ALMOST 12 months of lockdown has had many people reviewing their options in terms of car ownership, renting, leasing, carshare or subscription.
Working from home has meant that the company, or family car, has sat for many days, weeks or even months, sitting on the driveway going nowhere. Once we get back to some sort of normality we will be firmly on the road to zero.
The government wants to end sales of petrol and diesel by 2030 and put us all behind the wheel of an electric car. To see how this might feel and work, an EV subscription is worth thinking about, basically a service that is more flexible than leasing.
We are currently trialing the EV subscription service offered by Onto, which has been described as the ‘Spotify of electric car ownership’ which sums it up quite nicely. There is a whole range of EVs to choose from ranging Renault Zoe to Jaguar i-Pace, with lots in between.
Onto is seeing demand grow rapidly – currently, 5% of all new electric vehicle registrations are actually made by Onto for its fleet. The minimum commitment is one month, and costs start from £339 per month, which covers everything (insurance, road tax, breakdown cover, wear and tear, service and repair, plus free charging when using a BP Pulse charging point or a Shell charging point).
Onto said that a third of customers also swap models regularly, to try out a range of cars and see which best fits their lifestyle.
To give Onto a go we opted for a Hyundai Kona, knowing that it has one of the longest, and most reliable around in terms of range. For a month this costs £559 and an additional £49 gets the car delivered to your door. A further £9 allows an additional driver to be added.
There’s very little heavy lifting required. Download the Onto app and register. Credit card details will be taken and subscription fees when you have a car are taken automatically. You need the app also to lock and unlock the car as well as start it.
Another neat touch is the fact that the app tracks the car on its way to you, tells you where charge points are and even where the car is parked should you forget.
On the day of arrival, as well as tracking, the delivery driver phoned with an ETA, had the car cleaned on route and went round the interior with sanitiser on arrival. He then photographed all round the car before we electronically signed for it.
The only slight hiccup was the lack of fast chargers nearby – they’ve been vandalised (hashtag infrastructure issues). That said there was still almost 150 miles range available on arrival and we have just had a home charger fitted by Project EV . The car comes with both charge point and three-pin household leads as well as those EV charge cards worth up to 1,000 miles.
The Onto Hyundai will be with us for a month to provide a good insight into living, and working, with an EV. We will be providing regular updates.
