Think electric cars are expensive? My new EV costs me less than a couple of posh coffees a day
Our EV editor Steve Fowler has just taken delivery of a brand new £38,000 Vauxhall Grandland – and he’s paying just £6.21 per day. Here’s why the secret to cheap car buying is leasing (and not being too fussy)
When it was time to buy a new car in the Fowler household, the Vauxhall Grandland wouldn’t have been at the top of our list. We’d decided to buy an EV, and my wife had her sights set on the new Renault Scenic – although I was trying to persuade her that the Renault 5 would be more up her street.
But as with any big purchase, saving cash is always high on the agenda. And it’s amazing how attractive things can look when they’re cheap – finding a new car for less than the cost of a couple of coffees a day was too good a deal to ignore.
We’re big fans of personal leases in our household – it enables us to get a brand new car with the latest tech and safety kit every couple of years for a low monthly payment and an affordable deposit. Our previous family car was a Peugeot 2008, which cost us around £190 per month, and before that we had a Citroen C3 Aircross which cost us even less.Neither were our first choice, but both were boosted by great leasing deals.
Leasing is simple: you pay a deposit, have an agreed monthly payment, a defined term and a strict mileage limit. At the end of the deal, you just hand the car back and go again.
There’s no chance to buy the car and own it as there is with a PCP deal. Why would you want to? You just head to the leasing websites again, check out the latest deals and see what’s on offer. And in my experience, if you buy right, it can be a lot more cost effective than a PCP anyway.
For a car fan like me, there’s hours of insight and entertainment available on the leasing sites. You’d be amazed at the cars you see pop up for not much cash each month. So how do they do it?
Car makers often have stock to shift. They might have made promises to head office to take a certain number of cars in a certain spec. They might need to keep cars rolling off production lines – it’s really expensive to stop or even slow production – or they might need to sell more EVs to avoid fines under the government’s ZEV mandate. Sticking a car on the leasing sites with a low monthly price is a great way to sell cars – it really works, while it also gets great visibility out on the road. Seeing more and more examples of a new car on a street near you is a great way of getting awareness and interest in a new model.
As you can imagine, deals come and go quickly. Once targets are hit, prices go up. It wasn’t long before the bargain Scenics we were tempted by but were a bit early for us (we didn’t want to pay for two cars at the same time) disappeared.
EVs are popular on leasing sites as car makers rush to hit their ZEV mandate targets, and you might see real desperation towards the end of the year as car makers rush to get credits or avoid fines
Keep in mind that there are some hidden costs to consider, like deposits and arrangement fees. And if you go over the agreed mileage, you’ll have to pay extra, too. But in many cases, when you get your calculator out, leasing can work out way cheaper than a PCP, or ‘personal contract purchase’, one of the most popular financing options today for people who want more car for their money.
Back to the Grandland, a car we’re warming to a few weeks in, not least for its value.
Our Grandland Electric in mid-spec GS trim has a list price of £38,255. The deal we got through leasing.com meant a deposit of £2,265.96, an arrangement fee of £349.99 and then 23 monthly payments of £188.83.
Sadly, that Grandland deal has now ended and you’ll have to pay a bit more. Currently the cheapest Grandland is still a great deal, but you’ll have to put down £2,396.16 as an initial rental, there’s no arrangement fee this time, and then £199.68 a month for 23 months. That’s still a fantastic car for less than £200 a month.
Once the initial capital expenditure is taken care of – the initial rental feel – the monthly payment we’re finding each month means means we’re paying less each day than you might spend on a couple of posh coffees. And if you’re a business owner and VAT registered, you can claim some of that tax back to make it even cheaper.
This is no entry-level compromise, either. Our GS is very nicely kitted out with a 16in infotainment screen that seamlessly blends into a 10in driver display, heated seats and steering wheel, wireless Apple CarPlay, adaptive cruise control, ambient lighting inside and fancy matrix-beam LED lighting on the outside, with the Vauxhall badge on the front and wording on the back all cleverly illuminated at night. It’s close to a luxury car.
