I sold my electric car and went back to a diesel – I’d had enough
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The maiden voyage of Guy Stenhouse’s new Jaguar I-Pace in 2019 did not go well. His 145-mile route from Glasgow to Sedbergh in Cumbria was lined with charging points – but most would not charge his car, meaning a trip that should have taken about 2 hours 45 mins took seven hours.
“I stopped at every charging station I could, hooked the car up to the charger only to find it wouldn’t work,” he says.” It meant I was only able to use slow chargers and I could only get about 13 miles of charge each time. I got home at midnight.”
Drivers are finding there are plenty of reasons for stalling on electric cars, from broken chargers and rising insurance costs to battery degradation and reduced range in cold weather.
Many electric vehicle (EV) drivers will have heard versions of this story, or even had a similar misfortune themselves – as I did when charging problems elongated a drive between London and Cornwall in an electric car last year.
It seems, five years ago, that perhaps Stenhouse was too far ahead of his time, and suffered at the hands of an under-developed charging network that is still evolving.
Stenhouse has since switched to a diesel car. That might sound surprising given that he was an early adopter of a fully electric car, as well as solar panels and a small wind turbine (he even had a hybrid car back in 2016).
But he’s not alone in turning his back on EVs. According to the UK-wide independent car supermarket Motorpoint, 56 per cent of EV drivers part-exchanged for an alternative fuel type in 2023, with petrol dominating the choice at 30 per cent.
Mark Carpenter, chief executive of Motorpoint Group, says: “It’s clear that some have found an electric vehicle isn’t right for them. There doesn’t seem to be one reason. Instead, it tends to be a range of factors, for example, moving to a property without a home charger, a new job with a longer commute, or the high price of public chargers.”
Harry Metcalfe, a motoring journalist and co-founder of the car magazine Evo, has also made the swap.
He also cites the rising cost of EV insurance, along with depreciation: the value of second-hand EVs has dropped 23 per cent in the past year, according to research from the online marketplace Auto Trader.
One reason for this is the Government’s Zero Emission Vehicles mandate, which requires that 28 per cent of all new vehicle sales must be EVs by 2025, increasing incrementally to 100 per cent by 2035.
It means manufacturers are pushing new EVs on to the market faster than demand is rising.
Ref: I sold my electric car and went back to a diesel – I’d had enough (inews)
Photo Credit: Supplied
