Until recently I was happily saying that seeing as I'm retired, I have plenty of time to slow charge at our 'local' public charge points which are 15-20 minutes walk away.

We've recently spent a lot of time visiting a friend in hospital though, the time pressure of which has meant a fair bit of more expensive DC charging.

We'll probably bite the bullet and have a charge point fitted to our garage, but the location of the garage means that won't be cheap.

In conclusion, public charging for us is proving a bit of a mixed bag. It can work ok, but at times can be an expensive inconvenience.

 

The walk is probably good for you, but 35 minutes return walk and then again to pick it up presumably will become a drag after a while. I would probably get the charger depending on the case (renting and moving out soon vs owning the house, how may miles a year done, cost etc). If it were me I would probably granny charge for now as well rather than walk and pay the 55p.

 

how much are those local charging points per kWh? are they reliable, or sometimes you go there and they don't work or someone else is using them?

 

They are 55p/kWh, and I've not had any problem with availability or reliability (fingers-crossed etc,), so on those days when I have the time, they work pretty well.

 

If you public charge often, a subscription is likely worthwhile. £10 a month to IONITY takes the price down to 40p, for example. As I mostly charge at home, I don’t bother with a subscription, but on a long journey use Arnold Clarke at 55p, which can take me from Aberdeen to Birmingham, though further south I have to use other networks. Still, just like eating at home is cheaper than a restaurant, and staying at home is cheaper than a hotel, when on holiday we expect to pay more. Over the course of a year, it’s still far cheaper than fossils, since you can never fit a home petrol pump and fill up at pennies per litre.

 

I see a mix of opinions where some say EV public charging is much more expensive than diesel or petrol, and others say it is about the same. So I thought I'd do some research and math for the case of the UK in 2025....

I've taken it for a long time that ~50p/kWh is equivalent to running an ICE. However, as you point out, charging at home is much cheaper (ignoring capital costs). For many public charging is the exception. It's overpriced, but it's like refuelling at motorway services - it's an exception and, as such, doesn't make a big impact overall. Choosing Tesla (pity about Musk) or Instavolt, in their cheap time-of-day, is comparable, but slightly more expensive, than running an ICE.

The real problem (isn't it one third of homes without a driveway - but what about apartments?) is those who can't use a home charger - and, I suspect, couldn't park outside in their designated space to use one across the pavement even if councils allowed them. But maybe we have too many cars, and need to rethink both our parking and transport infrastructure? If I go around some housing estates during the day, they're still rammed with cars parked on the road because there's no space at the house. 2-4 vehicles per house! And then wait until laws on pavement parking imposed.

We're certainly doing some things wrong!

 

I think it depends hugely upon individual circumstances and what is available near you. My options with a Tesla M3 doing 4mi/kWh living in Doncaster would be (if I didn't have a home charger):

• Arnold Clarke - 55p/kWh 2 min drive away, I would go there and charge whilst doing some work on my laptop in the cafe. So just under 15p/mi with minimal inconvenience.
• Instavolt off peak - 54p/kWh 2 min drive away, similar cost to AC but more inconvenient, even so a 10 or 15 min charge isn't too bad.
• Ionity with subscription - 43p/kWh ie just over 10p/kWh but 10-15 min drive away so more inconvenient, although often pass by that way to top up.
• Tesla - bit far away but often pass Blyth, Ferrybridge etc and new one opening at Thorne soon, so under 40p/kWh = 10p/kWh.
• No local or conveniently located AC chargers near me.

So I could definitely be price comparable or cheaper than petrol, but main problem I think relying on fast charging is the winter and all that energy wasted heating up the battery...

 

We're charging in public (near work) on AC at 44p/kWh. But similar-priced AC near home too. Rapids on long journeys we tend to use Ionity on subscription, and often go to the continent where other chargers are cheap too.

It is somewhat more expensive than fuel alone for our previous diesel car, mostly because that was a very efficient Polo.

The cost of charging isn't a showstopper, but most people would find charging a couple of times a week annoying if they had to walk more than 5 minutes each way, or take a detour on the way home from work and sit at a rapid for 25 mins.

