Currently reading: Report: Most British drivers could feasibly swap to an electric car

Survey finds that using an EV over the Christmas period would have no adverse impact on majority of drivers

Most UK drivers could make the switch to an electric car with no impact on their motoring lifestyle, according to the results of a new survey carried out by Peugeot.

Research found that British drivers will travel an average of 79 miles over the Christmas period (often one of the longest drives of the year) - a distance well within the capabilities of the majority of mainstream electric vehicles.

Peugeot said that more than a third of respondents said they would be “comfortable doing all of their Christmas travels between 23 December and 2 January” in an electric vehicle, despite the fact that EVs currently make up just 1.4% of the UK car market. 

The results also show that two thirds of drivers will make at least one stop during their Christmas journeys, during which an EV’s battery could be considerably topped up by a motorway rapid charge point - with which most new electric vehicles are compatible. 

Aside from the feasibility of ownership, Peugeot said that swapping into an electric vehicle would save the average motorist from emitting nearly 1.6 tonnes of CO2 over Christmas. 

The manufacturer has just launched its e-208 electric supermini in the UK; it offers a claimed range of 217 miles and is available to order from £25,050. 

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Felix Page

Felix Page
Title: Deputy editor

Felix is Autocar's deputy editor, responsible for leading the brand's agenda-shaping coverage across all facets of the global automotive industry - both in print and online.

He has interviewed the most powerful and widely respected people in motoring, covered the reveals and launches of today's most important cars, and broken some of the biggest automotive stories of the last few years. 

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sidevalve 12 December 2019

Cost, cost, cost, cost

While electric cars might be wonderful and might be able to walk on water (well, for about 200 miles, as long as there is a charging point at the other end), many millions of people, me included, will never be able to afford one. They are just a neoliberal con aimed at raising the first cost of buying a car to prohibitive levels, driving all maintenance footfall into dealerships, and keeping the hoi polloi off the road. All for a CO2 reduction which is marginal at best, and which is end-loaded to 10-15 years time, because electric cars take that long to amortise their production emissions.
russ13b 6 December 2019

anti ev forum? petrol infrastructure co2?

not really, it's just realistic. As are the claims regarding problems with charging infrastructure. I could accuse people of being excessively pro-ev due to them trying to pass all this off as insignificant. No, i'm not being anti-ev by ignoring refinement emissions in my calculations; at the time of typing this 15.6% of electricity is coming from gas, 5.3% from coal, 25.7% from nuclear. Where are the figures for those materials? They don't arrive at the station by magic! used nuclear material really doesn't dispose of itself. Did you know coal powerstations release more nuclear material in to the atmosphere every year then nuclear does in a decade? It simply blasts out of the chimney, completly untreated. Am i being anti-ev now? no, simply pro-reality. i represented the engine by using a 1999 wrangler 4.0 for crying out loud, and it still didn't work. 14mpg urban! Yeah, there's infratructure co2, according to smmt the average new car emissions was 125.4 g/km last year; i did my maths with a 302g/km jeep, so there's arguably around 60% there that could be offset to infrastructure.

paste this in to your favourite search engine, then read the article from thisismoney; Electric cars’ lifetime CO2 emissions half that of petrol and diesel

the bit of interest is where it states "the co2 emitted during battery prouction for a premium ev is equivalent to charging the batteries for 15 years (10000km per year) of use". is that 150000km at 43.5g/km unaccounted for? the average age of a car in the uk is 8, so no it isn't, it's 81.65g/km. the maths there was (15/8 = 1.875) x 43.5 = 81.66. There are some point of comparison grey areas with this, so i'm not entirely happy with the facts or accuracy. None of this was in the leaf co2 calculations.

So, ignoring gas station infrastructure is mileading, is it?

carnut's 2.5t mondeo is a 222 to 251g/km car, probably. I checked a newish one and a moderatly old one. That leaves 17 to 26% of what i calculated as an infrastructure offset.

I do hope nobody's trying to say i'm being wilfully misrepresentative.

russ13b 5 December 2019

@si73

i also didn't take in to account co2 created by fueling the powerstations, you can only work with the available figures