and decelerating require more electricity than driving at a consistent speed, so you should avoid accelerating and maintain a consistent, manageable speed whenever possible.
Try to avoid going up steep inclines or on uneven roads. Drive as smoothly as possible, and you’ll get the most out of your EV.
While electric and petrol/diesel cars have differences, one thing they have in common is tyres, which wear and tear on an EV just as much as they do on a conventional car.
Keep an eye on your tyre pressure and maintain it at its recommended levels; if you’re unsure what those are, they are usually listed on a plate inside your EV’s door frame.
You can pump your tyres at home or at a petrol station. Having optimal tyre pressure means they’ll work perfectly and save you money on buying new tyres. However, having under-pressure tyres will reduce your car’s efficiency and having over-pressured ones will reduce their lifespan.
Even if you take all the precautions, your tyres will eventually wear out. Keep an eye on them for uneven tread wear, and replace worn-out tyres as soon as possible.
The exact cost of new tyres depends on their size and how common they are. Smaller common tyres are the cheapest ones on the market. To figure out the price of a new tyre, you should measure the width of the tread that meets the road, the thickness of the tyre and the wheel's diameter.
Input these measurements into tyre price comparison sites to find quotes.
Electric cars and petrol cars also share the same type of windscreens, so they are just as likely to chip with EVs as they are with conventional cars and use just as much wiper fluid.
Wipers and washer fluid should cost around £50; windscreens are more expensive to replace, and the exact price depends on the model. Before buying a new one, check if your car insurance covers windscreen damage.
Electric cars also have disc brakes, like petrol or diesel cars, which can break. To replace brake pads, discs and fluid, you should expect to pay around £250.
However, EV disc brakes are generally only used as an emergency backup to regenerative braking, so they probably won’t be used too often. Thus, they should outlive your EV, so you probably won’t have to replace them.
So which is cheaper to maintain? An electric car or a petrol car?
Well, there is an obvious winner: the electric car. Although it has much higher upfront costs, its low maintenance costs make it a great buy. It has much fewer moving parts that might need replacing.
The only major expense could be if the battery pack fails. However, most have long warranties, and drivers should expect them to last at least eight years.
Electric cars are much cheaper to fill up than pricy petrol cars and around half as expensive to run.
The cheapest place to charge your EV is at home, but many public charging stations offer affordable tariffs.
The more you know about your electric car, the more you can get out of it. EV maintenance costs being lower than petrol cars is a big financial benefit of electric cars. Another major financial difference is the low cost of charging compared to the price of petrol and diesel.
As EVs get more popular, there is more public charging infrastructure being introduced each day. There are so many networks that it can be hard to decide where to charge. Each network seems to need you to download their app and purchase a network membership just to use one charging point.
You’ll probably have to download new apps to charge everywhere you go. Downloading separate apps can quickly clutter your phone, and paying for multiple memberships can make charging a stressful, expensive thing to do.
That’s where Bonnet comes in. Bonnet is our app that allows drivers to connect to 17+ charging networks with just one app download. Our partners have charging points across the country at every speed, price and location imaginable.
If you’re looking to cut down on your charging bill, we have a membership option named Bonnet Boosts, which can help EV drivers save up to 15% off all their charging within our public charging network. Bonnet Boosts is the ideal way to charge at public charging stations.
If you want to make public charging stress-free and cheaper, you should download Bonnet today.
Electric cars are generally more expensive than conventional petrol or diesel cars. Despite this, they present many savings opportunities, including exemptions from road tax and congestion charges and cheaper maintenance costs.
Electric drive trains can operate on fewer than 20 moving parts as opposed to internal combustion engines, which often need around 2,000 moving parts. Fewer parts mean fewer things can go wrong with your EV, and thus it is cheaper to maintain.
Of course, you still have to do some maintenance work like with a petrol car, such as ensuring your tyres are well maintained, checking if your brake discs are working and making sure there is no damage to your windscreen.
This article aims to provide a concise guide to electric car maintenance costs.
Generally, electric cars are cheaper to maintain than standard cars; the most expensive potential cost of EV maintenance is your battery, which could cost up to £10,000 to replace.
Despite that, most of the time, EV maintenance will be relatively cheap, as they use fewer moving parts and thus have fewer parts that can be damaged than a petrol car.
Generally, EVs cost around 30% less to service than a traditional car and can be as much as 50% cheaper to maintain. However, maintenance costs vary between makes and models.
Plug-in hybrids are generally cheaper to maintain than full-petrol or diesel cars. However, they are more expensive to maintain than fully-electric cars, as they still have many conventional car parts, such as exhausts, clutches and gearboxes, which will need to be maintained and can be costly.
