car

How will electric car owners pay the new mileage tax?

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In last week’s budget, a new electric vehicle mileage tax was announced. This will apply to all electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles from 2028, and will mean electric vehicle owners will initially pay 3p per mile, and plug-in hybrid owners will pay 1.5p per mile.

According to the BBC’s reporting, the mileage will be checked when the car has its annual MOT once it is three years old, or at other annual checks at the end of years one and two. The charge should then be combined with the annual Vehicle Excise Duty payments, which electric vehicle owners now have to pay as well as of the 1st April this year.

This method probably makes the most sense, but when the tax was first mooted earlier in the year, there were various theories about how it could be collected. I’m going to go through some methods, including the most likely one, to compare their feasibility.

Recording mileage at the MOT

All cars registered in the UK, once they are three years old (four years in Northern Ireland), have an annual MOT test (MOT just standard for Ministry of Transport) to ensure that they’re roadworthy, safe, and meet exhaust emissions requirements. The car’s mileage is also recorded at this point, and so it makes sense that this is used as the basis for calculating the mileage tax as it builds on something that already takes place. There presumably would need to be some backend IT changes at the DVLA to arrange for the tax to be charged to the vehicle’s registered keeper, but this method seems to make the most sense.

Where there is an issue, is that, as mentioned, cars don’t need to appear for the MOT until they’re three or four years old. I seem to remember that, historically, cars needed an annual MOT after one year, but I couldn’t find anything to back this up so it may be me mis-remembering. If I did remember correctly, then a re-introduction of an annual MOT would resolve this. However, very few cars need major repairs after a year of use, and there would likely need to be an expansion of garages offering MOT tests to cope with an increase in demand.

What seems to be proposed instead, is a simpler test to record the mileage. I guess there would need to be new legislation in place to make this mandatory, in the same way that it’s illegal to have a car on a public road without a valid MOT (unless you’re driving straight to a garage to a pre-booked MOT appointment). However, if it’s a simple case of reading the odometer, these could potentially be done at home and wouldn’t require a garage trip.

There may also need to be better enforcement of dodgy garages which alter odometers or pass vehicles which would otherwise fail an MOT.

Include the tax when charging

At the moment, owners of cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) pay fuel duty when they buy petrol or diesel from a petrol station. So you could argue that electric car drivers should pay the text when they recharge at a public charge point, as that’s the equivalent. Right?

As I write this, I haven’t used a public car charger in four months – the last time was on the way back from Little Moreton Hall in August. All my charging has been at home (or my parents home – thanks for the free electricity, Dad). So including it in the fees paid at public chargers wouldn’t work – especially as being able to charge at home is much cheaper and one of the major benefits of having an electric car.

Indeed, home charging provides something of a conundrum here – how do you work out what electricity is being used for charging a car, and then convert the kWh used to miles? Whilst we have a dedicated electric car charger, it’s just connected to our fuse box like any other high load device. From the perspective of our energy supplier, it would be hard to tell when we’re charging the car or using our electric shower, for example. We’re not on an EV tariff (because our smart meter still isn’t working) and, in any case, our charger isn’t one that’s directly supported on intelligent EV tariffs.

Even if our charger was modified to report its usage to the DVLA, if we wanted to we could just use a slower ‘granny charger’ to get around this.

The conversion from kWh to mileage will vary for different cars. For ours, 1 kWh of power is about enough for 4 miles, but we have a relatively small Nissan Leaf. Many EVs are bigger and heavier to increase their range, and so may need more power to move.

Modifying cars to send mileage data to the DVLA

Most electric cars have internet-connected systems probably that could be configured to send mileage data to the DVLA on a regular basis, via a software update. For those that can’t, there would need to be a hardware modification, which could be enforced at the car’s next MOT. However, I could see this being unpopular from a privacy perspective, and the car manufacturers may need an incentive to spend time and money on developing this.

The advantage would be that the data could be collected in real time, rather than annually.

Include it in self-assessment tax returns

Every year, around 4000 people file their self-assessment tax returns on Christmas Day, ahead of the deadline on the 31st January. I’ve never needed to do a self-assessment tax return, as my employer handles it through Pay-As-You-Earn.

As this is a tax, I suppose it could be added to the income tax system, but then that would make (potentially) millions more people like me have to do an additional tax return that we don’t have to do presently. This may also have to rely on self-reporting of car odometers and so would be open to abuse. Let’s not go there.

How much will the mileage tax affect me?

Right now, as we’re not on a dedicated EV charging tariff, we pay 23p per kWh to charge. That also assumes that we’re charging when it’s dark (no energy from our solar panels) and our home battery is empty; it can be much less than that on a really sunny summer’s day. As mentioned, each kWh gets us about 4 miles; with the new tax, we’ll additionally pay 12p to cover those 3 miles. That’s about a 50% increase. I reckon, based on an annual mileage of around 6000 miles, we’ll pay an additional £180 each year. The Treasury are keen to stress that this is half of what we would typically pay in fuel duty, however.

