See all Motoring AdviceIf you've been looking to buy a brand-new car recently, it's highly likely that you might have considered one that has electric drive. There are more new electric models to choose from than ever, and they range in size and shape from compact superminis, through a wide variety of SUVs right up to luxury cars – there are even electric vans on offer.
But as you've looked through the price lists, it can't have passed you by that electric vehicles (or EVs for short) are quite expensive. It's particularly noticeable when said EV is sold alongside a petrol equivalent. Here we explain the reasons behind this.
Take the Opel Mokka as an example. It's a small SUV that's sold with petrol or electric powertrains, and the difference in price between the two is clear. The electric version costs around €5,000-€6,000 more than if you chose the same model with a petrol engine and an automatic gearbox (for comparison's sake, since all EVs are autos). What's more, that EV price includes the SEAI electric vehicle grant and applicable VRT relief, too, which both help to bring the EV's price closer.
So why is an EV so much more expensive? It's largely down to the drive battery. While a combustion-engined car has an empty fuel tank to fill to drive the engine, an EV's battery stores energy for the electric motor(s). The most popular type of battery in electric cars today uses lithium-ion technology. Lithium is an alkali metal that is a relatively rare element that needs to be mined and extracted from igneous rocks. This is a costly process, while assembling the lithium-ion batteries is separate from the cost of vehicle manufacture itself, and is said to account for 30-40 per cent of the price of an EV.
The battery is a substantial extra expense, but manufacturers are also trying to recoup the cost of research. Combustion engines have had more than a century of development, but EV research has only reached the same level in the past 20 years or so. Experiments are ongoing to find ways to make battery chemistry more efficient, and some of these experiments are paying off with cheaper battery types.
Another problem in need of addressing is the life span of an EV battery. Lithium-based batteries can lose performance if fast charging is often used (excess heat from charging can overheat the battery, reducing its capacity), so manufacturers are researching ways to keep batteries cool so that they last longer. On the flipside, a heat pump is a useful addition to an EV that takes the strain off the drive battery to warm the car's cabin in winter. But again, this adds cost (about €1,000) to an EV's list price.
Improved efficiency will either result in a smaller battery or a longer range, although the latter seems to be the main pursuit of most EV makers. The easiest way to do that is to fit a bigger battery, but of course that will bump up the car's price.
As more manufacturers build EVs, economies of scale mean that prices will come down, and we could see price parity between EVs and combustion-engined cars in the next few years.