There are plenty of luxury EVs on the market, but there are also some value-for-money options that won’t break the bank.
We’ve picked some of the best cheap electric cars that you might want to consider if you’re making the switch to an EV.
What are the best-priced electric cars?
Electric cars are typically more expensive than your average fuel-powered runabout, but you’ll cut costs on fuel by relying on electric charging.
Finding a used electric car is another way to cut costs – you might find a cracker of an EV that would be outside of your budget when purchased brand-new.
Don’t worry about battery degradation and health, either. Electric car batteries are expected to last up to 20 years and come with lengthy warranties.
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Peugeot’s boxy, van-based Rifter has proved a hit with active families
The new electric model is available in two trim levels: allure premium and the GT
Have you noticed how van drivers who whizz past you or sit on your tail always seem to look happy and contented?
That’s because vehicle manufacturers know that ‘white van man’, who almost lives in his vehicle and covers exceptionally long distances, needs very comfortable seats, a high driving position, a practical layout with lots of storage and cubby holes, plenty of cargo space, and a good lick of pace.
That’s why Peugeot’s boxy, van-based Rifter has proved such a hit with active families and couples seeking a no-nonsense vehicle that will carry up to seven people, be flexible enough to load up with leisure equipment, and be no slouch on the road.
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As it turns out, not all electric cars are created equal
Electric cars are not absolute newcomers to the car industry anymore. Over the past five years or so, most carmakers have churned out at least one electric car with plans to release a handful of others over the coming decade or so. The charging infrastructure has grown, too.
While this is obviously good news, it also leaves us (and the customer) with quite a big pond of EVs to choose from. To add more to the confusion and indecision, electric cars come in all shapes and sizes, set in motion by just one electric motor, two, or even three, and, obviously, very different price tags. Long story short, picking your next electric car might leave you scratching the top of your head. We get it.
Fret not, though. We’ve been kindly invited by Romania’s leading car outlet, Automarket, to an eight-day, eight-car real-life experiment that set out to discover just how good (or bad) the latest electric cars are in actual traffic both in and outside the city. What followed was to be known as Electric Romania 2020, basically a workshop on wheels powered by Vitesco Technologies, joined by other partners such as Michelin. The experience helped us better digest and understand both the strengths and shortcomings of today’s electric car: range-wise but also in terms of comfort, dynamics, user friendliness, tech-savviness, and overall liveability.
Porsche Taycan Turbo S (Image: Porsche)
This is where I started feeling like doing my dissertation paper all over again. Firstly, Electric Romania was thought out and designed as a tour of Romania done with EVs.
In case you’re asking why eight days, well, the backbone of the tour consisted of eight cars – all launched in 2020 on the Romanian market – and 14 journalists and content creators that would sample the said cars.
Basically, you got to drive another car each day, and the end of which you had to fill in a form with various bits of information: distance travelled, total time of travel, charging times, how much battery you had left at the destination, how much electricity went into the battery during charging, average speed, and so on.
So, each electric car was put through its paces over eight days, but every time by a different driver with a completely different set of driving habits than the one before him and on a different route. This included highways, winding A- and B-roads through the mountainside and hillside, as well as flat, plain-splitting roads where the elevation didn’t change much.
As for the car lineup itself, this is it, in the exact order we drove them:
Porsche Taycan
Renault Zoe
Volkswagen ID.3
Audi e-tron Sportback
Hyundai Kona Electric
Kia e-Niro
Mini Cooper SE
Peugeot e-2008
From here on, each car’s battery pack, electric motor (or motors), range, other specs as well as driving impressions will be presented as it follows.
Porsche had to get its first electric car right. And good God, it did. The Taycan Turbo is not just a flurry of performance, but a smile magnet. Sitting behind the wheel in the handful of traffic jams that slowed us down is the best way to enjoy the most honest smiles I’ve been treated with in a luxury car. Some people see you in Mercedes-AMG S63 or in a Panamera Turbo and you can just read either envy or loathing on their faces. With the Taycan, it’s the complete opposite: candid, genuine smiles from folks of all ages, walking on the street or driving in the next lane.
When you’re not sitting in a traffic jam, the Taycan Turbo’s personality can flip from tame to psycho as quick as it can go from naught to 60 mph: three seconds flat with Launch Control, on its way to a top speed of 260 kph (162 mph). The acceleration is brutal. You can easily squeeze a lot of squeal out of the wider-than-life rear tires from a standstill and with a drop of bad luck, you can even fracture a vertebra before the electronic nannies kick in or you decide to lift off. Even at highway speeds, smashing the accelerator will make the Taycan squat then shoot straight up ahead. The back of your head never leaves the headrest. Even if it wants, it can’t. At this point, I’m scared just thinking of what the Turbo S can do.
For a car this wide and long, city cruising is surprisingly swift and easy, but it’s the outer roads that make your spine tingle inside the Taycan. When on, the Launch Control feature triggers the Overboost function that unlocks the Turbo’s 500 kilowatts (670 hp, 680 PS) and 850 Newton-meters (627 pound-feet) coming from two electric motors fed by the 83.7-kWh battery pack (that’s the net, usable capacity – gross capacity according to Porsche literature is 93.4 kWh).
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That’s because it is. PSA doesn’t do a special, electric-only model like the Renault Zoe or Honda e. Rather than spend a vast amount of time and money designing and building a bespoke EV platform, it engineered its so-called ‘CMP’ architecture to accept both petrol/diesel and electrified powertrains. Every car that’s based on it (the 208, 2008, DS3 Crossback, Vauxhall Corsa and soon, Vauxhall Mokka and Citroen C4) gets the option of electric propulsion.
