309 The Learner EV Driver Episode

Gary Comerford (: 00:00

One thing that's common amongst all drivers, whether they drive electric or otherwise, is that at some point in their life they had to learn to drive. For years, the only driving license you could get allowed you to drive a manual vehicle, or what the Americans call a stick shift. Then this changed with the tech so that you could have a license to allow you to drive an automatic vehicle. Now, with the arrival of electric vehicles, we have a third option.

But if you're just thinking about learning to drive and have decided you want to go electric, what are the options you have? What's the path of least resistance? Let's look at learning to drive in an EV.

I am Gary and welcome to this week's episode of EV Musings, a podcast about renewables electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. Now we're looking at learner drivers in the world of EV this week. But next week on the show, however, we've got a mid-season roundtable episode. Two specially invited guests coming to talk about topics of interest to them in the EV field. Can't say too much about it at the moment, but I reckon one of the topics might be around whether public charging is a little bit too complex for some people.

Now we'll also be speaking with BP Pulse in a few more weeks. They were here several seasons back talking about their charging offering. But things move fast in the world of EV charging, so we'll to get get together with them and get an update.

Gary Comerford Zapmap Intro (: 01:22

The EV Music's podcast is sponsored by ZapMap, the go to app for EV drivers to find and pay for public charging with confidence.

Gary Comerford (: 01:29

So here's a question for you. Can you remember your driving test or tests? I bet you can. Something of a rite of passage, and for most people, it's a high stress situation often resulting in failure and retest. Now, just for the record, I passed my driving test first time, as the first student out on a Monday morning with the most stringent examiner in the office. But I was still a nervous wreck and I put it down to the examiner having an off day in the best way.

Chances are that when you learn to drive, the experience was both simple but also incredibly complex. Simple from the point of view that you chose your driving instructor, you'd their car, usually with the gears and a clutch, and even a choke if you were old enough. But complex in that you had to learn things such as the biting point of the clutch, hill starts, managing the reds versus the speed as you drove along the road, all while trying to avoid oncoming cars, pedestrians, and obeying all the road signs and signals. No wonder most people fail their driving test first time out.

The average pass rate in: 2023

or an electric. Now if you choose an electric or automatic though, a lot of the complex parts of driving such as clutches and biting points and revs magically disappear. Now let me just set out a few things of note.

When I took my test, you took it in a manual vehicle. It didn't really matter if you wanted to drive an automatic or never ever intended to drive a manual, you tested in a manual. It kept your options open for the long term. Nowadays you've got the option of electing for manual or automatic slash electric. Now the idealist in me is saying you should always take your test in an electric because that's what everyone should be driving.

But the pragmatist in me realizes that this isn't always the ideal option and there can be downsides at the moment with doing that. Which then leaves you with the question of do I take a manual test or an automatic test? Now I I read through an interesting social media thread recently on this very topic. The crux of it was there's no real reason to do electric car lessons. Just learn on an automatic and you're right. And from a strict this is how to pass your test point of view, I think that's okay. But

Anyone who's ever driven an electric car after moving across on petrol or diesel will be aware of the fact that there are differences, how regenerative braking works, for example, or how to drive to get the maximum range. But are these the sort of things we should be teaching new drivers as part of their driving test preparation? Or are these things that can be taught afterwards? Well, as someone who spends a chunk of their life teaching people about electric cars, I think anything that can demystify and explain EVs is welcome.

I personally I'd have a completely separate teaching curriculum for EV drivers, more hands on experience, at focused time, looking at EV specific things like regen and public charging, etc. But that's just me.

My niece is going through this at the moment. Granted, she's a little older than the standard learner. In the UK, most kids start to learn as soon as they hit 17, the legal age for driving, and take their test as soon as they can. My niece is in her early twenties, and she's just now elected to start learning. She was initially going to buy an automatic car, learn on the automatic, and take a test on the automatic. Her logic was if I'm buying an automatic car, or even if I get an electric car, the chances are

I'll never drive in a car with a gear stick. Her parents and her grandparents, however, persuaded her to go with a manual test. And they reason that most of the other cars in the household, she has older siblings with cars, are manual. If she has an automatic-only driving license, it removes options for her in the case of issues with her car, borrowing vehicles, etc. So she's learning in a manual. But even if she were learning in an automatic,

. Statistics indicate that in: 2015

If you're in a household that only has EVs and the intention is to buy an EV as soon as that you've passed your test, it makes sense to learn in an EV and take your test in an EV. So how simple is this?