Whether this will be a lump sum, or payable monthly by direct debit, remains to be seen – I assume we would pay the previous year’s accumulated mileage tax in arrears the following year. There would also need to be some mechanism for ensuing a part year of mileage tax is settled when the car is sold to a new owner.

I agree for the need for EV owners to pay for upkeep of the roads. Maintaining roads costs money, and if the money to pay for this comes from fuel duty, then there needs to be a new income stream as more people switch to electric vehicles. After all, it won’t be possible to sell new ICE cars from 2030 – that’s only four years away now. And, as electric cars tend to be heavier than an equivalent ICE model, I also agree that EV owners should cover the increased damage to road surfaces that this will cause. Basing it on mileage makes sense, as those that drive the most pay the most. Perhaps I would have liked to see a variable tax, with smaller and lighter vehicles paying a lower rate, but I don’t know how feasible this would be.

Route planning apps for electric cars

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A screenshot showing various route planning apps, including Google Maps, Apple Maps, ZapMap, Electroverse, PlugShare and ABRP

Since I first got my own car (10 years ago), we’ve used Google Maps for directions. I’ve never bothered with a stand-alone satnav, and our Nissan Leaf is the first car that we’ve owned to have one built-in.

With our electric Nissan Leaf, Google Maps is still our go-to app for route planning and directions, but there are some other apps that I’ve considered. Here’s an overview of them.

Google Maps

Starting with Google Maps. Its support for electric vehicles is okay; you can tell it that your car is an electric vehicle, and it’ll offer the most energy-efficient routes as well as the fastest. Remember, electric and hybrid cars have regenerative braking; in a petrol or diesel car, a shorter but slower route may only use a little less fuel, but a lot less energy in an electric car. On one recent journey, a slower but more direct route took five minutes longer, but used 29% less charge and meant that would get there and back without having to recharge en route.

You can also tell Google Maps what plugs your car supports. Our Nissan Leaf, for example, can charge from a 3-pin plug, a Type 2 AC charger and CHAdeMO DC chargers. Then, when you switch your car from being petrol/diesel to electric, it’ll no longer offer to show you directions to petrol stations, but to public electric car chargers instead.

Google Maps will show public chargers from the majority of major operators, and their occupancy. However, compared to some of the other apps mentioned here, it won’t show all chargers.

If you have a really new electric car with Google Maps built-in, then it’ll know your car’s current charge and be able to add charging stops for long journeys. Our Nissan Leaf doesn’t – we can just use Google Maps through CarPlay or Android Auto. As such, it won’t automatically suggest charging stops on longer journeys.

Apple Maps

Note: I’m writing this about Apple Maps in iOS 18, which was current at the time of writing

I’m sure that Apple Maps works great, if you live in California. I don’t, and since Apple launched it 13 years ago in iOS 6, it’s been a disappointment. If you do live in California, or a supported country, then there are EV features available to you. But it appears that the UK either isn’t a supported country, or it just doesn’t work with my Nissan Leaf. Either way, for me, there are no special features available in Apple Maps.

I can’t even tell Apple Maps that I drive an electric vehicle, and so it still bubbles up petrol stations which are of limited use to me now. You can search for ‘charging point’ and get directions to charging points, but it can’t easily incorporate these into a route. It also recommended a charging point to me which didn’t actually exist.

ZapMap

ZapMap has probably the best list of UK electric car chargers. As well as listing all of those on the main charging networks, including availability, users can also add chargers themselves. These are often ‘destination chargers’ at places where you can visit, which may be offered for free and are not part of a larger network.

The app is ad-supported, and won’t work with CarPlay or Android Auto unless you pay for ZapMap Premium. This currently costs £5 per month, or £35 for a full year if paid in advance (£30 if you sign up before the end of the month). As well as hiding the ads, you get a free ZapMap RFID charging card (normally £10) and a 5% discount if you pay for certain public chargers through the ZapMap app. As I only use public chargers occasionally, I may consider the £5 per month option when needed, and then cancel.

The free app lets you plan a limited number of routes, which can then be sent to either Apple or Google Maps for navigation.

Octopus Electroverse

Electroverse is the public charging app from Octopus Energy. It doesn’t list as many chargers as ZapMap, as it focusses just on those on the major networks. However, it offers things like route planning, CarPlay and an RFID card for free, unlike ZapMap, and there are no adverts. It also looks nicer.

It’s worth noting that, by default, it’ll only show public chargers that are compatible with the Electroverse app and RFID card. This means that public chargers from Pod Point initially don’t appear, for example. You can turn this off if you want to prioritise seeing a wider range of chargers.

The route planning is quite good. You can tell it what car you drive, your start and end points, and how much charge you expect to start with. It’ll then calculate a route that includes stops at compatible chargers, and it’ll tell you how much you need to charge at each stop and how long it’ll take. You can then send the route to Google or Apple Maps. Note that in CarPlay mode, handoff is only to Apple Maps and not Google Maps, so bare that in mind.