 

Most public DC charging feels like the equivalent of paying the premium for petrol or diesel at a motorway service station - it's reliable, it's available, but you pay a small fortune for it.

Anyone relying on lots of DC charging, either because they do long distance or don't have home charging, will have a Tesla or Ionity subscription, and thus be paying less than 43p per kWh in nearly every situation. This comfortably makes my EV 'fuel' cost lower than my previous petrol SUV, and almost on par with my previous diesel saloon car (which, by the time I got rid of it, was old and maintenance costs were getting high).

 

Anyone relying on lots of DC charging, either because they do long distance or don't have home charging, will have a Tesla or Ionity subscription

But in general the majority of ionity chargers are on or near the motorway network (not that it's a big network) so not great if you don't have home charging. Nobody wants to be driving up and down the motorway just to charge.
Also in many locations Tesla isn't much better. Driving through the city traffic to use the superchargers at the service centre certainly isn't my idea of acceptable. The other ones nearish are in a paid carpark. Then again I could drive up the motorway to use the Tesla chargers.
Realistically I would be using the BP chargers (not great prices even with membership) or instavolt even though McDonald's carpark can be a bit sketchy after 9pm and that's hoping that the youths aren't blocking the chargers with their hot hatches. Having to go to these places after 9pm to make it even comparable to petrol isn't exactly enticing.

So I suspect many people wouldn't benefit from either subscription. The hope is in time other networks will have some good membership offers that are comparable.

 

I meant to discount my rates by perhaps 5% to account for subscriptions and discounts, but I forgot.

It's a fair point because the relevant comparison is for people that can't charge from home and will be charging a lot.

So my numbers might be a bit pessimistic.

However if Ionity is 43p/kWh +£10.50/month then this might work out at 50p or 55p including the monthly fee when you work it out - depending on usage.

It will work well if you have an Ionity station(s) that you can regularly use as your main go to charger. But won't work for people that don't have those Ionitys on their regular routes.

 

I meant to discount my rates by perhaps 5% to account for subscriptions and discounts, but I forgot.

It's a fair point because the relevant comparison is for people that can't charge from home and will be charging a lot.

So my numbers might be a bit pessimistic.

However if Ionity is 43p/kWh +£10.50/month then this might work out at 50p or 55p including the monthly fee when you work it out - depending on usage.

It will work well if you have an Ionity station(s) that you can regularly use as your main go to charger. But won't work for people that don't have those Ionitys on their regular routes.

If we take 8000 miles as a reasonable average for someone with a new-ish EV, and the 2.9 miles per kWh from your original post... we get:
8000 miles per year
2759kWh per year
230kWh per month
£10.50 subscription divided by 230kWh = £0.045
So it's really 43p + 4.5p = <48p per kWh

I'm really lucky that a brand new V4 Tesla site is being built just along the road from me - off-peak should be 26-27p per kWh, and based on an annual subscription (£90 - so £7.5 per month), it should work out at..
230kWh per month
£7.50 per month divided by 230kWh = £0.033
So it'll be 26-27p per kWh plus 3p, so less than 30p per kWh or just over 10p per mile.

Obviously not everyone will be able to benefit from a subscription as they won't live in the right place (or won't be a morning person - so starting a charge before 8am or 9am doesn't seem so feasible...), but, for me I do already run my EV at a competitive rate (without home charging) and I'll hopefully be running it at an even cheaper rate as soon as Tesla finish building and get the power connected.

 

If you calculate charging at the Ionity Power rate, you also have to factor in the subscription. I usually take out the subscription when I go on a trip (it wouldn’t make sense for me to get the annual one). At first glance, the savings look significant, but once I add the subscription cost, the balance often changes quite a bit. For example, I spent £80 on charging, but when I add £10.50 for Ionity and £10.99 for Tesla, since I often need both, sometimes SUC is better, sometimes Ionity, the total comes to £100 compared to £130 without subscription. Of course, it still makes sense to get the subscription, but the difference isn’t quite as big.

