We have taken the plunge and got an EV. Inspired by events in the Middle East I thought it was time to do this. We have gone for an electric version of the Kia Niro we had so not a so different drive. Apart from a bewildering number of controls and settings we’re now faced with.

We traded in our old Niro at EMG Motors - we’ve just got on with them in the past. We were surprised when they listed our old car on their website before we had exchanged! A necessary pre-requisite to having an EV was fitting a charge point to the house. EMG Motors directed us to Ohme but there are quite a few providers of EV chargers. It took Lee of Ohme just over an hour to install the charger for us, he was late as his previous installation was rather tricky. I had attempted to clear the affected areas but Lee had some challenges at our house. He had to drill carefully to get a wire through to where the charger was on the front of the house.

We exchanged cars on a Friday and immediately felt the learning curve. We couldn’t work out how to turn the music off at first! The new car says hello when we get close by turning the side mirrors, I’m still getting used to not using a key to start the engine.

The main fun with an EV comes with charging the beast. To begin with it seemed like this was not going well. One deceiving factor was the capacity, nominally 280 miles. In practice you only get 280 miles on a fine day with all the planets aligned. The capacity when we got the car was more like 250 miles. The Ohme and Octopus apps (Octopus are our energy provider) are very clever, and work together, but the information they display can lag somewhat.

We have yet though to face charging our EV up on long journeys.