I took delivery of a PHEV Kuga on a 73 plate October last year, it’s a company car. In December my employer issued a statement saying ‘electric only’ for any new orders in 2024 :thumbsdown: . Its costs me circa £120 per month in tax at 40% with no personal contribution.
Most of my colleagues who had ‘electric only’ cars delivered last year regret it. Time to charge at home too long, costs to charge anywhere other than at home way too expensive, mileage rate claimable per mile too low and barely covers costs of charging at home. Massive real world range reduction in winter, or at any speed over about 50mph.
The Kuga does about 30 miles +/- on the battery, in winter at night with the lights on, and costs about £1 to charge up from empty on a night time EV tariff. Not exactly staggering, but a lot of the journeys I do on personal mileage are ‘local’ so almost entirely in electric mode and very low cost.
For our 3 weekly London trips I put it in ‘save electric for later’ mode and switch to ‘electric only’ just after Heston services - the electric is sufficient to get us all the way through London to St Barts and back out again in the stop/start traffic.
For work trips I can claim 27p per mile as the petrol engine is 2.5 ltr - significantly more than the actual running cost even on petrol only.
It’s not the last word in terms of build quality and refinement, but it’s not a pain In the arse either and if I need to go somewhere at the drop of a hat it doesn’t matter if the battery is flat - best of both worlds.
Do I think it’s saving the planet? no, would I spend £38k on one out of my own pocket?… definitely not. Is it a really cheap way of me running a practical, low cost, brand new car ? (even if it is a ford) - Yes.