Even as little as three years ago, there were articles decrying the fact that there were very few electric vehicle driving schools. Nowadays, even the AA and RED, two of the top driving school franchises, offer EV only driver training. If you're going to use a franchise to learn, then these are probably the best. They'll provide the EV, the trained instructor, and the expertise. But if you want something a little more local and

probably a little cheaper, it's going to be a case of searching in your local area.

I did a bit of a Google search to see if I could determine what the pricing differences are for learning to drive electric.

The AA charge around thirty five thirty five pounds an hour for driving lessons in an automatic car, which is what you'd use if you wanted to drive electric. Red charge around forty five pounds an hour if you buy a ten hour package, although longer packages are cheaper per hour.

An independent driving instructor in an E V will charge anything from ten pounds to forty five pounds an hour, but as with all things car related, it's caveat emptor. Buyer beware, you will get what you pay for.

Some organisations, such as RED Training aimed at fleets, will offer a one day introduction to electric vehicles for people who've already been driving ice cars for a while. And this course covers things like how to plug in and charge an EV, using regen braking, economical driving techniques, range planning, and finding chargers. Zapmap, anyone?

So the next thing is going to be getting an EV for your learner driver. Now, obviously, this comes with a whole load of issues related to things like suitability for the learner, insurance, etc. Let's look back at pure automatics for a moment. A typical first car for a learner driver is between five and fifteen years old, relatively cheap to insure, and we'll talk insurance a little later, and it will cost £1,000 to £3,000.

Now if you're trying to find something like that in an automatic, you'll find that only one point nine percent of all cars that fall into that criteria are automatic. Not necessarily electric, but definitely automatic. And what's more, they'll be more expensive than similar age cars, sometimes up to twice as expensive.

But let's look at EVs. Now cost used to be an issue, but with a current suite of excellent value used EVs on the market, it shouldn't be too difficult to get some sort of used EV for the learner to use.

I've done a whole episode on buying a secondhand EV at the start of the season, episode 301, the Buying a Used Car episode. Brilliantly named, I think you'll agree.

But essentially all you need to do is find a car that has good battery health and you can get it checked and get a certificate, and that'd basically be bulletproof even with a high mileage.

If you're buying for a learner, your budget might be quite small, so I would recommend something like a BMW I three, an early Kia E Nero, perhaps a VWE up or similar.

Even though they're well loved by many, I wouldn't advise going for an early Nissan leaf. The Chadmo charging and the lack of heat management for the battery are a couple of reasons to avoid these for learner drivers.

With a good bit of shopping around, you can pick up a nice older EV for a reasonably small amount of money.

But let's be clear here. many people would opt for a five hundred pound banger ice car for a new learner driver. The car's cheap to buy, relatively cheap to insure, and it won't cost a fortune if it gets a scratch, a scrape or a ding.

I know my first car was an old Austin Mini eight fifty CC in which I couldn't even lock the doors fully. Resulting in my father following me into town one night and while I was in the cinema with my girlfriend, he got into the car, he draped a jacket over the steering wheel to let me know that he'd been there, and that was a very subtle message to tell me to get in and do something because

If he can do something benign like that, then somebody else can come in and do something a little more malevolent. Get it fixed.

You're not gonna get a five hundred pound EV banger. EVs are just too new to the market for there to be many of them floating around in that price range. The ones that are will probably not have good battery health and should probably be avoided.

Gary Comerford (: 10:57

But this will also have a knock-in effect to our next topic of discussion: insurance. The thing that many people do when it comes to younger drivers on insurance is to add them as second drivers on an older person's insurance, usually a parent. And for whatever reason, the insurance companies tend to price this as a lower risk, and the premiums are not as high. But make no mistake, they will be high. The fact that you have a new driver.

