Think electric cars are expensive? My new EV costs me less than a couple of posh coffees a day

When new car time came around in the Fowler household, the Vauxhall Grandland wouldn’t have been at the top of our list. We’d decided to buy an EV, and my wife had her sights set on the new Renault Scenic – although I was trying to persuade her that the Renault 5 would be more up her street.

But as with any big purchase, saving cash is always high on the agenda. And it’s amazing how attractive things can look when they’re cheap – finding a new car for less than the cost of a couple of coffees a day was too good a deal to ignore.

Our previous family car was a Peugeot 2008, which cost us around £190 per month, and before that we had a Citroen C3 Aircross. Neither were our first choice, but both were boosted by great leasing deals.

Leasing is simple: you pay a deposit, have an agreed monthly payment, a defined term and a strict mileage limit. At the end of the deal, you just hand the car back and go again.

There’s no chance to buy the car and own it. Why would you want to? You just head to the leasing websites again, check out the latest deals and see what’s on offer.

This is where it gets interesting. You’d be amazed at the cars you see pop up on these leasing sites for not much cash each month. So how do they do it?

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Car makers often have stock to shift. They might have made promises to head office to take a certain number of cars in a certain spec. They might need to keep cars rolling off production lines – it’s really expensive to stop or even slow production – or they might need to sell more EVs to avoid fines under the government’s ZEV mandate. Sticking it on the leasing sites with a low monthly price is a great way to sell cars.

As you can imagine, deals come and go quickly. Once targets are hit, prices go up. It wasn’t long before the bargain Scenics we saw on offer but weren’t ready to lease yet (we didn’t want to pay for two cars at the same time) disappeared.

Keep in mind that there are some hidden costs to consider, like deposits and arrangement fees. And if you go over the agreed mileage, you’ll have to pay extra, too. But in many cases, when you get your calculator out, leasing can work out way cheaper than a PCP, or ‘personal contract purchase’, one of the most popular financing options today for people who want more car for their money.

Back to the Grandland, a car we’re warming to, not least for its value.

Our Grandland Electric in mid-spec GS trim has a list price of £38,255. The deal that’s still currently on offer at leasing.com (but could disappear any day) shows a deposit of £2,265.96, an arrangement fee of £349.99 and then 23 monthly payments of £188.83.

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That monthly payment means we’re paying less each day than you might spend on a couple of posh coffees. And if you’re a business owner and VAT registered, you can claim some of that tax back to make it even cheaper.

This is no entry-level compromise, either. The GS is very nicely kitted out with a 16in infotainment screen that seamlessly blends into a 10in driver display, heated seats and steering wheel, wireless Apple CarPlay, adaptive cruise control, ambient lighting inside and fancy matrix-beam LED lighting on the outside, with the Vauxhall badge on the front and wording on the back all cleverly illuminated at night. It’s close to a luxury car.

We didn’t get a choice of colour, but the white paint with the black roof looks good. And the the 77kWh battery gives a claimed range of 319 miles, although we charged to 100 per cent and the readout said 327 miles.

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We’ve no complaints about efficiency so far. Nearly three weeks into ownership, we haven’t had to plug in again after its initial charge. And with our last car going back with 8,400 miles on it, we’re unlikely to be bothered by the 5,000 mile limit for each of the two years we’ll ‘own’ the Grandland.

And for anyone who thinks EVs are expensive to insure, the Grandland is cheaper than the petrol Peugeot 2008 we had before. We got £194 back on our insurance for the six months left to run by swapping in the Peugeot for the Vauxhall.

Vauxhall obviously has a few EVs to shift, but the Grandland is the cheapest (and best) of the lot. Electric Mokkas and Astras are also currently showing as under £200 a month (plus deposit) on leasing.com.

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The only other models that come in cheaper than the Grandland are the budget Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03 – making the Vauxhall even more of a steal – while the Peugeot 2008 is the only other electric car under £200 at £199.

Bargains just over the £200 mark currently include the brilliant Citroen eC3 and eC3 Aircross, the smaller-battery Renault 5 and the MG4 – but that all changes quickly.

Leasing.com acts like a comparison site for leasing brokers, but you can go direct to the brokers themselves, too. Selectcarleasing.co.uk is one of the better known, not least as it sponsors Reading FC who play in the Select Car Leasing stadium.

If two years and 5,000 miles doesn’t suit you, you can play around with the numbers on the leasing sites to see how moving the mileage and deposits changes the monthly payments. You can work with smaller deposits, but obviously the monthly payments will go up.

Regular visitors to these sites will also learn much about the dynamics at play in the car business, seeing who has spare stock to sell and when. And there are some great deals on premium models, too: the brilliant Volkswagen ID.7 is often under £300 a month. BMWs can be very cheap, Lotus Eletres were on sale a while back and Polestars can be pretty tempting at times.

Window shopping on the leasing sites can be addictive. For me it’s become a hobby – I’m often swapping links to new deals with pals, seeing what we could get for not a whole lot of cash.

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EVs are popular on leasing sites as car makers rush to hit their ZEV mandate targets, and you may well see real desperation towards the end of the year as car makers rush to get credits or avoid fines. But there are plenty of excellent hybrids and petrol models available too. The British-built Nissan Qashqai is a regular amongst the bargains, as Nissan balances the need to keep the Sunderland factory flowing with the need to make money.

Leasing may not be right for everyone. My advice is to think hard about what you need, how you’ll use it and how you want to pay. Always have a budget in mind and stick to it – it’s very easy to be persuaded to pay more to get something just a little bit nicer.

If you’re a deal hunter like me, it pays to not be fussy. That way you can end up with something that’s still really nice, but at a price that have friends’ jaws dropping at the dinner table.

In the meantime, the Fowlers will be rolling around in a rather lovely and extremely cheap Vauxhall Grandland, counting down the days until I can jump online and grab another bargain.