While you should keep an eye on your electric car to ensure there are no problems, generally, you won’t have to put too much effort into maintaining your EV.
There are fewer parts in the vehicle than in a petrol car, so fewer things can go wrong. Plus, there are many routine maintenance costs for a petrol/diesel car, such as an oil change, that an EV doesn’t need.
Unless something dreadful happens, EVs are relatively easy to fix. Perhaps the biggest potential problem is that your battery could go flat and leave you on the side of the road. Allowing your battery to drain fully can damage its lifespan, but you shouldn’t run out of charge, as most EV batteries will warn you they’re running low.
In case you are ever out and about and your battery signals for you to go to a charging point, you should download Bonnet, our app, which allows you to access thousands of charging locations across the country at a discounted price. We have partners with charging points in every part of the UK, so you’ll always be close to a charger if you download our app.
Maintaining your EV is important, and you should try to schedule regular servicing as your electric car will still need to pass its MOT test.
Almost all EV manufacturers offer service plans for their electric cars. Much like a mobile phone contract, they are often paid monthly by drivers in return for regular servicing when they need it; these services are generally cheaper than servicing petrol cars. For example, the Renault Zoe’s service plan only costs £299 for three years and 30,000 miles.
While these service plans are useful and can help prolong your car, they don’t generally cover wear and tear items, such as brake components or windscreen wipers.
The frequency you get your car serviced depends on what model you own. Nissan recommends you give its Leaf a service after each 12,000 km, while Tesla advises that you inspect their cars every 16,000 - 20,000 km.
Regular servicings are good and will help you maintain your car’s performance, ensure the battery lasts as long as possible and save you from potentially expensive maintenance costs in the future.
The battery is the most expensive part of your EV – and you may need to replace it. How long a battery lasts depends on how you drive and the EV model you own. A good general rule of thumb is adding two years to the EV’s warranty and expecting the battery to last around that long.
A few examples of rough estimates for how long EVs might last would be that the Nissan Leaf and Jaguar I-Pace are expected to last around eight years, and the Tesla Model 3 is expected to last between 21 - 35 years.
As your EV ages, it will degrade with each charging cycle. At first, these degradations will be incremental, and you probably won’t notice any effect on your EV or its driving range. However, over time, these increments build up, and they will significantly impact your battery’s lifespan. EVs lose around 1 - 2% of their range yearly, so after just five years of use, you might lose around 10% of your entire battery.
If you don’t care too much about your driving range and can get by on a limited number of miles per charge, you should be able to function fine, and it won’t impede your life, except for the need to charge more regularly.
Your battery condition might never affect you, as many manufacturers expect their batteries to outlast the car they are in.
When you purchase your car, it will come with a warranty. Many manufacturers guarantee that if your EV falls below 80% in eight years and 100,000 miles of driving, they will replace it. The exact specifications of an EV’s warranty vary depending on your model and battery size.
Below are a few battery warranty examples.
If battery cells aren’t working, you can repair them rather than replace the whole battery. However, battery repairs are very rare, and you probably won’t experience one.
Costs vary between manufacturers, and repairs will have to be done by the manufacturers directly. You should check if your warranty covers battery repairs.
Battery replacement isn’t something most drivers will have to deal with, as most batteries will outlive the car they come in. The cheapest way to get a replacement battery is to go to third parties who can fit used or refurbished batteries. Depending on battery capacities, you should expect to pay between £4,000 - £10,000 for a battery replacement.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a battery costs around £113 per kWh. Below are a few prices you might pay for a replacement battery, although the exact price might differ.
As battery replacement costs so much, you’ll probably want to prolong your battery life as much as possible to ensure you don’t have to fork out thousands of pounds.
Your battery uses more electricity if you overwork it, thus needing more regular charges and degrading your battery quicker. So try to avoid straining your battery whenever possible.
Below are a few simple tips which could help you extend your electric car’s battery life.
When you let your battery dwindle towards 0%, you don’t just risk leaving yourself stranded on the side of the road; you also damage the battery. So it’s a good idea to keep the battery comfortably above 0%.
It might sound counter-intuitive, but you should also try to avoid charging to 100%, as this can negatively affect your battery capacity and degrade it. Try to keep your battery in the 20 - 80% range; 10 - 90% isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Most modern electric cars have in-built systems that slow down your charge as it approaches 100% to keep your battery safe and not overworked, but you should still try to avoid doing it too often.
