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With electricity prices soaring, electric vehicle owners might be getting slightly anxious. The benefit of being able to charge your electric vehicle at home is becoming all the more evident after it has been calculated that a full charge using the public network is going to cost approximately £30. Overall this is around £1250 more expensive than those who have the ability to charge from home. It is no wonder drivers of EVs with no home charging facilities are getting a little frustrated.
This has been based on calculations carried out by electrifying.com using prices from all of the UK's largest charging providers’ public access points. Averaged out, it means it costs 53p per kilowatt hour to use a rapid charger in public. If we consider the cost of something like the Volkswagen ID.3, which has a 58 kWh battery and the driver must now pay approximately £21.52 to rapidly charge a battery from 10% to around 80%.
At the top end of the scale, the provider Ionity is the most expensive as with them you will pay £28.01. The cheapest public providers are Lidl and Tesco, who have pod point units costing £11.36. It’s pretty clear where most drivers are going to be headed, as this is virtually half the average cost.
There is little doubt that the most cost-effective way to own an electric vehicle is to be able to charge it at home and take advantage of the nightly rates. Using the same vehicle for comparison, this means a 10,000 mile per year driving range costs £208.80 for home charging and a horrifying £1475.52 if the owner is reliant on public charging points and cannot have one installed at home. But before you head back to a petrol engine, if you had to fill up a diesel car at 50 mpg, it would cost you an extra £1800 on top, so basically, electric vehicles are still cheaper, even if you still have to rely on public charging.
There seems to be a widening split creating two-tier electric vehicle ownership. Those who have access to driveways and garages and can therefore have a private charging port installed get a better experience than those who simply cannot. Of course, there is something of an irony in this because it tends to be houses and flats in towns and cities that have the least access to private chargers, and the whole point of electric cars is to improve air quality which is most damaged in built-up areas. For now, it seems that it will be something of a charging lottery. If you do not have a private charger within your home and have to rely on public charges, it’s going to depend on who provides the services in your local area. With Tesco and Lidl at the top of the charts, you are best off securing charging with them if possible.
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