PlugShare

PlugShare is another site that allows user contributions of public charger places. Unlike ZapMap, which is UK focussed, PlugShare is global. Its list of chargers is extensive, and even includes chargers which are ‘under construction’. I checked a couple of these locally, and found that, whilst there was planning permission in place for these, construction work hadn’t started. I think this is where Apple Maps may be getting its data from, but without the knowledge that they’re under construction.

It supports route planning, but this seems to be limited to showing public chargers on a given route. Unlike Electroverse, it didn’t tell me how much to charge up by and how long to stop for, and wouldn’t send the details to a mapping app. It supports CarPlay though.

ABRP – A Better Route Planner

A Better Route Planner is worth considering. It’s a full replacement for Apple Maps or Google Maps, and is designed for electric cars. Like with Electroverse, you can select your car and the starting charge, and it’ll plan routes to include car chargers.

CarPlay is limited to ABRP Premium, which also allows you to factor in weather conditions when driving, and to prefer chargers where there are toilets or children’s play areas. And, like Google Maps, ABRP Premium incorporates traffic data. It can also connect to live battery data in more cars, albeit in a somewhat roundabout way. For my Nissan Leaf, it needs an OBD2 adaptor and the Leaf Spy Pro app (£20) set up. ABRP Premium costs €5 per month, or €50 per year.

Combining the apps

At the moment, I’m using a combination of all three:

  • Google Maps for general navigation
  • Electroverse for calculating charge levels on a route, or incorporating charge points into a route plan
  • ZapMap for finding charger locations

It would be nice if Google Maps included charge levels in its route planner on cars that don’t have it built-in; that would minimise my need to use other apps. Still, by planning my routes in Electroverse and sending them to Google Maps, I can achieve most of the features of ABRP without their premium subscription. Once I’ve picked up an OBD2 adaptor that’s fully compatible with Leaf Spy, I may give ABRP another try though.

Higoom Cordless car air pump review

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A photo of the Higoom cordless car air pump

One thing that all cars have in common, regardless of the type of engine or number of wheels, is that they all use tyres. Tyres can lose their inflation over time; a deflated tyre creates more drag, meaning the engine has to work harder to counter the increased resistance. So, keeping your tyres properly inflated should improve your car’s fuel economy, or miles per kWh for electric vehicles.

Our previous car came with a portable car air pump, that also doubled up as a puncture repair kit. However, our new car doesn’t, and so I needed to buy a new pump to keep the tyres correctly inflated. Coincidentally, I started seeing social media adverts for cordless car air pumps, although ultimately I ended up buying this Higoom cordless car air pump from Amazon (sponsored link). At time of writing, it’s ‘Amazon’s choice’ and costs £25.

The Higoom car air pump in use inflating my car's tyres

Unlike my previous car air pump, this can be used without being plugged into your car’s 12V supply – although you can still plug it in if you want and a 12V car adaptor with a barrel plug is provided. Instead, there’s a hefty battery inside, which makes it a lot easier to use. It’s also a digital model, so you can set the target air pressure first and pump the tyres to this level, and then it’ll automatically stop. The standard tube also has a lever-top fixing, so you don’t need to screw it on to your tyre valves. It also comes with a variety of adaptors, for inflating other things like bike tyres and paddling pools.

The car air pump also doubles up as a power bank – there’s a USB-A output socket on top – and as a torch, with an LED light. The battery inside charges using a USB-C socket.

Whilst the size of the battery makes it quite hefty – almost a kilogram in weight – it’s still small enough to store in your car’s glove compartment. It also comes with a storage bag, which is big enough for the pump and all its accessories.

I’ve seen similar devices sell for double the price of this Higoom model, so at £25 it’s worth considering.

Some thoughts on the state of public electric car charging in 2025

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A photo of my Nissan Leaf, with the car charging port open and a Type 2 cable plugged in.

So we’re about a month into owning an electric car, and in that time we’ve taken it on two long distance trips – our holiday in Wales, and to the Midlands and Oxfordshire for a family birthday. As our Nissan Leaf only has a 150 mile range on a full charge, we were therefore reliant on public chargers to be able to continue our journeys. This post is therefore some collected thoughts on our experiences, in case you are thinking about switching to an electric car.

Availability of charging bays

Across the UK, there are almost 42,000 places you can charge an electric car, according to ZapMap, with each location offering an average of two chargers and three connectors. However, sometimes you would encounter a charger with two bays, for two cars – but the charging machine could only charge one car at a time. This was a particular problem with the faster ‘Rapid’ chargers. There were a couple of occasions where we arrived at a charger, and could plug in a cable, but would have to wait because another vehicle was already charging.

Other times, we would get there and all the chargers would have been taken. On the way back from Wales, we visited Chester Zoo, which I’ll blog about later in the summer. There are 26 charging bays available, but on a summer Saturday in August, all were taken by the time we arrived at 10:30am. Thankfully, I could check their availability on an app, and was able to move our car around when one had become free around lunchtime.

