Lease or no lease: a spreadsheet turned mini web app
Checking out work's electric car scheme
One of the many employee benefits offered by Ghyston is an electric car leasing scheme. The details are the same as offered by other companies: you lease a new electric vehicle (EV) for a few years, the lease includes insurance/tax/maintenance, and crucially the lease payment is taken from your salary pre-tax and you instead pay a small benefit in kind tax. This lets you drive a nice new electric car around town, whilst you save your marginal tax rate off the cost of the lease.
Naturally curious, I went to the lease provider's website, chose a not too extravagant electric car I quite liked the look of, filled out a couple of details and got a quote back. £400 a month. That seems quite high? Or maybe it's reasonable? How much do I pay already on maintenance, and insurance, and road tax? How much do I pay in fuel? How much would an EV cost to power? What am I spending on second hand petrol cars amortised over their ownership?
Never one to shy away when some numbers are in need of crunching I put together a quick spreadsheet. And... I got the slightly disappointing answer I'd expected all along: whilst it might be nice to drive a new EV over my 10 year old petrol car, it is far from a sensible financial decision, at least with my annual mileage.
Building something
So that was it. I'd spent a good half an hour finding numbers and making a spreadsheet and I didn't even have an excuse to buy a new car to show for it. But maybe it wasn't entirely wasted; I could share it and let others use it too.
The problem is, unless they really want what you've built, no-one is that enthusiastic about checking out someone else's spreadsheet. Were it a little web app though... still probably no-one would care. But just maybe they'll at least have a quick poke about. Plus I've been looking for an excuse to try out Chart.js for a while, so it wouldn't be a total waste of effort.
Building the app was simple: npm create vite, add some form inputs, translate the spreadsheet formulae into TypeScript, add a chart, splash some Tailwind on it until it looks half decent, and throw it up on Netlify. Easily done in... well... most of my weekend...
Anyway, presenting "Lease or no lease":
Have a go here and see how much you can justify an electric car to yourself/your significant other.