ELECTRIC vs PETROL CAR – which is REALLY cheaper?? | What Car?

you might assume that an EV is significantly cheaper to run than a petrol car but is that really the case that's what we're going to be finding out today to start this test we're at Cobham services on the M25 south of London I've got a fully electric BMW I4 and right now I'm topping up the battery to 100 and I'm in a BMW m440i Gran Coupe it's pretty much identical to the I4 other than the fact it has a petrol engine of course I'm just brimming the tank when Doug is finished charging we're going to head up to Leeds that's about 200 miles from here when we get there we're going to Crunch the numbers and find out how much all of this costs [Music] foreign [Music] that we've got on this test this is the I4 M50 which is the more powerful of the two versions of this car that you can get and it's pretty expensive costs more than 65 000 pounds but it's very quick it's very powerful and it's got a pretty big battery as well the usable capacity is 80.7 kilowatt hours and that's good for acclaimed wltp range around 300 miles so in theory the 200 mile Journey that we're planning to do today should be easily manageable in this car but I am a little bit nervous because the vast majority of those 200 miles are going to be on the motorway where electric cars at those faster speeds aren't as efficient as they would be doing slower speeds so it should make it but I'm not sure if it will make it comfortably pretty sure I'm going to have no problems making it in one go in this it's showing me 444 miles after I've just been the tank this is the 440i as I've already said it's the range stopping version of the 4 Series Grand Coupe lineup and it has a three liter straight six petrol engine it isn't quite as quick as dark side 4 it can do not 62 in 4.7 seconds but it is quite a lot cheaper it costs less than 60 000 pounds and on paper at least it should average around 35 MPG well that nice simple route that we had from London to Leeds has gone out the window almost instantly because the traffic today is absolutely horrendous so this is very representative of a real life journey in the UK where you think you know where you're going to go but the traffic is so bad that you have to do a massive detour right at the start and probably turn up late to whatever you're heading to we've also got the climate control set to Auto at 21 degrees I've got the regenerative braking set to Adaptive and we're not trying to hypermile this or anything we're trying to make it representative of a real world Journey when you need to go from London to Leeds in one hit so let's see what happens Douglas well we are over halfway so it's time for a progress update what is your trip computer saying at the minute mine's actually saying 38 MPG which is quite a bit better than this car's supposed to do I have been sticking to the speed limit so that might be why but uh yeah so far so good um I've got 330 miles predicted range so it should quite easily make it so my battery is down to 38 percent um my predicted range is 96 miles and we've got 83 miles left until we get to the biology charger so that'll be fine I think I think we'll still make it because also hopefully the trip computer is intelligent enough to realize that we've mostly been doing Motorway miles so far so surely it'll kind of take the prediction of what's left based on the you know average speed that we've been doing for today but also maybe not foreign [Music] dog I can still see you in my rear view mirror so you haven't run out yet but are you gonna make it I haven't run out yet I have been quite nervous basically the whole time we've been on the M1 I can tell you that right now so what we've got eight miles until we reach the charger I've got 17 miles left so you're gonna make it but it's gonna be close I should make it unless something goes horribly wrong that should be enough and of course if I wasn't driving as part of this test with you then I would probably you know quite a few miles ago I would have stuck it in Eco Pro I would have made the regen braking stronger than it is that kind of thing but I'm determined not to resort to anything like that so we can make this as Fair as possible I've got uh between half and three quarters of a tank left and apparently I don't know if I believe this or not but apparently I'm doing 39.7 MPG that's the average on the trip so far and this car is only supposed to do about 35 MPG yeah I don't know I mean nearly 40 MPG it's not bad from a three liter straight six with this much power that is ridiculous whereas I have got five percent of my battery charge left yeah I've still got 280 miles remaining predicted range so uh yeah I can easily get back back down to uh Cobham again I think in fact I might do that and here we are at the ionity charges and every single one is taken but that's okay I'm not particularly in a rush and I've made it that's the important thing this wasn't supposed to be a range test but it kind of has turned into one hasn't it so I've made it the trick computer saying 227.7 miles I've got 11 miles of range left now I suppose I better get comfortable and wait for a charger to become free [Music] okay just pulling into the fuel station here and I can't quite believe this but it's saying I've done 39.9 MPG on the way up here couldn't quite hit 40 but still that's way more than this car's supposed to do it is uh along the motorway journey of course but still for a car but this much power that is very good but let's find out how accurate that is and fill it up [Music] right so just filled up here's the receipt so how much did we spend reveal those numbers it is the next day we're in Leeds and we're going to do the return Journey from here down to Cobham services in two different cars so now I've got the fuel powered Peugeot 208 and I'm just about to fill it up with petrol and I'm charging up the e-208 it's pretty much exactly the same car but it's powered