The pitch for electric ownership is seductive and largely true: cheap to run, cheap to service, quiet and quick. But between the showroom smile and your first year of ownership sit a handful of costs nobody puts on the brochure. Here are the seven worth knowing before you sign.
None of these should stop you buying an EV. But going in with clear eyes beats a nasty surprise three months later.
The home setup
First is the home charger. The car is only cheap to run if you can charge overnight, and a proper wall box plus installation is a real, one-time cost that the finance quote conveniently ignores.
Second is insurance, which often runs higher than for an equivalent petrol car, thanks to expensive battery packs and a smaller pool of specialist repairers.
An EV is cheap to run and occasionally expensive to own. Both can be true.
— Our ownership-costs desk
The ones you forget
Then come the smaller surprises: pricier tyres that wear faster under the instant torque, public fast-charging that is far dearer than home charging, and depreciation that is still harder to predict than for combustion cars.
Add them up and an EV can still be the cheaper car overall — but only if you have budgeted for the bits the sales pitch left out.