On the road, especially someone who in this day and age is usually attached to their mobile device, is a huge risk. And the premiums will reflect this. Now, anecdotally, I've heard tell of new drivers who've been quoted a £2,000 insurance premium per year for a non-EV that only cost £500 to buy. Now, this clearly shows the level of risk the insurance company places on new drivers. Furthermore, someone who is passing their test

On an automatic only license will automatically get a higher premium. Apparently, automatic only license holders are 46% more likely to have an insurance claim, and the premium will be 56% higher in cost on average in the first year. But if you're a manual license holder driving an automatic, this doesn't apply for some reason. Hmm, interesting. There simply isn't a way around this.

Be ready for high premiums for new drivers and especially high premiums for automatic only license holders. Fit a black box telematic system if you want to monitor what the driver is doing. This can lower premiums somewhat, but it's still going to be heavy. Now I've done a number of episodes on insurance and how companies factor in EV risk, etc. Check out the archives for those. Now, not specific to electric vehicle drivers, but new regulations are coming into the law in the UK or

Have already come into law. Now in Northern Ireland, new drivers aged under 24 will only be allowed to carry one passenger aged 14 to 20 between 11 pm and 6 a.m. for the first six months after they pass their test. This is not law in the United Kingdom yet at the time of recording, but discussions are underway. This is to stop a new driver taking a bunch of friends out late at night and getting peer pressured into driving stupidly and either hurting themselves.

or others. Now obviously nothing like that ever happened when I was a new driver. Stares knowingly into the camera. Additionally, new drivers have their license revoked if they get six points in their first two years on the road. For non new drivers, i.e. experienced drivers, it's twelve points. Now these points don't have to be part of a single offense. They can add up. For example, two speeding defences could take you over a six point limit and mean you have to take your test again. It's almost like the government

Doesn't really want new drivers on the road, right? So, where does this leave us? Well, the long and the short of it is that there are companies that will teach you to drive an electric car, but they are few and far between. Mostly they'll teach you in an automatic, and you'll need to learn the electric aspects yourself: regen braking, efficient driving, charging, etc. But the actual mechanics are not dissimilar to those of learning to drive any car as a younger person. You need to find someone to instruct you.

and a vehicle in which to be instructed. There are cost implications and insurance implications for both of those.

The ideal method is to get in an electric car, learn in that, and drive that. Entirely possible if your whole family is electric only already. For those where this isn't the case, there are other implications, and learning in a manual with a few hours of cross-training once you've passed your test is probably the right solution. So have you learned to drive electric recently? What was the process? What were the issues? Let me know in the comments please.

Gary Comerford Zapmap Outro (: 14:52

The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers to find and pay for public charging with confidence. Zapmap is free to download and use, with thousands of public charge points to choose from, live pricing and availability information, and a range of filters to find the right charge for you. Plus, choose subscription models for enhanced features such as using Zapmap in car, on CarPlay, or Android Auto, and discounted charging across thousands of charge points.

Gary Comerford (: 15:19

I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show.

Gary Comerford Boilerplate (: 15:23

If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms, or other general messages to pass on to me, I can be reached at info at evmusings.com. On the socials, I'm on BlueSky at evmusings.bsky.social. I'm also on Instagram at EV Musings where I post short videos and podcast extracts regularly. Why not follow me there? Many thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon, on a monthly basis, and through coffee.com on an ad hoc one. Regular listeners will know about my two ebooks.

So you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable. They're 99p each or equivalent, and you can get them on Amazon. Check out the links in the show notes for more information, as well as the link to my regular EV Musings newsletter and associated articles. Now my stats show that a lot of people watch this on YouTube, but they're not subscribers. So if you're one of those, why not hit that button and the notification bell so you don't miss out? Thank you very much.

Gary Comerford (: 16:19

If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you. Why not let me know you've got to this point by messaging me at musingtv.bsky.social with the words L Plates. #ifyouknowyouknow, nothing else. Thanks as always to my co-founder Simon. You know, like me, he's grandfathered into a lot of driving classes. He can drive an electric unicycle and a tractor, but not at the same time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye now.