And these cars are not for zero-emission virtue signallers. PSA’s electric cars look and feel almost exactly like their petrol-powered counterparts. That’s the point – to normalise what is for many still a scary, new technology. You just fill them with electrons instead of inflammable liquid.
Surely the electric ones are more expensive?
Peugeot e-2008 electric SUV (Image: Peugeot)
They are. The e-2008 is available in all the same trim levels as the regular 2008, with prices (including the Government’s £3,000 grant) coming in at around £5,600 more than the equivalent petrol auto if you’re buying outright.
But you’re not buying outright, are you? Lease direct from Peugeot, and you’ll pay around £60 more per month for the electric-powered car. Remember, though, that the EV is exempt from road tax and BIK (potentially saving company car drivers thousands) and a full charge should only cost a little over £7 if you do it at home, while a full tank of petrol costs £50.
Yes a tank of fuel will get you further than a fully-charged battery, but not that much further.
How far can the e-2008 go on a charge, then?
Far enough. Peugeot claims between 191 and 206 miles, which is a smidge less than the mechanically largely identical e-208 because of the e-2008’s increased size and weight. We think 160 miles is a fair estimate of what most people will see, but pop it into Eco mode, amp up the regen and switch off the air conditioning and obviously you’ll go further.
In a 65-mile test the e-2008 managed 3.9 miles/kWh, which is actually very good. Its range computer is annoying though. Rather than counting down progressively as you cover distance, like other EVs, it tends to stick at one reading for miles, then loses a load of range in one big lump when you gently accelerate up a slip road. This is annoying and not massively confidence-inspiring.
A three-pin plug takes 24 hours to fully charge the e-2008, so if you’re got a driveway definitely get yourself a 7kW wallbox. It does the same in less than eight hours – a good night’s sleep. Find one of the relatively few 100kWh chargers out in the wild, and your e-2008’s 50kWh battery will charge to 80 per cent of its capacity in just 30 minutes.
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The electric Peugeot 2008 compact crossover brings zero-emissions power to a conventional-feeling car
What is it?
Another week, another feature that opens with the line ‘another week, another compact crossover’. A further opportunity will come in January. But this week it’s the Peugeot e-2008, the taller small Peugeot that is not quite as small as the last one. At 4.3m long, it’s 15cm longer than the 2008 it replaces, so is now longer than a Volkswagen Golf.
Peugeot e-2008 electric SUV (Image: Peugeot)
It sits on Peugeot’s CMP (Common Modular Platform) small car architecture which, you may know, means it comes with a choice of internal combustion power or as a pure battery-electric vehicle, as tested here. Plug-in hybridisation is saved for bigger Peugeots and Citroëns and DSs now, Vauxhalls later and who knows what beyond that, once parent company PSA Group merges with Fiat Chrysler as is planned next year.
Anyway, the idea is that, instead of Peugeot making a stand-alone electric vehicle, you choose a car from the regular Peugeot range and then choose your powertrain – ‘thermal’ or, increasingly, electric – to suit you, which strikes me as a pragmatic long-term approach. We’ve only tested the combusted and electric versions separately because they’re still widely searched for separately online – I guess electrification’s work will be done when searches are powertrain agnostic and the EV will have truly entered the everyday motoring lexicon.
Meantime, the e-2008 is meant to feel much like an ICE 2008. Like all big car companies, Peugeot needs a mix of low- or zero-tailpipe-emission vehicles to meet legislated CO2 targets. Its current order bank, with electrified versions into double-figure percentages, suggests it’ll meet them comfortably.
The 134bhp electric version will make up a double-digit percentage of 2008 sales, considerably more than the 99bhp manual-only diesel, which thanks to Volkswagen’s diesel cheating will likely make up just one 2008 in every 20. You can try to make a good case for a clean modern diesel, Peugeot CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato tells us, but “nobody’s listening”.
The new 2008 joins a raft of compact crossovers and, at this size and price, is pitched against rather a lot of family hatchbacks too. Other crossovers have not exactly set a high bar, but the best small family hatchbacks are really rather good.
Prices for combusted 2008s start at around £20,000 and rise to £31,000, with e-2008s costing £28,000 to £34,000 after the government grant, though lower servicing and refuelling costs on the BEV are meant to keep overall ownership costs equivalent to a 129bhp petrol.
What’s it like?
You can get this electrically powered SUV in every one of the 2008’s available trim levels but the one we tried was a GT Line (£32,000), three-quarters of the way up the ladder and quite classy inside, with some faux-leather and funky contrast stitching, with silvered plastics used sparingly enough that you can almost be convinced they’re actual chrome.
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Electric version of Peugeot 2008 small SUV joins e-208 hatchback in range
Peugeot has released details and pictures of the e-2008 – an SUV version of the already-revealed Peugeot e-208 electric hatchback and a sister model to the forthcoming DS 3 Crossback E-Tense.
The e-2008 comes with a 50kWh battery and an official range of 193 miles – slightly less than the 211 miles claimed by the e-208 and what potential rivals like the Kia e-Niro and Hyundai Kona Electric can manage.
Peugeot e-2008 electric SUV (Image: Peugeot)
However, Peugeot suggests the e-2008 will undercut those models on price. It also says the car will have a 134bhp electric motor and be capable of using 100kW rapid chargers, with an 80% top-up taking just 30 minutes.
As with the Peugeot 208, pure electric is just one of three powertrain options that’ll be offered with the 2008; diesel and petrol variants will also feature in the range. There’ll be 1.2-litre petrols with 99, 128 and 153bhp outputs, as well as a 99bhp 1.5-litre diesel.
