Streets ahead? What I?ve learned from my year with an electric car

This time last year my partner John and I celebrated purchasing an electric car by driving through London to see the Christmas lights without having to pay congestion or Ulez - ultra-low emission zone - charges. I gleefully tweeted that Regent Street, deserted in lockdown, seemed a London from a different era: empty roads and glittering shop windows.

This was my first moment of enjoyment of the electric vehicle (EV), whose purchase had been the source of considerable domestic tension. An eternal optimist, John was convinced we should dispense with a diesel car. The arrival of a grandchild, living at the opposite diagonal corner of London, tipped the balance. It would cut 30 minutes off a hellish journey.

I mainly saw negatives. I liked my nippy BMW and had range anxiety. How far could we go before the battery failed? Would we be able to do long drives? Were our meandering journeys through France finished for good? "Of course we'll go," John said. 'The French are way ahead of us when it comes to electric."

Not in the Tesla price bracket, we settled on a Renault Zoe. Of the cheaper cars, it had the longest range: about 240 miles on a full charge, weather and driving conditions dependent. But all EVs are expensive - £31,000 for this small and far-from-luxury car. We opted to lease, paying a small amount of cash and then monthly payments.

From the outset the whole experience was distinctly lacking in frills; a couple of young petrolheads waved us goodbye with minimal induction to the car and no information about the charging infrastructure, except to "use the Zap[-Map] app to find a charge point".

One piece of info that would have been handy for our survival was that EVs have incredible acceleration. We had been in eco-mode since purchasing the car, when, on the first trip outside London, we found ourselves labouring up a hill, accelerator flat to the floor and still only hitting 55mph. John reached over and switched off eco-mode "to see what happens". Pinned against the seats by the sheer force, we took off like a rocket.

We were on our own trying to figure out the mysteries of the country's charging network. BP rang, offering us a charging point outside our house. This domestic charging is cheapest but, living in a London terrace, we were ineligible. Instead we became aficionados of charging lamp-posts, relatively common in our area. But, as often with EVs, there is a catch. Wandsworth borough council does not reserve the parking spaces for EVs, so "ordinary" cars park there, displacing EVs, which are forced to hunt around for one of the faster, more expensive chargers.