Electric cars made simple

If you want to make your money and your electric car go farther, the first thing to do is drive efficiently. As with a petrol or diesel car, the harder you accelerate and the faster you go, the more energy your car will use, so go easy on the accelerator and keep things smooth. You should also keep the tyres pumped up to the correct pressure to reduce friction as you drive, and consider using an ‘eco’ drive mode if your car has one.

Cold weather does have an effect on electric car batteries – low temperatures reduce battery performance by slowing chemical reactions, so you won’t get as many miles out of a full charge as you would in summer. In-car heating is one of the biggest drains on your battery, too, so you can expect your electric car to give you a slightly shorter battery range in winter. There are things you can do to help, though – many electric cars come with a pre-heating or pre-cooling function that allows you to switch on the air-con while it’s charging, which is a great way of conserving battery life because you won’t have to max the air-con (which saps a lot of power) on the move.

Electric cars offer many environmental benefits but one thing you might be wondering is ‘what will happen to their batteries in the future?’ While electric car batteries are expected to last at least 10 years, they will eventually need to be replaced. The good news is that there are an increasing number of ways they can be reused after they’ve served their purpose in a car. As well as being used for power storage for businesses and homes, batteries can be disassembled by specialist firms and their valuable components, including lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt, can be used elsewhere.