There is a degree of etiquette when it comes to charging a car. For example, if your car has finished charging, then, if you can, it’s best to go back to it and move it to a standard space to free it up for someone else to use. Also, don’t hog a rapid charger if there’s a slower charger available that you have the time to use.

So far, we’ve not encountered a charging bay being ‘iced’, as in occupied by a standard petrol or diesel car with an internal combustion engine (ICE).

Only slower chargers available

Many public chargers are 7 kW ‘medium’ speed chargers. A full charge on one of these would take about six hours for our Nissan Leaf, and likely much longer for those with much bigger batteries. These chargers are fine for ‘destination charging’ – for example, at Portmeirion, where we were intending to stay for the whole day anyway. But they’re no good for a quick charge to continue a journey.

This problem will get better in time as more rapid and ‘ultra-rapid’ DC chargers are installed.

CHAdeMO, or the lack thereof

Our Nissan Leaf can charge from three types of plug:

  • Standard 3 pin plugs at around 2 kW for a slow charge
  • Type 2 plugs at around 7 kW for a medium charge
  • CHAdeMO plugs, for a rapid charge of around 40 kW

CHAdeMO is a Japanese standard, and a number of Japanese cars of a similar age to our Nissan Leaf were built with these sockets and sold worldwide. But it’s not the European standard for fast charging, which is CCS2. CCS2 looks similar to the type 2 socket, but with an extra bit on, and it’s DC rather than AC. We can’t use CCS2 chargers without buying a converter, and they’re expensive – at least £600.

A lot of rapid chargers will just have one or two CHAdeMO plugs. A good example was Northampton services on the M1, where a bank of 12 rapid CCS2 chargers have been installed, but only one CHAdeMO charger. Which, predictably, was already occupied by another Nissan Leaf. Thankfully, we managed to find somewhere else to charge.

I get the point that barely any new electric vehicles are being built with CHAdeMO connectors, but for those of us with such cars, it can be a pain when they’re not available.

All the apps

Public car charging apps are a bit like car parking apps, in that you may well end up with several of them installed. Early on, many public chargers could only be used using an app – I remember talking to someone who was a very early electric vehicle adopter, who said that having all the apps was the worst thing about it. Thankfully, many public chargers offer contactless payments with a credit card, which is much easier. And some accept an RFID card, which you can order from several places that you then link to a payment method. We’ve got one from Octopus Energy, which works most of the time, but not always.

But some still require you to download an app, sign up for an account, link a payment method and then start charging. The worst of these, in my view, is Pod Point, where you also have to top-up a balance before you charge. That means estimating how much you’re going to need to pay before charging, and then having any money left over held in a Pod Point account. Unfortunately, Pod Point are one of the bigger operators, having partnered with Tesco.

The other issue with apps is phone reception. We managed in Wales, but had we not had a signal, there would have been some places where we wouldn’t have been able to use the chargers.

No chargers where you need them

I mentioned ‘destination charging’ above, giving good examples of Portmeirion and Chester Zoo that allow visitors to charge whilst they’re there. This is one of the key advantages of having an electric car, in that you can charge at somewhere you were planning to stop at anyway, rather than taking a detour to a petrol station.

But not all ‘destinations’ have charging. Whilst in the Midlands, we visited Cadbury World, which doesn’t yet allow its visitors to charge their cars. Which was a shame, although we did find a rapid public charger at an art-deco McDonald’s in King’s Norton.

Thankfully, it looks like more places are investing in charging infrastructure for their visitors. The National Trust, where possible, is installing chargers at many of its properties. And they’re potentially another income source for these attractions. Whilst some may offer free charging, as an incentive, most electric car drivers do expect to pay to charge. So whilst there is the upfront cost of installing electric car charging infrastructure, and then maintaining it, in the long run it could make a good return on investment.

Broken infrastructre

At home, our nearest rapid charger is a short walk away. But it’s been out of order for months, and we’ve seen a number of public chargers that were broken on our travels. This particular charger is in a local authority car park, and I understand that the council got funding to install it, but not maintain it. And last weekend, when we needed to use a rapid charger in Congleton in Cheshire, all of them across the whole town were faulty.

I wouldn’t say faulty chargers are a widespread problem, and most mapping tools for finding public chargers will indicate whether chargers are faulty if they have this data. That should reduce the risk of arriving at a charger with only a few watt-hours to spare, to find it’s out of order.

Charging at home is (almost) always cheaper

Electric cars make the most sense when you can charge them at home. Your home electric supply will (almost) always be cheaper than using a public charger. We’re on a fixed electricity tariff with Octopus, where we pay 20p per kWh. And that assumes that we’re charging overnight, without any contribution from our solar panels.

By contrast, even the cheapest public chargers are usually more than double that. Rapid chargers, especially those at motorway service stations, cost even more – typically 88p per kWh, so more than four times more expensive than charging at home. Part of the reason for this is that public chargers must charge you a higher rate of VAT. At home, your electicity bill has VAT at 5%, but public chargers have to charge 20% VAT.

