It seems like a win-win situation. An electric car may not only help save the environment, it should help save you money on your fuel bills.
At £25,000, Volkswagen’s e-Golf doesn’t come cheap. But one green X-Ray viewer felt it would be worth it.
X-Ray even set up a little experiment to compare the distance an electric car would travel, compared to an average petrol car.
Does an electric car travel further on £10 of fuel than an average petrol car?
It may not look particularly scientific, but we’ve done the maths, and with a tenner’s worth of fuel, the electric car cruised to victory by miles.
So it may seem like a pretty good deal in the long run. However, we didn’t have to charge up our toy cars. And that’s where the problem lies.
There are very few places where our viewer Stephan Grabner from Abergavenny can charge up his car quickly once he’s en-route.
X-Ray investigates electric cars
Different types of electric cars need different types of chargers. There’s a software problem with some of the rapid charge points, which means they’re not working with e-Golf at the moment. The company which runs them have told X-Ray that the problem will be sorted in the next few weeks, so that’s some consolation for Stephan.
But there’s cold comfort from Volkswagen. They’ve pointed out that the small print in the e-Golf brochure does flag up that the ‘normal driving’ range can fall to just 56 miles when temperatures drop. With winter on the way, Stephan’s travel plans will have to remain rather limited.
It looks like a bumpy road ahead for Stephan, so are electric cars really worth it? I’ll be talking to a motoring journalist tonight, who drives one himself, to see if he still believes they are the future.
X-Ray is on Monday 3 November at 10.35pm on BBC One Wales.