Don’t charge your battery every night just because you can; try to charge when you need to, as each charging cycle degrades your battery condition a little bit more.
Rapid charging is the fastest way to charge your electric car. Some chargers in the UK can charge your EV at 350 kWh. Rapid DC chargers can charge your car in just minutes compared to the hours it takes to charge your car at AC chargers.
However, while it might save you time charging, it will degrade your EV battery. High-voltage DC charging strains the battery much more than an AC charger does. If you use AC charging, you help your battery last much longer. Eight years of AC charging should give you around 10% more battery life than eight years of rapid charging.
If you’re unsure where your nearest AC chargers are, you should download Bonnet, which can locate chargers at any speed.
Accelerating and decelerating require more electricity than driving at a consistent speed, so you should avoid accelerating and maintain a consistent, manageable speed whenever possible.
Try to avoid going up steep inclines or on uneven roads. Drive as smoothly as possible, and you’ll get the most out of your EV.
While electric and petrol/diesel cars have differences, one thing they have in common is tyres, which wear and tear on an EV just as much as they do on a conventional car.
Keep an eye on your tyre pressure and maintain it at its recommended levels; if you’re unsure what those are, they are usually listed on a plate inside your EV’s door frame.
You can pump your tyres at home or at a petrol station. Having optimal tyre pressure means they’ll work perfectly and save you money on buying new tyres. However, having under-pressure tyres will reduce your car’s efficiency and having over-pressured ones will reduce their lifespan.
Even if you take all the precautions, your tyres will eventually wear out. Keep an eye on them for uneven tread wear, and replace worn-out tyres as soon as possible.
The exact cost of new tyres depends on their size and how common they are. Smaller common tyres are the cheapest ones on the market. To figure out the price of a new tyre, you should measure the width of the tread that meets the road, the thickness of the tyre and the wheel's diameter.
Input these measurements into tyre price comparison sites to find quotes.
Electric cars and petrol cars also share the same type of windscreens, so they are just as likely to chip with EVs as they are with conventional cars and use just as much wiper fluid.
Wipers and washer fluid should cost around £50; windscreens are more expensive to replace, and the exact price depends on the model. Before buying a new one, check if your car insurance covers windscreen damage.
Electric cars also have disc brakes, like petrol or diesel cars, which can break. To replace brake pads, discs and fluid, you should expect to pay around £250.
However, EV disc brakes are generally only used as an emergency backup to regenerative braking, so they probably won’t be used too often. Thus, they should outlive your EV, so you probably won’t have to replace them.
So which is cheaper to maintain? An electric car or a petrol car?
Well, there is an obvious winner: the electric car. Although it has much higher upfront costs, its low maintenance costs make it a great buy. It has much fewer moving parts that might need replacing.
The only major expense could be if the battery pack fails. However, most have long warranties, and drivers should expect them to last at least eight years.
Electric cars are much cheaper to fill up than pricy petrol cars and around half as expensive to run.
The cheapest place to charge your EV is at home, but many public charging stations offer affordable tariffs.
The more you know about your electric car, the more you can get out of it. EV maintenance costs being lower than petrol cars is a big financial benefit of electric cars. Another major financial difference is the low cost of charging compared to the price of petrol and diesel.
As EVs get more popular, there is more public charging infrastructure being introduced each day. There are so many networks that it can be hard to decide where to charge. Each network seems to need you to download their app and purchase a network membership just to use one charging point.
You’ll probably have to download new apps to charge everywhere you go. Downloading separate apps can quickly clutter your phone, and paying for multiple memberships can make charging a stressful, expensive thing to do.
That’s where Bonnet comes in. Bonnet is our app that allows drivers to connect to 17+ charging networks with just one app download. Our partners have charging points across the country at every speed, price and location imaginable.
If you’re looking to cut down on your charging bill, we have a membership option named Bonnet Boosts, which can help EV drivers save up to 15% off all their charging within our public charging network. Bonnet Boosts is the ideal way to charge at public charging stations.
If you want to make public charging stress-free and cheaper, you should download Bonnet today.
Generally, it is cheaper to maintain an electric car than a petrol car. Maintenance costs can be as much as 50% less with an EV. The most expensive thing to maintain is your battery, which can cost thousands to replace.
Maintaining an electric car is much easier than maintaining a petrol car. This is because an electric car has many more moving pieces than an EV. An electric drive train can work with less than 20 moving parts, whereas an internal combustion engine might need around 2,000 working pieces.
It is recommended that you service your EV annually to ensure it is running optimally and is experiencing no issues. Nissan recommends you service the Nissan Leaf every 12,000 km.