 

You do, but, any subscription is easily covered by savings elsewhere.

My Skoda Enyaq service plan is £12.75 per month.
The cheapest Skoda petrol/diesel service plan is £22.25 per month (cars under 1 year old) or £21.75pm (cars over 1 year old).

My combined EV service plan + Tesla annual charging subscription is less than the equivalent petrol / diesel service plan.

Which is why anyone sensible will have looked at the total cost of ownership ('fuel', servicing, cost of the car, VED etc.) and not just look at one element in isolation.

 

Of course we all know that the cost of "fuel" for EV is much cheaper if you can charge from home. But if you can't?

I see a mix of opinions where some say EV public charging is much more expensive than diesel or petrol, and others say it is about the same. So I thought I'd do some research and math for the case of the UK in 2025. And work out a cost per mile that is only for fuel, excluding maintenance, service, repairs, insurance, the cost of buying the car etc.

Electricity
For fast charging I take 76p/kWh (a calculated average of Instavolt 87p, Osprey 82, Gridserve 79, Ionity 74, Podpoint 69, MFG 70, Tesla 60p).
For slow charging I use 52p/kWh (used Chat GPT to get that number).
The average of fast and slow is 64p/kWh.

For miles per kWh I settled on 2.9 as an average after checking various sources online. (The average of sources was 3.3, I changed it to 2.9 to account for charging losses.)

That gives us 18p per mile at slow paid public chargers (52/2.9), 26p per mile at fast chargers and 22p per mile for the average of both.

Petrol
I take £1.35 per litre assuming you charge at supermarkets mostly and very occasionally at a motorway service station and I assume 36.5 miles per gallon and 4.54 litres per UK gallon (average of various sources online) which gives me 17p per mile.

Diesel
£1.40/litre and 43 miles per gallon (various sources) gives us 15p/mile.

Price Parity Point
So if you are relying on fast chargers it's more expensive, if you can mainly use a 40-50p charger it's about the same.

I calculate an EV charging price of 43p/kWh to equal diesel and 49p/kWh to equal petrol.

Conversely, if petrol rises to £1.77 that would equal the average of all chargers, or £2.10 per litre to equal the average of fast chargers.

I think those figures are pessimistic even if you have no local AC charging.
You can bring the fast charging cost down considerably by using a subscription. You can alternatively get a discount just for using off peak pricing etc.
Near me the options with subscriptions are pretty sparse (no Ionity, Tesla for example). But fairly close by I have several Osprey and Instavolt stations with off peak rates. It would be easy to spend half an hour charging at the Instavolt once every few days at 54p/kwh*. On longer trips you can make use of a subscription if needed.

2.9mi/kwh is also very conservative, I average low 3s in the ID4 and high 3s in the ID3 over a year, without really trying and with a poor use case. Someone doing more 40-50mph runs than me would average better. Charging losses are lower than your assumption on a rapid, 5% or less so I think a assumption of 3.3-3.5mi/kwh is fair. Obviously this depends on the car but if you go for an EV being this cost conscious and then it's an iPace or an original eTron, that's on you. If you buy something efficient and drive fairly carefully you could beat that by a considerable margin.

Anyway, if we assumed 54p/kwh at 3.4 mi/kwh that'd be 16p/mile, which happens to almost equal your ICE running costs.

For a new car, or a used car less than 3 years old, I don't think there is any financial disincentive to buying an EV now. As said above if your normal budget for a used car is <£10k you still have few EV options. However there are increasingly few reasonable ICE options in that price range too. Your classic mid range 3 year old family car now costs considerably more than that with any power train.

* people moan about Instavolt pricing but this must actually be a really good option now for many people without home chargers, because they are so widespread.

 

2.9mi/kwh is also very conservative, I average low 3s in the ID4 and high 3s in the ID3 over a year, without really trying and with a poor use case. Someone doing more 40-50mph runs than me would average better. Charging losses are lower than your assumption on a rapid, 5% or less so I think a assumption of 3.3-3.5mi/kwh is fair.