by batteries of course and because we're looking at cheaper cars here it's not just the money side of things because this car has a shorter range so I'm not entirely sure it's going to make it back down south on a full charge but let's find out by the way the Persia that I'm in is the Peugeot 208 pure Tech 100 GT premium so that means it gets a 1.2 liter three-cylinder petrol Engine with 99 brake horsepower and I've got a six-speed manual gearbox with it you can have this engine and this gearbox combination in the 208 from around about 20 000 pounds but because we've got high spec GT premium that means that this car costs a little bit more than 24 000 pounds which is quite expensive in the 208 lineup but it's still a fair bit cheaper than the e208 now the e208 is in many ways a very good electric car in the same way that the regular Peugeot 208 is a very good car it's comfortable it has a nice interior it's reasonably refined on the motorway but the range isn't that spectacular it's not as bad as cars like the mini electric and the Honda e but this car can't do as many miles as a Renault Zoe for example which is another rival and nowhere near of course as many as the I4 although that is a lot more expensive and I wouldn't mind so much if you have some realistic figure from the manufacturer in the trip computer but we're doing 70 miles an hour here we're not gunning it along at 95. and in fact some sections of the M1 have been down 60 so that's enabled the car to be even more efficient and yet I started off with 213 miles showing on the Range indicator after a long Motorway Journey yesterday so it isn't as though we'd been driving the car around town for a week I have done 48 miles and I've used up 88 miles of charge so it's dropping at pretty much double the rate of the miles that we're actually doing and for that reason I don't think there's any chance of us making it even to Milton Keynes let alone to come [Music] okay so we're back on the road we've just had a quick top up to 70 took around 20 minutes so let's see how we get on and when we get there we do some charging work out some numbers and tell you how much all this costs right so now it's time to go through the numbers and we're going to start with the BMWs from yesterday so if you remember we did 227 miles a bit more than that in both of those BMWs will you win the m440i how much fuel did you put in and how much did it cost well I needed to put in 26.19 liters very expensive Motorway service station of course so pretty much top end one pound 99 a liter and the total cost was 52 pounds and nine P 52 pounds and 90 okay so I was in the I4 obviously did the same miles the same journey and when I charged it up at an ionity charger in Leeds I needed 83.68 kilowatt hours and the price at 69p per kilowatt hour and the total cost of that was 57 pounds 73 Pence so more expensive than the fuel needed in the m440i quite a bit more and it's a more expensive car it's course to buy so so now the Peugeot which we've just driven back to Cobham we've fully charged this e208 and I filled up the 208 and it required after 208 miles funnily enough 15.96 liters the fuel price was exactly the same here as it was in Leeds yesterday and the total cost of that was 31 pounds 90. how much did it cost to charge it up well obviously you had to do two charges we had to stop on the way because it couldn't make it in one hit but if you add both of those charges together and obviously same price we were using our naughty charges for both tests so 69 per kilowatt hour and that came to a total of around about 41 pounds 50. 41 pounds 50. so right 10 quid more than the petrol price they're doing exactly the same Journey so what did we learn well in this test on the day it was more expensive to do our 200 mile Journeys in an electric car than a petrol car a result which many people will be shocked by and since we filmed this test petrol prices have come down from their record highs while the electricity costs of many charging companies have gone up there are those some important caveats to note here this test was designed to see what you'd pay if you had to charge or fill up in a hurry at a Motorway service station the rnt charges we used are some of the most expensive around and petrol prices are also usually significantly cheaper off the motorway Network finding much cheaper petrol is at least relatively easy whereas finding much cheaper public charging stations can be tricky because they're typically in less convenient locations and are often slower too but the main counter argument for electric cars here is that if you have the ability to charge up at home you'll pay far less than you would at an expensive public charger even factoring in recent price Rises do this and a journey in your EV will be significantly cheaper than the same miles in a fuel powered car still in the early days of electric cars it was taken as a given that they would be much cheaper to run than an equivalent petrol car that isn't necessarily the case today for much more on the cost of electric cars versus petrol cars go to our website whatcar.com where you can also read all of our reviews and get yourself a great saving on your next car thanks for watching and to see lots more videos like this subscribe to our Channel [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: What Car?

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Keywords: What Car, what car, petrol car review, car review, electric car, is electric car cheap, what car review, petrol vs electricity, petrol or ev, new electric car, peugeot ev review, ev range test, Peugeot range test, e-208 review, electric car review, i4 review, i4 vs m440i, 208 review, BMW, Doug Revolta, Will Nightingale, ev test, ev, ev review, electric cars, should i buy an electric car, ev vs petrol cars, electric car vs petrol car, electric vs petrol car, ev cars

Id: SzZYRFZUbn0

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 02 2022