If you need to use a public charger to top up your charge to get home, then it’s worth calculating how much you need to charge to get home. That way, you only need to charge your car by that much (plus maybe a bit extra) to get home, where the rest of the charge can be done more cheaply.

I say ‘almost’ always cheaper because you may get lucky, and find a free public charger. There aren’t many, but we came across two in Wales. Admittedly, one was a 3-pin plug, offering a very slow charge, and the other was a medium speed 7 kW charger. But still, it’s free electricity, and as we were away and reliant on public chargers, it was very welcome.

Hello to our new electric car

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A photo of a red Nissan Leaf

Well, our journey towards an electric car is complete, as on Friday, we bought a new (to us) Nissan Leaf. It’s a second generation model, built in 2021, and replaces our diesel Peugeot 3008. It’s also our second Nissan, having previously owned a Nissan Note from 2015 to 2019.

Both of our previous cars have been around 6 years old when we’ve bought them, whereas this Nissan Leaf is less than four years old. It’s the ‘n-Connecta’ trim, so a mid-range model with a similar level of features to our Peugeot. Our local dealership also had a cheaper model with the ‘Accenta’ trim level, but we decided to pay more for the additional features that we were used to with the Peugeot.

Driving the Nissan Leaf

Like almost all electric cars, the Nissan Leaf just has one gear, so it drives like an automatic. I’ve only ever driven cars with a manual transmission before, and so this took a little getting used to. In particular, one quirk of the Nissan Leaf is the parking brake (i.e. handbrake) is foot operated, roughly where the clutch would be on a manual car.

The car has three driving modes: standard, eco, and e-pedal. Standard is best for motorway driving, giving you better acceleration at the cost of higher power usage. Eco is fine for day-to-day driving, but turning on e-pedal enables single pedal driving. That means that you press the accelerator pedal to go, and take your foot completely off the pedal to slow to a stop. As it the car brakes, the energy generated is then recovered to the battery – known as regenerative braking. As well as meaning you only need to keep your foot on one pedal most of the time, it’s also the most energy efficient way of driving.

Compared to the Peugeot, the steering is much lighter, and even in Eco mode, it’s got good acceleration. But most electric cars will accelerate faster than an equivalent car with an internal combustion engine.

In common with the Nissan Note, the legroom isn’t great when driving, but Christine finds it more comfortable to drive than the Peugeot.

Energy use

We’ve only had the car a couple of days, and have used around 40% of its charge across around two and a half hours of driving. This equates to about 40 miles. The Lithium-Ion batteries in most electric cars are less efficient in really hot weather, like what we’re currently experiencing in the UK as I write this. Therefore, you should keep your EV below 80% charged in hot weather (if you can). Indeed, when I picked the car up on Friday, the dealership had charged it to this level.

The maximum stated range of the Nissan Leaf is around 150 miles. That’s quite a bit less than our Peugeot, which could do around 400 miles on a full tank. And, of course, a key disadvantage of electric cars is that even a quick charge takes longer than fuelling a car with petrol or diesel. We’ll have to plan our longer journeys with recharge stops, although most motorway service stations include several quick charge points now. That being said, a quick charge should mostly recharge our Nissan Leaf’s battery in about 40 minutes.

Size

We deliberately decided to buy a smaller car than our previous Peugeot 3008. There are a couple of occasions each year, when the Peugeot’s extra capacity would be helpful, like holidays. But for 95% of the time, we were driving around a car that was bigger than we needed it to be. That’s a waste of fuel, and also makes it more difficult to park in narrow space.

Compared to the Peugeot 2008, the Nissan Leaf is around 5 cm (two inches) narrower, so parking should be a little easier. It’s also shorter in height, by around 10 cm (four inches). However, weirdly, it is actually longer – by around 30 cm (6 inches). It doesn’t look like it should be longer, but it is.

As such, the actual amount of space inside the Nissan Leaf is only slightly less than in the Peugeot. And on the few occasions that we may need extra space, we’ll considering hiring a roof box, which will also be easier to reach with the lower roof.

Charging

So far, I’ve only charged the car at home, using our dedicated Rolec EVO car charger. The previous owner of our car had set it to charge on an overnight schedule, so by default, it won’t start charging as soon as it’s plugged in. However, there is a dashboard button to over-ride this to start an immediate charge. Three lights appear on the dashboard, visible from outside the car, to show how charged the battery is.

On a ‘slow’ 7 KW home charger, expect a full charge to take around 6 hours. At present, I’ve knocked the current down to 16 Amps, so a full charge would probably take closer to 14 hours at this rate. This is where the equation to calculate power, voltage and current that you learned for GCSE Science comes in.

The Nissan Leaf supports two charging sockets. There’s a standard ‘Type 2’ socket, which only supports ‘slow’ chargers up to 7 KW, like our Rolex EVO. Then there’s a second ‘CHAdeMO’ socket, for use with supported fast chargers. Type 2 is essentially the European standard, and some public charge points only offer type 2 sockets, even for fast charging. Therefore, if we need to use a fast charger, we’ll need to find one that offers a CHAdeMO socket. Many do, but not all.