The new deal I spotted is on the same GS model as ours. But if you wanted a hybrid Grandland rather than the electric model, you can currently get a top-spec Ultimate model complete with panoramic sunroof and upgraded stereo for £2,495.68 down and £178.82 per month with all these two-year deals based on 5,000 miles a year. You can play around to up the mileage if you need to, but remember that the average mileage driven in the UK these days is just 7,000 miles per year.
We didn’t get a choice of colour with our car, but the white paint with the black roof looks good. And the the 77kWh battery gives a claimed range of 319 miles, although we charged to 100 per cent and the readout said 327 miles.
We’ve no complaints about efficiency so far. Now a couple of months into ownership, we’ve only plugged it in once after its initial charge. And with our last car going back with 8,400 miles on it, we’re unlikely to be bothered by the 5,000 mile limit for each of the two years we’ll ‘own’ the Grandland.
And for anyone who thinks EVs are expensive to insure, our Grandland is cheaper than the petrol Peugeot 2008 we had before. We got £194 back on our insurance for the six months left to run by swapping in the Peugeot for the Vauxhall.
Vauxhall obviously has a few EVs to shift, but the Grandland is the cheapest (and best) of the lot. Electric Mokkas are also currently showing at just over £200 a month (plus deposit) on leasing.com.
The only other models that come in cheaper than the Grandland are the budget Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03 – making the Vauxhall even more of a steal – while the Peugeot 2008 is another electric car under £200 at £199. Better still, an MG4 can be yours for £190 and the super-sexy Hyundai Ioniq 6 was at £199 when we last checked – that might not last long, though.
Bargains just over the £200 mark currently include the brilliant Citroen eC3 and eC3 Aircross, the smaller-battery Renault 5, the Volkswagen ID.3 and the big Leapmotor C10. Even the brilliant Renault Scenic is now at £222 a month – but all those deals can change quickly.
Leasing.com acts like a comparison site for leasing brokers, but you can go direct to the brokers themselves, too. Selectcarleasing.co.uk is one of the better known, not least as it sponsors Reading FC who play in the Select Car Leasing stadium.
Window shopping on the leasing sites can be addictive. For me it’s become a hobby – I’m often swapping links to new deals with pals, seeing what we could get for not a whole lot of cash.
If two years and 5,000 miles doesn’t suit you, you can play around with the numbers on the leasing sites to see how moving the mileage and deposits changes the monthly payments. You can work with smaller deposits, but obviously the monthly payments will go up.
Regular visitors to these sites will also learn much about the dynamics at play in the car business, seeing who has spare stock to sell and when. And there are some great deals on premium models, too: the brilliant Volkswagen ID.7 is often under £300 a month. BMWs can be very cheap, Lotus Eletres were on sale a while back and Polestars can be pretty tempting at times.
Window shopping on the leasing sites can be addictive. For me it’s become a hobby – I’m often swapping links to new deals with pals, seeing what we could get for not a whole lot of cash.
EVs are popular on leasing sites as car makers rush to hit their ZEV mandate targets, and you may well see real desperation towards the end of the year as car makers rush to get credits or avoid fines. But there are plenty of excellent hybrids and petrol models available too. The British-built Nissan Qashqai is a regular amongst the bargains, as Nissan balances the need to keep the Sunderland factory flowing with the need to make money.
Leasing may not be right for everyone. My advice is to think hard about what you need, how you’ll use it and how you want to pay. Always have a budget in mind and stick to it – it’s very easy to be persuaded to pay more to get something just a little bit nicer.
If you’re a deal hunter like me, it pays to not be fussy. That way you can end up with something that’s still really nice, but at a price that have friends’ jaws dropping at the dinner table.
In the meantime, the Fowlers will be rolling around in a rather lovely and extremely cheap Vauxhall Grandland, counting down the days until I can jump online and grab another bargain.
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