The Short Answer
Charging at home on an EV tariff, an average driver spends about £164 a year: that's 7,100 miles at 3.3 miles per kWh on Intelligent Octopus Go's 7.6p night rate, or about 2.3p a mile. On a standard tariff at the price cap it's about £566. Do all your miles on public rapid chargers and it's about £1,700, more than the £1,254 a 45mpg petrol car would cost in fuel.
So the honest version is: an EV is very cheap to run if you can charge at home overnight on a proper tariff, and not cheap at all if you can't. Everything else is detail.
What It Costs, Every Way of Charging
For an average driver doing 7,100 miles a year (the 2025 England average for all cars, from the Department for Transport's National Travel Survey), in a car that does 3.3 miles per kWh (the real-world average across EV Database's records), the car needs about 2,150kWh a year. Here's what that costs:
| How you charge | Price per kWh | Per year | Per mile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home, EDF Pod Point Plug & Power | 6.18p | £133 | 1.9p |
| Home, Intelligent Octopus Go | 7.6p | £164 | 2.3p |
| Home, Octopus Go or British Gas EV Power | 9.5p | £204 | 2.9p |
| Home, standard tariff at the price cap | 26.32p | £566 | 8.0p |
| Public slow and fast chargers (3 to 49kW) | 54p | £1,162 | 16.4p |
| Public rapid and ultra-rapid (50kW and up) | 79p | £1,700 | 23.9p |
| Petrol car at 45mpg, for comparison | 174.88p a litre | £1,254 | 17.7p |
Public prices are Zapmap's weighted pay-as-you-go averages for September 2026. Petrol is the DESNZ UK average for 5 October 2026. The price cap rate is for 1 October to 31 December 2026. Some energy is lost as heat while charging, so real home costs run a little higher than these.
Cost per Mile, Every Way of Charging
7,100 miles a year at 3.3 miles per kWh. Rates checked 11 October 2026; public prices are Zapmap's September 2026 averages; petrol at 174.88p a litre in a 45mpg car.
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Work out your own numbers, with your mileage, your car and your mix of home and public charging:
EV Charging Cost Calculator
What a year of driving costs on each way of charging, against a petrol car. Every rate was checked with the supplier or official source on 11 October 2026.
England average 7,100 (all cars), 9,400 for EVs
Real-world average 3.3. Small, efficient cars do 4+, big SUVs under 3.
The rest is public charging
Rapid 79p, slower public 54p (Zapmap, Sept 2026)
Petrol 174.88p a litre (5 October 2026)
Your EV, per year
£290
4.1p a mile, 2,152kWh
Petrol car, per year
£1,254
17.7p a mile at 45mpg
EV saves you
£964
Fuel and charging only
Breakdown
Home charging £147 | Public charging £143
For comparison, doing all your miles on public rapid chargers would cost about £1,700 a year. Home charging is what makes an EV cheap to run.
All your miles charged at home, by tariff
Charging only. EV tariffs usually charge more than the cap in the daytime, which raises the rest of your household bill. Our EV tariff guide works through when that wipes out the saving.
Assumes all home charging happens in the cheap window. Real costs run a little higher because some energy is lost as heat while charging, and the figures leave out standing charges, servicing, insurance and vehicle tax. Price cap rate 26.32p/kWh (1 October to 31 December 2026). Sources: supplier tariff pages and the Octopus API, Zapmap Charging Price Index (September 2026), DESNZ weekly road fuel prices, DfT National Travel Survey NTS0901, EV Database, HMRC eVED policy paper (13 July 2026).
Cost of a Full Charge
The same sums for a single charge, from empty to full, for three common battery sizes:
| Battery | EV tariff at 7.6p | Price cap, 26.32p | Public rapid, 79p |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40kWh (small city car) | £3.04 | £10.53 | £31.60 |
| 60kWh (typical family car) | £4.56 | £15.79 | £47.40 |
| 80kWh (large car or SUV) | £6.08 | £21.06 | £63.20 |
In practice you'd rarely charge from completely empty, and most cars charge more slowly as they near full, so rapid sessions are usually stopped around 80%. Work out a real session, with your battery, your charger and how far you're charging:
Charge Time and Cost Calculator
How long one charging session takes and what it costs, at home or on the road.
Energy added
36kWh
About 119 miles at 3.3 miles per kWh
Time to charge
5 hr 9 min
At 7.0kW
Cheapest cost here
£2.22
On the cheapest EV night rate
This charge on each rate
Times assume a constant charging speed. In practice most cars charge more slowly as the battery gets close to full, which is why rapid sessions are usually stopped around 80%, and some energy is lost as heat. Rapid times also depend on the car's own maximum DC charging speed. Tariff rates checked with each supplier on 11 October 2026; public averages from Zapmap for September 2026.
The Three Things That Decide Your Bill
1. Whether you can charge at home
This is by far the biggest one. The gap between an EV tariff night rate and a public rapid charger is more than ten to one. If you have a driveway or garage, a home charger pays for itself quickly. If you don't, look at the grant for cross-pavement charging, and if that's not possible, plan around the cheaper slow public chargers rather than rapids where you can.
2. Which tariff you're on
A standard tariff more than triples the cost of home charging compared with an EV tariff. But EV tariffs usually charge more than the price cap during the day, and the whole house pays that day rate, so the saving isn't automatic. Our EV tariff guide has a calculator that works out whether it pays for your household.
3. How efficient your car is
EV Database's real-world average is 301Wh per mile, about 3.3 miles per kWh. The most efficient car on its list, a rear-wheel-drive Tesla Model 3, uses 218Wh a mile, about 4.6 miles per kWh and 28% less energy than the average. So the car you choose moves the bill nearly as much as the tariff does. Expect to use more per mile in cold weather, too.
Charging Speed at Home
A typical home wallbox on a single-phase supply charges at about 7kW, which adds a 60kWh battery's worth in roughly eight and a half hours, comfortably inside most EV tariffs' cheap windows if you top up rather than charge from empty. A portable cable plugged into a normal socket at 10 amps draws about 2.3kW, so the same charge takes over a day. That's fine for a low-mileage driver or a plug-in hybrid, slow for anyone else.
A wallbox sold for home use in Great Britain has to be "smart" under the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021. Among other things, it must come set by default to avoid charging in peak hours, defined as 8am to 11am and 4pm to 10pm on weekdays, though you can change that. Simple portable cables that can't send or receive information are outside the rules.
What About Tax?
Two things worth knowing. Electric cars now pay vehicle tax: £10 in the first year, then the standard £200 a year (£210 by monthly Direct Debit), plus an extra £440 a year on electric cars with a list price above £50,000. And from 1 April 2028 the government will add Electric Vehicle Excise Duty, a mileage charge of 3p a mile for battery EVs and 1.5p for plug-in hybrids, paid alongside vehicle tax. For an average 7,100 miles that's about £213 a year.
Even with that, an EV charged at home stays well ahead. For comparison, fuel duty on petrol is 52.95p a litre, which works out at about 5.3p a mile in a 45mpg car, before VAT, so a petrol driver already pays more in fuel duty per mile than the new EV charge will cost.
Can You Cut It Further?
- Get on an EV tariff if your mileage is high enough to cover the day-rate penalty. For most households that's more than about 2,800 miles a year.
- Charge from your own solar in summer. It's free electricity, though it isn't always the best use of it. See our guide to charging an EV from solar panels.
- Drive smoothly and pre-heat while plugged in. Warming the car from the wall rather than the battery saves range in winter.
- Avoid rapid chargers out of habit. At 79p a kWh on average, one rapid session can cost more than a month of home charging.
