Personal Contract Hire

[peteo48]

Just putting this out there for any views/experience.

Chatting to a mate yesterday who drives a VW Tiguan. He has this car on a 48 month lease and pays around £250 per month including servicing - he said he doesn't like having capital tied up in a car but, more importantly, he can drive a better car.

I put £200 a month away and this is enough, just, to replace a one year old Honda Jazz with another similar car in, say, 3 years.

I ruled out PCP some years ago as it seemed to me you put a wedge of money in up front and ended up with zilch at the end plus PCP payments are higher. I can't begin to work out why PCP is massively more expensive than PCH but that's by the by.

Any view, especially direct experience, gratefull received.

[culzean]

Here is a good article explaining pretty much all the ways of getting a car and the pros and cons of each.

https://www.gocompare.com/motoring/guides/is-it-cheaper-to-lease-or-buy-a-car/

[Jocko]

My step-daughter had a car on lease and when her marriage ended, was forced by circumstance, to return it early. It cost her a small fortune. Almost as much as her final payment would have been if she had decided to keep it at the end of her lease.

[Rory]

Chatting to a mate yesterday who drives a VW Tiguan. He has this car on a 48 month lease and pays around £250 per month including servicing - he said he doesn't like having capital tied up in a car but, more importantly, he can drive a better car.

Wife has a Tiguan and I keep on eye on these things - while there are PCH deals from time to time, that's pretty cheap for a Tiguan.  He may well have had a hefty initial payment, which people always ignore when they talk about how much their car costs.    The cheaper deals are usually very limited on mileage - could be 5K/yr - although if the finance is through VW then their excess mileage charge isn't too bad.

They are pretty strict on the car's condition when it gets returned - you see a lot of complaints from people who think they've been unfairly charged.  As suggested above, if you have to return early you get hit - VW charge 55% of the outstanding rental, but some finance houses want the full amount. 

One thing that's put me off so far is you're not in control of the timing - at the end of the deal the car pretty well has to go back.  In theory you can buy the car but the price is usually high, or you can extend the lease, but VW often whack the cost up.  So you've got to have something sorted well in advance and there might not be any deals around at that time.

Is PCH cheaper than PCP?  I think it can be be if you get a deal on PCH but at normal prices they should be similar.  We started off looking at PCH on Tiguan when we got ours 4.5yrs ago because I stumblesd across adverts at £89/mth.  But that was the baisic model in a flat colour, 2yr deal, 5K/yr.  Plus VAT.  Plus a big initial payment.   

The model we wanted, on the terms we wanted, was a bit over £300/mth.   But on PCP is was available with £6000 discount.  Trying to guess its value at 3yrs old I reckoned there was nothing in it, so we went the PCP route, although we pulled out of the PCP to save the interest cost.  If we'd needed the finance then PCH would have been cheaper (but less flexible).   We got the 2014 Jazz on PCP as it was 0%.

[peteo48]

Yes Rory, I thought the Tiguan was cheap at £250 per month but I did a bit of googling and you can get them at that price. You can even get a new Nissan Leaf for £181 per month although that does not include servicing. These are on 48 month deals - much dearer with 24 or 36 month ones.

I suppose it's getting that balance right between always having something newish and up to date and not starting to require repairs and overall cost. I think what prompted my "rethink" if you like was how I finance my own cars. I put about £210 per month away for eventual replacement and also servicing (although I got 2 "free" services when I bought the car). This is barely keeping up with depreciation and I am still driving second hand cars. I confess I was amazed at how cheap PCH was (even allowing for the up front payment) with a 48 month deal. I found myself wondering how they made a profit given the rental barely covers depreciation but I guess they pay a very heavily discounted price to buy the cars.

Which brings me to the Leaf at £181 per month. No road tax and my low mileage would mean a fuel bill of about £4 per month and I would get added smugness and virtue signalling

[sparky Paul]

Which brings me to the Leaf at £181 per month. No road tax and my low mileage would mean a fuel bill of about £4 per month and I would get added smugness and virtue signalling

If you can regularly charge at home, you have to take that saving into account - it can be considerable.

[Jocko]

If you can regularly charge at home, you have to take that saving into account - it can be considerable.