3.3mi/kWh I came up with by averaging numerous studies and articles which I can go and dig up and post if anyone is interested.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of people out there not driving as carefully as us, and a lot of people driving around mid and large size SUVs which are factoring into those numbers. Something to consider is that the average EV might still be slightly smaller than the average ICE. The fairer comparison is arguably that the 3.3 average and the miles per gallon ought to be equivalent for a car of the same weight (and perhaps shape) so ti be fair here some slight pessimism on the miles per kWh might be justified?

I used a 10% charging loss which was the average in some articles that I just googled before writing the article. Again, I can post them on request. I didn't want to add 20 sources to the article, then it takes twice as long to write it and is a bit cumbersome. After applying the 10% charging loss I changed it to 3.0.

I then changed it to 2.9 because my personal experience when I've actually measured it has been over 10% and I thought worth using my own experience as I haven't seen studies that actually sourced why they think it is 10% or showed evidence or measurements.

I'm less convinced about the off-peak options because who really wants to leave home and drive to a charger at 9pm at night, or get up early and drive to a charger at 7am. Occasionally, you might be driving past one at just the right time, but not very often. So I'm looking for a realistic price equivalence to petrol that doesn't require a lot more time and hassle to charge.

 

I'm averaging 4.1 m/kWh in my ID3 so these numbers feel low to me.

The local on street chargers are £0.40kWh off peak (Char.gy)and I have nearby fast charge at £0.50 (Instavolt) or even £0.36 if I go to Tesla at off peak hours.

Problem is, if you don't know where and when to charge or you don't have these cheaper options nearby you can easily be paying £0.80.

Oh and Ubitricity can do one with their £0.76 for 5kW chargers.

 

I'm averaging 4.1 m/kWh in my ID3 so these numbers feel low to me.

The local on street chargers are £0.40kWh off peak (Char.gy)and I have nearby fast charge at £0.50 (Instavolt) or even £0.36 if I go to Tesla at off peak hours.

Problem is, if you don't know where and when to charge or you don't have these cheaper options nearby you can easily be paying £0.80.

Oh and Ubitricity can do one with their £0.76 for 5kW chargers.

Ubitricity seem to be 57p/kwh in Liverpool via electroverse. Less if you get a discount for Octopus being your home energy supplier, but obviously most people without home charging won't have that.

 

I've done the math for my particular car. A Kona, about 16kWh/100km. Previously I had a VW Polo gasoline, about 6.5l/100km. For the Kona to break even with the Polo, I'd have to pay about 0.69€/kWh. At home I pay 0.11€/kWh. Even considering charging losses and the fact I don't always charge at night, let's say 15 cents / kWh. Less than 25% of what it cost me to drive before. Now, on public chargers. Many of them are expensive around here. Here the tradition is to also pay a fee per minute, not only per kWh, so that makes the math a bit more complicated. Tesla is one of the cheapest ones and it's like 40 cent/kWh during the day (no time fee). So charging outside is definitely comparable to gas, and sometimes more expensive than diesel.

 

I took an Ionity subscription for my trip through Spain / France / Switzerland / Italy. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that it was around 30% cheaper than it would have been in a similar sized petrol car.

I think subscription plans for local chargers are the way forward. First, build out the infrastructure and then offer subscription plans to local residents. Could even be done on a per-street basis, e.g. you are entitled to an X% discount on AC chargers that are less than 100 metres away from your residence. This would prevent chargers being hogged by commuters or visitors.

 

For me and my Ioniq 5 I'm averaging 3.5 m/kWh at home and paying a maximum of 7p/kWh so 2p a mile for home charging.

On longer, faster runs I'm getting around 3m/kWh. In the UK I pay a month at a time for a Tesla subscription when I need it. On my most recent trips that's been at 37p/kWh so 12.3 p/mile.

With the increasing roll out of superchargers and them being opened up to non-Teslas I'm finding it relatively easy to plan them into my journeys. My most recent find is a new one just north of Toddington and only about a mile or so from the M1 next to a garden centre with reasonably decent coffee.

