On sale now, the Volkswagen e-up! offers a quieter alternative to their award winning up! city car. Available from 24 e-Retailers, the e-up! offers a five door, four-seat high spec. car producing zero emissions at the tail pipe. In addition, Volkswagen have teamed up with Ecotricity, the world’s first ‘green electricity’ company, to provide an optional electricity package specifically catering for electric cars. The package ensures that when owners of the e-up! recharge their vehicle at home, they do so with 100% ‘green energy’, plus a discount as detailed below.
As part of Ecotricity’s ‘Green Electricity + Car’ package, customers receive green energy for their homes, a free smart meter to monitor electricity usage, access to Ecotricity’s national network of charging points, the Electric Highway, as well as 1,000 free miles in their e-up!. The ‘Green Electricity + Car’ tariff works in realising that drivers of electric cars will use more electricity and less petrol/diesel than they did prior to electric vehicle ownership. The net effect is a reduction in owners’ electricity Unit Rate, or the equivalent to a £27.00 annual discount. Considering the VW e-up! approximately costs 2.7 pence per mile to run, the £27 annual saving equate to the 1,000 free miles.
Commenting on the package, Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity said:
“Ecotricity’s new tariff ensures customers with electric cars are recharging at home with green energy and as a bonus they’ll get 1,000 free miles worth of electricity. And when away from home, drivers of electric cars will also have access to the Electric Highway, so when you’re out and about you can still drive with zero emissions.”
When Ecotricity was founded in 1995, it became the world’s first ‘green electricity’ company. Its aim is to change the way electricity is made and used in Britain. Now powering nearly 100,000 homes and businesses from its growing fleet of wind and sun parks, Ecotricity is a ‘not-for-dividend’ enterprise that, on average, invests more per customer in building new sources of green electricity than any other energy company in Britain.
You can read all about Volkswagen’s e-up! electric car by clicking here. It costs £24,250 (RRP), including battery, before the government’s £5,000 electric car grant is applied, which brings the on-road price down to £19,250. However, there are new Volkswagen finance packages specially made for the e-up!, called e-Solutions, which we detailed at the end of 2013.
For more details on Ecotricity, go to www.ecotricity.co.uk.
Source; Volkswagen
* Green Electricity + Car tariff acknowledges that drivers of electric cars will be using more electricity and less petrol, so the net effect of the 1,000 free miles is a reduction in their Unit Rate or the equivalent of a £27.00 discount annually.
The Volkswagen e-up! will cost approximately 2.7p per mile to run based on its battery capacity of 18.7 kWh and range of 93 miles with a full charge costing around £2.75.
