Finding the chase and cutting to it

Of course: how much are you saving?
Not how is it to drive, what’s it like on a long journey or how comfortable is it in traffic.

Actually, that’s not quite true, there is one other question that pops up from time to time.  The whole quietness of the experience is a major concern for a few.  I have to say I keep to the old adage taught from Road Craft and my advanced motorcycle observers: what is happening, what can happen, what can possibly happen?  You have to pay attention, but then in any modern motor car, that is the case and there is a horn if we need it and the sharpest brakes we have ever experienced.

So back to the major one: and how can we judge unless we compare the running costs.

This has not been a usual year, I spent some time not commuting due to the sinusitis, the operation and my recovery.  So our miles have been down, Jon did spend some time not travelling as much as usual.

Hot off the press, we have done 2,384 miles with 565.7 kW/h of electricity.  Given that 1 kW/h costs approx. 16p, that gives a total of just under £91 for six months worth of driving.  As I said it’s been a light year so far.

Each mile costs approx 4p or each pound buys 26-27 miles of driving.  However, 50% of the charging has been done on public charging points, so as an estimate, we’ve spent £45 on charging the car at home.  In total, that’s £7.50 a month for electricity at home and “£7.50” for charging elsewhere (although currently that’s all been for free).

This is not being particularly careful either.  We keep up with the traffic, even on dual carriage ways (27-30mph in 30mph limits, 37-40mph in 40mph and 57-50mph in 50mph limits.  Typically for the journeys we do, we keep up with the traffic and over take the lorries etc. on dual carriage ways varying between 57-70mph where the limit allows).

We run the air conditioning in the summer and during the commute, it’s odds on to favourite that the radio is on.  If it rains, dipped headlamps and front (and rear) windscreen wipers are going.

But each 1mph has an effect on the battery, so it’s really rewarding not doing the full 70mph, especially up hill :o.  Going down hill, being light on the throttle means more charging.

Now for some bistro maths…

To get what we’re saving, we are going to take the average consumption the BMW 650i reported (as this was the car we lost for the Leaf).  This is not really fair on the BMW, as the majority of the journeys we do the Leaf were not the journeys the BMW was built to do.  But we have done a couple of long journeys with the Leaf which is equivalent.  Also the BMW is not your average car, but it’s what we had, so these are our figures.

The BMW did 22mpg according to its trip computer.  So that means the journeys we’ve covered in the Leaf would have consumed approx 108 gallons in the Beamer.  To get litres we multiply that by 4.5 (to one decimal point), giving us a total of 486 litres.

Let’s be generous (as petrol prices were not that good back in January) and say a litre costs £1.30.  This gives us a total of £587 saved on petrol.  So per month:

Car	Cost per month for mileage	Cost per month for insurance	Cost per month for tax	Total costs for the 6 months
Leaf	£15	£17	£0	£192
BMW	£98	£35	£21	£924

(Please note that this is not the whole picture: we chose to rent the battery, which adds £420 for the six months- if we’d bought out right then that charge wouldn’t impact us.  It also ignores the “free electricity”.)

How are we doing compared to other Leaf drivers?

Nissan rates your driving economy in your region and we are not doing that well (though we’re certainly not the worst). The car with the best results is getting a whopping 12miles per kW/h in the UK. By my estimate that means they are managing around 190 miles per charge per 16kW/h worth of battery. Which impressive.  We get around 80 miles for 16kW/h.

We are not aiming for that.

We have a car that does have the same pull at a set of traffic lights as my husband’s 5 litre, 6 year old BMW had.  It doesn’t have the top speed of that car and lacks a couple of the creature comforts.

We’re running the Leaf for 20% of the costs of that petrol car and there are not that many petrol cars that could have done that given the performance we’re enjoying.  Not including servicing but we think we save a third on that too.

It’s good to own a Leaf.