'I've driven EVs for six years - here's one hidden thing nobody talks about'

Whether , there’s a whole host of reasons why people may opt for an . One person who’s had a vast amount of experience driving both electric vehicles and petrol cars is Peter Greaves, who goes by the name Petrol Ped online.

As an automotive content creator, he has driven an array of electric cars over the years, and has noticed one main thing since he first drove an EV six years ago. “The biggest and most obvious thing that’s changed in the six years since I first drove an EV vehicle is the infrastructure has improved, although it still has a way to go,” he tells the .

“, so there is more availability. I guess the flip side of that is there are also more EVs on the road.

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“In the early days, you would turn up to a charger and there probably wouldn't be anybody else around and you could just plug in. The challenge then was that it might not work. Nowadays your challenge is you turn up to plug in and there's already a car there charging. That can really throw a spanner in the works on a long journey. But it is getting better,” explains Peter.

It comes as . , meaning for those who aren’t able to charge their car at home, public EV chargers can be found at a range of locations including , cinemas and at the side of roads. However, public charging can come at a higher cost than charging at home.

“I can remember when I first started reviewing EVs, I might have been paying 20 or 30 pence per kilowatt hour on an ultra rapid charger. Now you could be paying 80, 90 pence, maybe even a pound per kilowatt hour. When you're charging in public then the costs go up significantly,” says Peter.

“If you are lucky enough to be able to park off-street and have your own charger at home, then running an EV is a completely different proposition. Every morning you wake up and you'll have charged your car overnight with a cheap rate electric tariff – if you've managed to plan that in with your provider – and you've got a full tank of battery charge and off you go. For most journeys, you're not going to exceed the range of the car each day. I didn’t plug into public charging in nine months when I had an electric car.”

But as well as the cost of public charging, Peter notes that the cost of buying a new electric vehicle could pose another barrier to people opting for an EV. “It's only really within the last couple of years with the entrance of some brands bringing cars to market that are a family-sized car for £20,000 to £30,000, whereas the traditional luxury brands, their equivalent size cars would maybe be £50,000 to £70,000. So there's an initial barrier to entry for a new car,” he says.

“With used cars, people worry about whether the battery is going to be OK, and if it's not they worry about how much it will cost to replace it. The challenge with that is normally based on things that aren't necessarily factually accurate, they've read something on social media about batteries losing all of their energy after two years, needing replacing and costing £20,000. That's actually not born out in reality.”

, Peter notes that there are some great deals to be had. He says: “One of the things we are seeing is batteries lasting a lot longer than even the manufacturers thought. You can run an EV for five years and still have maybe 85-90% of the battery capacity left, which is still going to give you sort of 80-90% of the range that you would have had when that was a new car.

“These second-hand EVs actually at the moment, there's some mega bargains to be had.”

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