All the extra fancy gubbins

Being nine years newer than our previous car, our Nissan Leaf has lots of additional features:

  • Adaptive cruise control. I used cruise control extensively on the Peugeot and so pleased to have it on here. Combined with no need for gear changes, I can drive for longer without using any of the pedals with this on. ‘Adaptive’ means that it will slow down to match the speed of the car in front if needed, which I didn’t have before.
  • Built-in Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Our Peugeot had the most basic entertainment system without a colour screen, so it’s nice to have these built-in. However, it only supports these over USB – if you want to use either CarPlay or Android Auto wirelessly, you need to buy a separate USB adaptor (sponsored link).
  • Heated seats and steering wheel. I suppose these will be useful in winter. Our nine-year-old seemed very keen on the idea of heated seats, until we pointed out that they still need to use a car seat until they’ve grown a bit more.
  • Remote start air conditioning and heating. Whilst the car is plugged in, you can use the Nissan app to remotely start the air conditioning or heating systems, so that your car is the right temperature before you set off. This also reduces the load on the battery.
  • Forward, rear and around view cameras. Our Nissan Note had no parking sensors whatsoever, whilst our Peugeot 3008 had standard rear parking sensors. The Nissan Leaf, meanwhile, offers a reversing camera, a forward camera, and ‘around view’ cameras. The around view gives you a top-down, ‘bird’s eye’ view of your car whilst reversing. This makes it much easier to park straight, especially if there are no white lines marking out the space. There’s also moving object detection.
  • Blind spot alerts. A small red light flashes on your wing mirror, along with an audible warning, if there’s something in your blind spot.

There’s a higher level of trim called ‘Tekna’ which adds a self-parking feature. That would have been lovely to have, but as we were buying used, we were limited to what was available at the dealership.

Compared to the Peugeot, the only things that I’m missing so far are:

  • The large storage box between the front seats (the Nissan Leaf has a smaller one)
  • The head up display, which showed the current speed and whether cruise control or the speed limiter was enabled.

The Nissan Connect app

The Nissan Connect mobile app allows you to control aspects of your car remotely, like checking its charge status or starting the heating or air conditioning. Alas, although I’ve downloaded the app, I can’t use it yet. The previous owner of my Nissan Leaf didn’t unlink the car from their account, and so I’m waiting for someone at Nissan to un-link it. Thankfully, the dealership gave me a copy of the DVLA ownership change confirmation and so hopefully that’ll be enough evidence.

Overall, we’re really happy with the Nissan Leaf. It’s easier to drive, easier to park, and should be much cheaper to run. I suppose it’s major test will be when we need to drive longer distances – like when we go on holiday next week.

Our journey towards an electric car – part I

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Christine and I have decided that we’re going to get a new (or rather new to us) care in the next few months, and we’ve decided that it’ll most likely be an electric car.

Last March, I talked about how our current car was starting to get expensive. It had been in the garage four times in as many months, and April made it the fifth consecutive month to clear the particulate filter. Since then, it’s been behaving itself a little better – so far, it’s only been in the garage twice this year. But there are still some issues. There’s various squeaks and knocks that, whilst not seemingly affecting our ability to drive it, are starting to get annoying. The air conditioning system doesn’t work any more – on a hot day, it just emits hot air. And, throughout the whole six years we’ve owned it, the tyre pressure monitor hasn’t worked properly.

More recently, we’ve noticed a patch of rust on one of the doors. Getting that fixed is likely to be expensive, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t want to throw more money at the car. I’d rather save it, and use that money towards buying a newer car.

Going electric

I’ve deliberately made this ‘part one’ of a series, as I have a few blog posts in mind between now and after we finally get a new car. When I say ‘new’, I mean ‘new to us’ – I doubt we’ll be buying a brand new car. We also haven’t decided on a particular make and model, but what we have agreed is essentially the following:

  • It’ll be roughly the same size, or smaller than our current car.
  • It’ll be electric, or a plug-in hybrid.

We want a smaller car, because our current car (a first-generation Peugeot 3008) can be a pain to park sometimes. And 95% of the time, we don’t need such a big car – we’re just burning extra diesel to carry excess air around. For the times when we do need more space, we’ll look at buying a roof box instead.

We’ve also decided that it’s about time we made the jump to an electric vehicle. We have the ability to charge one at home (more in that in a future blog post in the series) and, as we have solar panels, we’ll be able to do so very cheaply. Plus, more electric vehicles are becoming available on the second-hand market, so we’re more likely to be able to afford to buy one.

Like I said, I’ll be posting more about this in future blog posts over the summer – especially once we’ve bought the car.

Six port car charger review

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A photo of a six port car charger in my car

With us having guests in the car for a long journey, I’ve recently bought a new USB car charger to go in the back of our car. Unlike others that I’ve bought in the past, which offer 2 or 3 USB ports, this offers six.