On my trips to France with far more miles to cover, I use Tesla, Izivia (at Mcdonalds), Aldi and Lidl. I'm usually paying between 25c and 30c.

My previous diesel would do about 47 mpg on long runs. (far worse round town). At say £1.40 a litre I make that £6.30 a gallon. So 13.4p per mile. I note petrol and diesel are currently more expensive in France than over here.

So for me the EV is cheaper for 'fuel' in almost every scenario except on very rare occasions where I have to use a more expensive provider.

 

It’s like saying I need a strawman to prove that India is bigger than Belgium.

I don’t - it’s a fact.

@Xinix: if range isn’t important to you, you could have saved a lot of money by going for a much cheaper EV than the Kia EV6 RWD LR.

For the environment, the best is not to have a car at all. The fact that you’re here shows you clearly don’t care about it, you’re not willing to make the sacrifices for the environment that Greta does.

A Mercedes ICE is definitely more comfortable than a Dacia/Citroen/Kia EV. EV is quieter, although modern ICEs are also quiet, and at higher speeds the environmental noise outweighs engine noise anyway. This means an ICE can be quieter than an EV, as has been proven with Tesla.

It’s only cheaper to refuel if you don’t leave home, otherwise, it isn’t. Electric Jamie showed that in #1. If you believe an EV charges faster than an ICE, I’ll give you the chance to make a fortune. I’ll give you a million euros for every euro you invest if we meet at a charger next to a petrol station and you charge your BEV faster than I refuel ICE.

 

It’s like saying I need a strawman to prove that India is bigger than Belgium

No it's like saying you need to live in India because it's bigger than Belgium.

There is a reason why people who drive for a living are limited as to how many hours they can drive without stopping

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5e14b5b040f0b65dbed713a0/simplified-guidance-eu-drivers-hours-working-time-rules.pdf

 

You’re just comforting yourself.

You can stop five times for two or three minutes, or you can stop once at a service area and sleep if you find a spot, which is often difficult. Even in Norway, EVs make up only 13% of new truck sales, and that hasn’t really increased. In the UK, electric trucks account for just 0.5% of the market.

 

You’re just comforting yourself.

I regularly drive the length of the country.

South coast to Scotland in a day.

I have the choice of an ICE with 450 miles or an EV with 200-250, I'd choose the EV every time .

So who exactly am I comforting?

 

Luckily, no one serious shares your opinion, which is why manufacturers are competing to offer BEVs with longer range and faster charging. As I’m writing this, I’m watching the 1,000 km test of the new CLA. It could turn out to be good, of course, nowhere near an ICE, but better than what we’ve seen so far.

 

Lol!!

Do you want to bet that the RAC and AA don't recommend taking a break after 2-3 hours ( regardless of the range of the car).

Faster charging is welcome as it will increase the throughput of the chargers

 

Fran K, you can get an Ioniq 28kWh for about £7,000 with a range of 140 miles or if you want more choice of brands/models and bigger range maybe £10,000. These cars are costing you maybe £1000-£2000 a year in depreciation while, if you can charge from home, saving you £1000-£2000 a year in fuel, maintenance, servicing and repairs. In other words total cost on a par with an old petrol car you can pick up for £200 with much worse tech. And will easily beat a petrol car of similar age.

Anyone who has an ICE car either hasn't done the math, doesn't know much about EVs, has been brainwashed by chit chat originating from tabloids, or has a reason to prefer to pay more money. Second hand EVs are the cheapest cars in the UK if you can charge from home.

 

Can we all agree we have a Croatian (?) troll in our midst?

It is really boring.

 

You can say that to people who don’t own a BEV or have never charged at a public charger. Unlike ICE, where prices are quite similar, with BEVs they can differ significantly. Two chargers at the same location, one is £0.42 (Ionity/SUC), the other £0.84 (Moon, Greenway, Shell,..), that’s double. In the case of ICE, at Costco it’s 124.88 and the most expensive is 128.74. Or €1.35 for the cheapest and €1.36 for the most expensive diesel in the country. That’s why 60% of the comments on SpeakEV are about chargers, charging, and the cost of charging. On an ICE forum, probably only about 1% of the comments are about petrol stations and refueling. Not true about the time spent on the journey either, you’ve simply adjusted your way of travelling to suit the EV.

p.s. When all your arguments are shot down, you’re left with “ICE is smelly, I’d rather drive a Leaf than a Ferrari Purosangue”.