From Pod point.
The cost to charge an electric car in the UK varies between home, work and public charging.

For a typical electric car with a 60kWh battery and ~200 mile range:

Charging at home: Costs about £8.40 for a full charge.
Charging at work: Many employers will install workplace charging points and typically offer free access throughout the day.
Charging at public locations: Public chargepoints at supermarkets or car parks are often free to use for the duration of your stay.
Rapid charging: Rapid charging points are normally found at motorway service stations and typically cost £6.50 for a 30 min, ~100 mile charge.

[sparky Paul]

From Pod point.
The cost to charge an electric car in the UK varies between home, work and public charging.

For a typical electric car with a 60kWh battery and ~200 mile range:

Charging at home: Costs about £8.40 for a full charge.
Charging at work: Many employers will install workplace charging points and typically offer free access throughout the day.
Charging at public locations: Public chargepoints at supermarkets or car parks are often free to use for the duration of your stay.
Rapid charging: Rapid charging points are normally found at motorway service stations and typically cost £6.50 for a 30 min, ~100 mile charge.

Home charging can cost half that on the right tariff.

If you are lucky enough to have solar panels or a wind turbine, using a Zappi charger or similar turns an EV into a useful receptacle for excess generation, effectively costing nothing to charge.

[peteo48]

Octopus Energy do a special EV tariff. It's 5 pence per unit as opposed to the normal 13 - 14 pence and is available at night only. This helps reduce potential pressure on the grid. A scenario where we all had electric cars and we all plugged them in at 5pm would mean instant power cuts.

Some scope in the future for EV batteries giving power to the grid at peak times and taking it back in the small hours.

[Jocko]

Scotland is quite good for charging EVs. ChargePlace Scotland is a national network of EV charge points, operated by Charge Your Car on behalf of the Scottish Government. ... All charge points are free to access though once the account has been set up, including rapid chargers and those units on key tourist routes.

[peteo48]

Dundee especially. They have a "petrol station" type facility in the city centre which makes it viable for people with no off road parking to own an EV.

[John Ratsey]

Octopus Energy do a special EV tariff. It's 5 pence per unit as opposed to the normal 13 - 14 pence and is available at night only. This helps reduce potential pressure on the grid. A scenario where we all had electric cars and we all plugged them in at 5pm would mean instant power cuts.

The Octopus Go! tariff's 5p/kWh rate is only for 00:30 to 04:30. This may limit the ability to fill big batteries unless a very potent charger is installed. Anyone can sign up to that tariff. I use it to get cheap electricity for my Tesla Powerwall battery during the winter half of the year when solar power isn't enough. This tariff highlights one of the benefits of having a Smart Meter. There's no need for a second meter (as on the old Economy 7) because the computer just prices the appropriate sedment of the 1/2 hourly usage data at a different rate.

However, unless there's a big investment in nuclear power (which is best left running at near full capacity) the time will come when too many batteries are charging overnight and there won't be a commercial need to sell night time power so cheaply. The other potential period of power surplus will be a sunny + windy summer's day, but that won't be very convenient for many people to do their battery charging.

[sparky Paul]

The Octopus Go! tariff's 5p/kWh rate is only for 00:30 to 04:30. This may limit the ability to fill big batteries unless a very potent charger is installed.

Indeed, 4 hours is not much use on a 13A socket charger.

I wonder if everyone is on 00:30 to 04:30 on the Octopus tariff? One of the advantages of the E7 system is that everybody is phased in gradually, with the demand spread over a 10 hour or so period, with maximum demand in the early hours of the morning.

E7 tariffs in some areas are not much dearer than the Octopus tariff, and obviously give you those extra 3 hours.

[peteo48]

Clearly the discounted tariff thing needs careful thought because even with a home charger you would struggle. My Pal has the Nissan Leaf with the 6.6 charger and his car can charge to full or almost full in 4 hours but then he only has a 24 kwh battery. Even the new Vauxhall Corsa EV has a 50 kwh battery.

[Jocko]

And how many drivers need to recharge from empty to full every night? Very few I would imagine. The Nissan Leaf uses 265Wh/mile, so if you do 30 miles in the day you would need about 90 minutes to recharge.