Your car’s probably your pride and joy. You probably keep it all shiny and nice looking, and love driving it here, there and everywhere.  But have you ever stopped to think how much it’s actually costing you to run your car in the first place?

In 2011, the Office for National Statistics found that the average UK household spends £33.30 on the operation of personal transport, totalling an expenditure of £133.20 per month simply on running a vehicle.

Driving is certainly an expensive hobby. When you think about it, there’s petrol, insurance, road tax and any repairs needed to also factor into the overall cost as well.

Driving a conventional petrol car is also having an extremely adverse affect on our environment, with fuel emissions contributing greatly to the ever-present threat of global warming. With more people becoming aware of the problems of fuel emissions and the affect they have on our environment, this is then driving up interest in more energy-conscious electric cars and vehicles.

But how much does an electrical car cost to run? Even if it’s more environmentally-conscious, there’s always the chance the electrically powered vehicle could also end up costing a fortune to run as well, right?

Nope. According to statistics obtained by Plug In America, it generally costs around $2 to $4 (certainly not a lot in pounds) to charge an electrical car up. This vehicle should then be able to travel 100 miles without needing a recharge (depending on the acceleration, road layouts etc) but it can’t be disputed that running an electrical car seems to be exceptionally cheaper than a conventional petrol car.

‘Great!’ I hear you cry. ‘Sign me up!’ you may say. But to you, my now electric car hungry friend, I say....stop. Although electric cars can cost a smidgeon of your annual electrical bills to run, the retail price of the vehicles themselves may be enough to make your eyes spin.

Take the Toyota Auris Hybrid. It looks exceptionally pretty and is very energy efficient, but it costs (at RRP) £20,800!  Unless you’ve got vast resources of wealth tucked away in the biscuit jar or hidden under the loose floorboard in your bedroom, it’s unlikely for most of us that we can afford to spend that much on any kind of car without saving for a long time.

While this is a hybrid car that uses both electrical and conventional fuel power, it’s easy to see how much the costs ramp up when the electrical engine comes into play. Higher end models can cost tens of thousands of pounds.

If you want to put things in perspective, if you work it out based on the average fuel consumption above of a UK household regular vehicle, it’d take around 156 months to pay the same amount for your regular car’s fuel as you’ve paid for the electric vehicle. That’s 13 years.

Of course you have to factor in things such as the cost of a regular car and potential rises in fuel prices, but it generally works out as being exceptionally expensive to buy an electric car, meaning any savings you would have earned on electric power would probably have been long since squandered on actually paying for the car in the first place.

There are some benefits of having an electric car though. Not only will fuel costs generally be cheaper, but you actually get access to your own parkin...er...’charge spots’ in certain areas where you can plug in your car and merrily wander off to watch a movie, eat some food or whatever else you so desire.

At the moment, the electric car seems to more of a status symbol than a legitimate solution to energy efficiency.   It’s all very well to say you’re going to get an electric car and do your bit for the environment, but your saved funds are really going to be taking a big hit as a result of your energy efficient lifestyle.


//

Written by Barry Atkins at www.tester.co.uk