I know what you’re thinking, this is some internet scam. But read on. I will convince you otherwise. Two years ago, I made the switch to an electric vehicle (EV), based on the reassurance from my dad owning one for four years and my uncle owning one for 10 years.

I was intrigued by this new technology. For the first time in 100 years, the automobile changed right from its core, doing away with the inefficiencies of the internal combustion engine, and removing the cocktail of pollutants that we, as a society, have accepted as the norm.

While I liked the idea of a greener ride, less maintenance, instant torque and acceleration, the switch to an electric vehicle for me was driven by one main factor: the cost of ownership.

The petrol internal combustion engine is around 30 per cent efficient

The true cost of owning a vehicle is not only what you pay at the showroom, but rather what you’re going to pay to get from A to B, indefinitely. The petrol internal combustion engine is around 30 per cent efficient. If one spends €20 on petrol every week, only €6 out of those €20 are being used to move you forward. Everything else is just wasted in the process.

Enter the electric vehicle: a vehicle which uses a large lithium-ion battery and an electric motor, replacing the two thousand moving parts in a traditional engine with just six. A design which instead uses at least 90 per cent of the energy put inside it to move the car. What does this ultimately mean for the average driver?

This means that, by design, an EV is significantly cheaper to run. In one of my YouTube channel videos, The Future is Electric, we compared the running cost for the same trip (from Mellieħa to Marsa-scala and back) for an EV and for a petrol car. The cost of the journey in an EV was a quarter of that of the petrol car.

Switching to an EV in Malta means that you would be slashing your fuel costs by a quarter every year or, in the case of larger engines, up to an eighth. Currently, the annual licence for EVs in Malta is free for the first five years and costs only €10 after the fifth year.

All of this means that the average Maltese EV driver is saving €1,000 per year in vehicle running costs. See, I told you it’s not a scam!

Luke Zammit is the producer and host of the YouTube channel ‘The Future is Electric’.

Sound Bites

•        Malta has a fleet of more than 426,000 vehicles. As of Q1 2023, there are 9107 EVs in Malta, 6204 hybrids and 3304 plug-in hybrids. New EV registrations represented 25 per cent of vehicle registrations during Q1 of 2023, which means that one of every four new vehicles on the Maltese roads was fully electric. This trend is currently ahead of the global average, where one in five vehicles being sold are fully electric.

•        Enemalta is currently forecasting that there will be 223,000 electric vehicles on Malta’s roads by 2050. This would imply that around 50,000 electric vehicles would be charging at once, adding around 73MW demand to the national grid. While EVs won’t be alone in contributing additional strain to the grid, Malta’s forecasted capacity of 980MW using the second interconnector should already be enough to handle this additional load.

For more science news, listen to Radio Mocha on www.fb.com/RadioMochaMalta/.

DID YOU KNOW?

•        EV batteries are covered by warranty for eight years or 160,000km to retain more than 70 per cent of their initial capacity at that point.

•        EVs have no traditional gearbox. One gear is used to power the vehicle from a standstill to maximum speed.

•        EVs accelerate faster than traditional cars, since the electric motor delivers maximum torque instantly.

•        The average driver in Malta covering 8,000km per year will need to charge their car once every week on average.

•        After their very long cycle life, a lithium-ion battery is 95-98 per cent recyclable, with current technology.

•        There are 360 public charging stations in Malta. You can see where they are located on the Chargemyride app.

For more trivia, see: www.um.edu.mt/think.