It’s currently on sale on Amazon for £13 (sponsored link), but I picked mine up cheaper elsewhere. There are two USB-C ports with Power Delivery, and then four USB-A ports. Of these four, there are two standard ports which offer 3 amps, and then a green one and an orange one, which support various proprietary quick charge specifications. I’m already using one of the USB-C ports for my CarPlay unit in the front, on a long cable.

Above the ports is a three digit display, which shows the current voltage coming in to the charger. This should nominally be 12 volts, but as you can see in my photo it’s higher at 14.4 volts. Should it go higher than 14.8, or below 11.6, that would be a cause for concern. The whole thing also glows blue when the engine is on and it has power.

Apparently you can’t use all six ports at once – the maximum is five. However, it’s apparently capable of quite high wattages. Whilst I’ve always known it as a ‘cigarette lighter socket’, the official name is the Automobile auxiliary power outlet, and the maximum current can be as high as 10 Amps. As such, 120 Watts is possible, assuming a 12 volt supply (see, I remember what I learned in GCSE Science). In practice, the maximum power from any one port will be around 60 Watts, but that’s still enough to charge a laptop.

For what it’s worth, I haven’t found any chargers offering more than six ports, so this seems to be the maximum. In the front of our car, we have a much smaller two port USB car charger, with one USB-A and one USB-C port. The location of the auxiliary power outlet, which is right next to the gear stick on the driver’s side, means that I prefer a smaller, low profile charger that doesn’t get in the way. Still, this means we have 3 USB-C and five USB-A ports available in the car.

Our car dates from 2012 and so it only came with one USB-A port built-in – I haven’t included it as it’s a 0.5A port and therefore a bit useless for charging. Also, if I plug my iPhone into it, the car stereo instantly starts playing the first song in my iTunes library, which is ‘Nothing’ by A. More modern cars presumably have many more USB ports, and I can see the cigarette lighter sockets becoming less common. Not least because it’s illegal to smoke cigarettes in a car with children in it in the UK, and barely anyone smokes nowadays anyway.

More car-related shenanigans

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An AI-generated image using DALL-E 3 of a small car in a dog kennel in the rain

Last month, I wrote about how our car had been for repairs multiple times in recent weeks. Since then, it’s been back in the garage again.

This time, the engine would only run in safe mode and so it had limited power. We live in the Pennine Hills in England – the emphasis there being on hills – and so had a not particularly enjoyable week flooring the accelerator whilst trying to get up a steep slope at 20mph. I have small Bluetooth OBD-II adaptor (sponsored link) that allows me to read the car’s error codes on my phone using a free app, and this suggested a fault with one of the cylinders in the engine.

My usual local garage couldn’t fit us in, so I tried a different garage. Their ODB diagnostic system was a bit more thorough and identified that, in fact, the engine’s particulate filter was full. They cleaned this out, and also replaced the sensor (since it still reckoned it was full even when it wasn’t) and, for the most part, the car drives okay again now. But this has set us back another £150.

Our car is approaching 120,000 miles on the clock and so it’s not worth much. Whilst it probably cost tens of thousands of pounds new in 2012, the couple of quotes I have had are around the £1500 mark. Which is certainly less than we have spent on keeping it on the road just in the last few months.

Whilst we have been lucky that it wasn’t a more expensive repair, we certainly need to look more keenly at replacing the car in the next year or so. I hope there are no more expensive repair jobs required, but if there are, the car is at risk of becoming beyond economic repair.

The expense of keeping a car on the road

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An AI generated image of a car being worked on by models of ancient Greek workers outside a Greek temple.

I write this at the weekend, after picking my car up from our local garage for the fourth time in as many months for repairs.

We’ve had our current car for almost five years, and it was seven years old when we got it. In that time, we’ve probably spent more money on repairs and servicing than we did buying it.

Its most recent visit was to replace two of the coil springs from the suspension, which failed in quick succession. The first went on the way back from Sci-Fi Weekender in Great Yarmouth on Sunday, and the second after going over a road hump on Wednesday. This resulted in a low grinding noise which prompted a call to our local garage.

Before that, we had both rear suspension arms and brake pads replaced, a new parking sensor, and a new wing mirror. My car has motorised wing mirrors which automatically tuck themselves in when the car is locked, but the motor seized up on one, and they’re sealed units, the whole wing mirror needed replacing.

I’m fortunate that there’s a good, independent garage within walking distance of home, that has been able to do all of these repairs. That means I can drop the car off in the morning, and then work from home. Having to fork out hundreds of pounds for car repairs, is even less fun when you also have to use a day of annual leave from work for it.

Earlier repairs have included replacement body work, a new timing belt, new front suspension, and the usual replacement tyres. I wouldn’t go so far as saying my car resembles the Ship of Theseus, but it’s certainly had a lot of work done on it over the years, and many parts are no longer original.

Whilst I would be tempted to cut our losses and get a new car, to get something similar in age and size to ours at time of purchase would set us back at least £7000. We just don’t have that kind of money right now, nor would we want to take on more debt to buy one. And I would rather keep this going until we can replace it with a used hybrid or battery electric model. Or somehow come into enough money to buy a new car outright.

