VOLKSWAGEN has started taking UK orders for the battery-powered VW e-Golf.
The new car is priced at £25,845 after allowing for the government’s £5000 Plug-In Car Grant (PICG), broadly in line with top-of-the-range versions of the Nissan LEAF, which starts at £20,990 – or £15,990 for versions with a separately leased battery.
Company car tax benefits of EVs
- Currently electric vehicles – such as the VW e-Golf – are exempt from company car tax. Which is a huge financial advantage.
- However, from the 2015/16 tax year the company car tax band will be 5% rising to 7% the following year.
- Company car drivers need to watch the P11D value of the car as this is the full price of the car and not the car minus government grant.
- So while the e-Golf has a benefit in kind value of £0 for 2014/15, this rises to £1540 the following year – still a modest amount by any standards giving rise to a company car tax charge of just £308 for the year for a 20% tax payer.
- You should also read my blog – Watch the hidden company car tax rises on electric cars (and the tax drop in diesels)
Ralph Morton, Editor
It’s also quite a bit more than the £19,250 Volkswagen is charging for the admittedly rather smaller e-up!, the plug-in version of its popular city car.
The VW e-Golf has a claimed range of 118 miles and a top speed of 87mph, and can get from rest to 62mph in 10.4 seconds – fairly typical figures for the current electric models from the main manufacturers.
A full charge takes 13 hours from the domestic mains but an 80 per cent top up can be achieved in 35 minutes using a fast-charger. A (subsidised) dedicated domestic wall-box can charge the e-Golf in eight hours.
The VW e-Golf’s AC electric motor delivers 85kW (or 115PS) and a healthy 270Nm of torque. The 318kg battery pack is housed under the car’s floor, and there’s an optional heat pump that draws heat from both ambient air and the vehicle’s drive systems rather than draining the batteries, which helps tackle a key weakness of electric cars – reduced range in bad weather.
In fact, Volkswagen says the heat pump can boost the e-Golf’s range by as much as 20 per cent when temperatures are low. The adoption of an improved heat pump-based heating system was the main feature of the Nissan LEAF’s recent mid-life update.
Like the e-up!, the VW e-Golf offers five different regenerative braking modes, which the driver can select according to driving style and range preferences.
The e-Golf is the first Volkswagen to use full LED headlamps, and blue trim detailing – inside and out – hints at the new car’s electric drive-train as well. Spec levels are generous – sat nav is standard, for example – and are based on the SE models in the mainstream Golf range.
The e-Golf will be joined later by a second plug-in Golf model, the high-performance plug-in hybrid Golf GTE.
