Trying to trade in my hopeless electric car has been a nightmare

The character with whom I have come to most associate through my car - an electric Mercedes 250 EQA - is Josef K, the hapless and unwitting victim of bureaucratic tyranny in Franz Kafka’s The Trial.

For anyone who hasn’t read the novel, it is a psychological horror tale about a lowly bank clerk who is arrested and charged with an unspecified crime. Despite being entirely innocent, he is unable to defend himself because he can’t access any information about his case, and every attempt he makes to discover any, only serves to accelerate his inevitable demise.

This parable of the excesses of modern bureaucracy and the madness of totalitarianism accurately describes how it feels to be the reluctant owner of an electric car in 2024.

For anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating, consider this. Through an initial desire to help Scotland reach its net zero target, I am locked into a four-year, £500-a-month lease agreement for a car that I can’t use in any meaningful way and yet am also unable to hand back or to trade in for an alternative model.

It seems that every attempt I make to drive the car simply exposes me to new and hidden charges and fines and even trying to find out who is ultimately responsible for it is to become lost in a Kafkaesque labyrinth of absurdity and futility.

Charging has proved to be a nightmare (Image: PA)

The last time I wrote about my experience of owning an electric car, this time last year, I had resolved that, as an expensive white elephant, I would trade it in for a diesel. That was before I learned it wasn’t that simple, but more about that later.

As a tenement dweller, I am reliant on accessing local public charging points. Even if I wanted to install a home charger, at a cost of £4,000, the lane at the rear of my building has to be kept clear for emergency access.

My local parking permit covers six charging points, which are almost always inoperable or the spaces are occupied, usually by non-electric vehicles. If I want to use the nearest available chargers, around a mile away, I have to pay a parking charge or face a £60 fine.

Despite the car having a nominal maximum range of around 250 miles, this is rarely the case and, in cold weather it can be as little as 170.

The only journey I have attempted in the 27 months I’ve had it, from Glasgow to Derby, took 10 hours there and 12 hours back, compared with between five and six hours in my old diesel.

Having reluctantly accepted that the car isn’t equipped for long journeys, I reasoned that I could still use it to drive around the city, which only exposed me to new, unforeseen complications.

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On top of my existing problems with finding an available charging point, the company that runs the chargers, ChargePlace Scotland, has introduced a three-hour limit for each charge, with a £40 fine automatically imposed if you breach the limit, even by a second.

This is not widely publicised and I accumulated three fines before learning why the cost of charging the car suddenly leapt from around £26 to £66 in a matter of seconds.

Three hours is enough to accumulate a range of around 100 miles, after which I’m obliged to vacate the space, and it can be several days before another becomes available. Parking wardens employed by Glasgow City Council don’t appear to penalise drivers of non-electric cars occupying charging spaces, as long as they have a permit.

And this brings us back to the car’s battery performance, which was never as advertised, but appears to be getting worse.

My wife is a community midwife who recently used the car to make a series of home visits. When she started, the mileage range on the dashboard was 180 and, after driving not more than 15-20 miles around the city, by the end of the day the range was down to 60 miles. With the climate control switched on, it was 42.

Because I lease the car, my first port of call to complain was the leasing company. “Nothing to do with us, mate,” they told me. “We only lease the cars; they are owned by Mercedes Finance. You’d better call them.”

So, I called Mercedes Finance and had a conversation with a very pleasant chap in a call centre somewhere in the world.

He listened to my list of grievances before telling me, very politely that, as I had signed a lease agreement, I was obliged to honour it.

When I asked if it was possible to exchange the car for a non-electric Mercedes and that I would even be prepared to restart the four-year lease term, he had to consult his superior.

He returned with a positive, jovial tone and my hopes soared. “Yes, that would be possible sir,” he cheerfully imparted. “As long as you pay the £17,000 outstanding on the current lease agreement.”

While I can’t be certain, I fear this reluctance to agree to what any local car dealership would have bitten my hand off for, may have something to do with the rate of depreciation experienced by electric cars.

The value of mine is now less than half of its new sales cost, according to Autotrader, and I suspect few people would be willing to buy or lease a used electric car whose battery technology is now three years behind the curve.

Earlier this year, tests of "real-world" ranges of electric cars by WhatCar? revealed that many don’t deliver on their claimed maximum range – with some overstating achievable distances by up to 100 miles.

If my experience is anything to go by, I would not be surprised in this is the next major issue to engulf motor manufacturers, following the 2016 emissions scandal for which they are now facing compensation claims worth billions of pounds.

My £500-a-month relic now spends most of its time sitting idly, outside my home, while I am often forced to take public transport to attend business meetings.

The next stage of my own personal Kafkaesque trial is to try to find someone, somewhere in the global Mercedes organisation who will take my complaints seriously and, at the very least, test my battery.