But fine, it’s my fault for trying to get obvious EVangelists to take off their rose-coloured glasses and step out of their bubble. It’s like trying to convince a member of Jim Jones’s sect, happily preparing to drink the poison, that it’s not the right thing to do. This Spanish cultist has already drunk it and is telling everyone how great he feels.

In any case, the arguments are there, costs, repairs, range, prices, and so on, so I’ve nothing more to add. I’ll step out of the thread and leave you to enjoy in your bubble.

 

I’d rather drive a Leaf than a Ferrari Purosangue”.

No, I'd rather drive a Rimac Nevera than a Bugatti Veyron.

Yet again you use false equivalence to make a false claim.

 

So, if an individual’s situation is such that they can only access high cost electricity but can access petrol/diesel, it’s possible that ICE will be the cheaper option but will of course depend on the ICE car that they are driving and the type of journeys that they are undertaking. But at some point in a price point of the electricity, in such scenarios, it may turn around and the EV becomes cheaper than the ICE.

Have I understood correctly?

 

As a new user to Ev, granny charger, using chargers on the move, and I do move around the North a bit
My gripes are Ed Miliband , If I buy liquid fuel then there are different grades etc, but lecky , its all the same, We pay high prices because of high basic electric costs , point one
Point 2, my phone has to have so many apps to combat dodgy RFID connections, Ev points that have been designed by a committee of monkeys,
Has it been cheeper than running a diesel , nope, not per mile, I know I need to manage my Ev better, that's a work in progress.
Ive also just used one card for all the apps, and I have so many apps , so I can help monitor payments and be secure,
If you haven't got a Monzo card I can recommend it, especially for taken money ,returned money

🎉 Join Monzo and get a mystery reward of up to £50.

join.monzo.com

 

As a new user to Ev, granny charger, using chargers on the move, and I do move around the North a bit
My gripes are Ed Miliband , If I buy liquid fuel then there are different grades etc, but lecky , its all the same, We pay high prices because of high basic electric costs , point one
Point 2, my phone has to have so many apps to combat dodgy RFID connections, Ev points that have been designed by a committee of monkeys,
Has it been cheeper than running a diesel , nope, not per mile, I know I need to manage my Ev better, that's a work in progress.
Ive also just used one card for all the apps, and I have so many apps , so I can help monitor payments and be secure,
If you haven't got a Monzo card I can recommend it, especially for taken money ,returned money

🎉 Join Monzo and get a mystery reward of up to £50.

join.monzo.com

You don’t need all those apps - a single Electroverse app works with most of them. There are other aggregators too, but as I’m an Octopus customer I get 8% off using Electroverse.

 

Oh goodie another app
I rocked up at a couple of places where I needed an app to work because RFID , didn't
I appreciate what Electroverse do, but unless they do the charger I need when I need it, .............

But I will give it a try and come back to you, thanks for the linky thing

 

All you usually need are Electroverse and Tesla accounts. These cover almost all charging stations. The exceptions are BP Pulse (and they’re dodgy and unreliable) and obscure local on-street providers.

If you’re making ICEV vs EV cost of ownership comparisons then you need to include much more than fuel costs anyway. I crunched the numbers, and between the electric, petrol and diesel versions of my 208, the electric one still came out the cheapest over 8 years, which is the minimum I keep cars for. And that was on the basis of using public charging, albeit with a subscription.

Of course, home charging significantly improved the cost delta for the EV version. To the extent that compared to the petrol version, over 16 years, the savings on fuel and servicing entirely paid for the capital cost of the car.

 

I wonder if Brits will (slowly) move over to the litres per 100km (meaningless to me), yet I (slowly) moved over to measuring using SI units.