Adding CarPlay to your car without installing a new stereo system

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A photo of the free-standing Carplay unit in my car

I’m someone who always has my phone doing something passively in my car whilst driving – whether it’s listening to music, podcasts or audiobooks, or giving me directions in Google Maps. Until now, I’ve just had my phone sat in a cradle with a built-in Qi wireless charger, because my car stereo doesn’t support CarPlay.

And then I found out, via Matt Haughey, that it’s possible to buy an additional screen for your car that just offers CarPlay, or its equivalent Android Auto. So I followed suit.

The three ways to CarPlay

As Matt points out, there are now three ways that you can have CarPlay in your car:

  1. It’s already built in. If you have a relatively new car, then the built-in stereo system will support it natively, either through a USB connection or wirelessly.
  2. If not, you can replace the existing stereo system with an after-market, or third-party system which supports CarPlay.
  3. Or, do what I’ve done – keep your existing stereo system as-is, but add a free-standing unit that connects to your car.

The reason why I’ve gone for the third option is that neither of the others are available to me. I drive an original Peugeot 3008, which I bought second-hand in 2019. Whilst it’s one of the higher-spec Allure models with cruise-control, climate control and a head’s up display, whoever bought it new decided to have the most basic in-car stereo system on offer.

No really, it literally just has a radio, CD player, auxiliary audio connection and a USB port that supports iPods. It doesn’t even have Bluetooth.

When I first bought the car, I did investigate the second option, of having the stereo system replaced with a Sony after-market system that supported CarPlay. However, I was advised by an installer that this would cause issues. This was backed up by various horror stories that I found online.

Annoying, many cars that were sold between around 2010-2016 put various car configuration options into the stereo menus. So, if you removed the stereo, it meant that you couldn’t amend settings for your headlights for example. I have seen some videos where independent garages have managed to get a working CarPlay system built in to a car like mine, but considering that the after-market units are usually around £300 plus additional parts and labour, it’s an expensive option.

Free-standing

So, to the third option. Periodically, I’ve tried looking for something very similar as I though it would be an obvious thing to make and sell, but never managed to find anything. So when Matt’s blog post popped up, I went straight to Amazon to find something similar. Indeed, it looks like most of these units have been on the market less than 6 months.

Matt bought his because he’s bought a new Rivian electric SUV. As Jeff Bezos was an investor in Rivian, it doesn’t support CarPlay or Android Auto. Instead, has its own touchscreen interface incorporating Amazon’s Alexa. And that’s probably okay if you just want to play music, but you don’t get access to the various apps on your phone – especially podcast and audiobook apps, or Google Maps. Sure, pretty much every car nowadays has a built-in SatNav, but Google Maps also has live traffic data and live re-planning of routes whilst driving, in case a quicker route becomes available. I understand that Tesla cars also don’t support Android Auto or CarPlay, although you’ll never catch me driving a Tesla for as long as Elon Musk is associated with the company.

Eyetoo 7″ CarPlay screen

The unit I bought was this Eyetoo 7″ model from Amazon (affiliate link). It’s a more basic model, which just supports CarPlay and Android Auto without offering much of its own interface. As well as the unit with the screen, you get:

  • a very long USB-C cable that has a 12 V cigarette lighter plug on the other end. Seriously, it’s about two metres long.
  • an auxiliary cable to plug into your stereo.

It can also broadcast on an FM frequency that you can tune your car radio to, if you want fewer wires.

There are several other models, all by different Chinese manufacturers that I’ve previously never heard of. Some of these have some additional features:

  • Built-in dashcam
  • Connection for a rear parking camera
  • MicroSD card port and media player software on the device
  • USB port for connection a phone directly

Whilst a reversing camera would be useful, it would probably need to be professionally installed. In any case, my car does at least have reverse parking sensors so I didn’t bother.

The unit comes with both a suction cup for attaching to a windscreen, and a stand with sticky pads for attaching to the dashboard. As you can see in the above photo, I went for the latter. This leaves a tripod screw on top, which you could also use to attach a dashcam, I suppose. The stand is pretty sturdy and holds it up well – it doesn’t wobble around at all. That being said, it does mean that it’s not easy to remove if you want to use it in another vehicle.

It starts up as soon as there’s power to the 12 V socket – i.e. when you turn the engine on – and takes a few seconds to boot up. Connection to CarPlay is wireless, which is good as this model doesn’t have a USB port for a wired connection to your phone. It takes a further few seconds for CarPlay to open, but it does open automatically and will even start playing your music for you.

The screen is fine – it doesn’t have automatically adaptive brightness and it’s not very high resolution, but more expensive models look like they offer this if that’s important to you. But on the whole, I’m really happy with it – it’s great to finally have CarPlay in my car without having to spend a lot of time or money on having it professional installed, and it hasn’t broken anything that affects the car’s systems. I am looking at ways of tidying up the cables though – perhaps with some right-angled connectors.

If you’re looking to add CarPlay or Android Auto to your car without needing to take it apart, I would recommend looking into this as a viable option.