I’ve owned the same electric car for 15 years – and I still love it

You’re going to hate me. I own an electric car and – shock horror – I love it. No range anxiety, no problems with chargers and no difficulty parking. What’s more, I’ve owned the same electric car for 15 years. Yes, I’m an evangelical early adopter – come at me!

No doubt you’ll have looked at the photographs accompanying this article and scoffed. My G-Wiz is barely big enough to call itself a car, and has all the style and structural integrity of a KitKat wrapper. Believe me, I’ve heard all the criticisms. But allow me to explain why this love affair has endured for a decade and a half.

Back in 2008 I had two small children and a job in an area of London that was a pain to get to. I had been working previously at glossy magazine publisher Condé Nast, where the editors were first with all the new trends, and around 2005 several of them started driving a G-Wiz. It felt like Bond St had become an open-air showroom as all the cute-as-a-button cars zipped around. 

GoinGreen is the only UK supplier of the little EVs, made by the Indian company Reva. Its director Alex Pierce recently told me that they started in 2003 with a few lease vehicles. “All 16 customers bought their G-Wiz off us at the end of the lease period,” he said. Pierce realised then that the cars would be popular, and in total around 1,100 have been sold in the UK.

I quickly ordered mine once I realised the running costs would be so tiny that offsetting the £9,700 price tag wouldn’t take long. But there were some essential adjustments required first …

My (thankfully extremely practical) husband installed an electric socket on the front wall of our terrace house – but with no driveway or dedicated parking space, we’d have to rely on the kindness of neighbours to leave us room to plug in.

I bought a cable cover, as having a wire dangling across the pavement would be an invitation to injury and arguments. I also made space in the hall for the ginormous container of deionised water that I’d need to “water” the vehicle’s battery regularly. And I made sure that, since I’d be driving across town to my office (a distance of about 10 miles each way), there was a plug available in the underground car park there.

My dinky car – in what I call Yves Klein blue – arrived, and I was immediately in love. The kids folded themselves into the back and we’d skitter around town, never having to worry about whether we’d find a parking space near John Lewis Oxford Street – two G-Wizes fit in one parking bay and it was free (these days I pay for the first 10 minutes of a four-hour meter period). The car is exempt from the Congestion Charge and there is even space to stash any shopping – albeit in an unusual place.

That detail has always raised a laugh from onlookers. Of course, with no engine, there’s just an empty space at the front of the car. Whether dropping my bags under the bonnet or standing alongside the car pouring water into what looks like a petrol cap, I quickly became an amusement for colleagues, neighbours and passersby.

And I’d be lying if it all felt seamless and joyous. There were times as I tootled along the Thames Embankment, being overtaken by thundering juggernauts, that I felt pretty vulnerable. The G-Wiz, after all, isn’t strictly a car at all but a “heavy quadricycle”, and with a flimsy body and non-existent rate of acceleration, any contact with another vehicle would inevitably leave me worse off.

Luckily, that’s never happened – in fact my only accident has been a gentle bump into a van in front during a traffic jam, when I absent-mindedly took my foot off the brake. It still rankles that the driver claimed against my insurance for whiplash. Give me a break!

If I ever dared to drive home at night in the rain while listening to music, I would watch the battery gauge plummet, so I soon abandoned the CD player function. 

Pierce recounted how another G-Wiz early adopter, who now has a Renault Zoe, “drove to Bath in her Wiz from south London and claims to have done it on one charge – slowly, avoiding motorways. It’s something I find hard to get my head around, but she’s not the kind of lady who would tell a lie.” This was long before lithium-powered EVs were available, he added, so it was “pretty remarkable for a lead acid battery”.

You might be thinking: what a crummy bit of kit to be celebrating. And you wouldn’t be alone. In 2016, Auto Express magazine ran a feature titled “Reva G-Wiz – the worst cars ever” and went on to state “The term ‘car’ is being generous to the G-Wiz. It had the performance of a sleepy vole and the structural integrity of your slippers.” How rude!

But while I’m absolutely aware of the shortcomings of this EV, and EVs in general, from reading about them assiduously as the industry has boomed over the past 15 years, hear me out.

I use my G-Wiz purely for short journeys around London and, as such, it’s a brilliant vehicle. It’s non-polluting and takes up very little space. It is happy at 20mph, which is now the imposed speed limit across all of the capital’s centre. In fact, it can be quite fun to watch a Porsche SUV and a Maserati saloon either side of me at the lights on Park Lane, desperately trying not to floor the accelerator. I give them a cheery wave when we meet again, inevitably, at the next set.

Once, with my children in the back, I was overtaken dangerously on a small residential road by an impatient driver. I was quite shaken by the experience but had my good humour restored by watching as his wing mirror was snapped off by an oncoming car as he continued his idiocy. “And that, children, is karma in action,” I laughed. Or “car-ma”, as we now call it.

Since 2008, EVs have changed beyond all recognition. The G-Wiz stopped production in 2012 and I feel like I’m now driving an antique. From my research, there are only about 200 left on Britain’s roads – almost all of those in London, as it is even more of a short-burst city car now.

Luckily for me, GoinGreen continues as a service and repair centre – not just for my car, but for the myriad other electric vehicles out there now. Pierce said, “With the number of EVs being sold by the [original equipment manufacturers] – particularly Kia, Nissan, Hyundai and Jaguar – we’re finding that their own dealerships cannot keep up with the maintenance of the cars they’ve sold.” 

For instance, he added, “Uber drivers – Uber leasing companies send us at least half a dozen cars a day – need fast and affordable service and repairs.” 

Love them or hate them, clearly electric cars are here to stay – and I intend to keep my G-Wiz on the road for as long as I can. It may be the equivalent of a brick phone in the age of the iPhone 15, but it does exactly what I need it to do. Go on, give me a wave if you see me around town.