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Electric car owners can reduce the cost of charging an electric vehicle to much less than fueling a gasoline car with a smart charger and an electricity special.
By using a system that allows them to charge at the cheapest possible time, drivers of a typical electric vehicle could end up paying just £18 to drive 1,000 miles a month, much cheaper than the £128 cost of refueling a petrol car. .
Home charging already makes EVs substantially cheaper to fuel per mile than petrol cars, but adopting smart charging can boost savings to more than £1,300 a year, new study shows .
Charging point provider Andersen EV analyzed the difference between what it costs a typical gasoline driver to fill up each year and a typical EV driver who uses a smart charger at home.
By charging at home with a smart charger, EV drivers can take advantage of off-peak rates. Smart chargers automatically stop and start charging based on national rate changes, such as when rates drop overnight because fewer people use energy.
Rising gasoline prices and falling off-peak EV rate costs have widened the gap between charging and refueling EVs at home.
It can now be almost seven times more expensive to refuel a conventional gasoline car than to charge an electric vehicle with a smart charger at home, according to the quarterly Andersen Index.
But the savings decrease if people use standard home chargers, and electric cars can be more expensive if they rely on public charging.
By charging at home with a smart charger, EV drivers can take advantage of off-peak rates. Smart chargers automatically stop and start charging online depending on how cheap electricity is, for example, taking advantage when rates drop overnight because fewer people use energy.
Smart charging of an electric vehicle versus the cost of gasoline
The Andersen Index compared a 1.2-litre Vauxhall Corsa to a Vauxhall Corsa Electric over a monthly average of 1,000 miles.
Live prices from six popular energy suppliers (including Ovo Energy, Octopus Energy, British Gas and e.on) returned an average smart charging rate of 7.9p/kWh.
When multiplied by the 230 kWh of battery power needed to power the Corsa E for 1,000 miles, an electric vehicle owner would pay just £18.17 a month, or £218.04 a year.
An equivalent petrol Corsa would need around 87 liters of unleaded petrol to travel 1,000 miles (at 52 mpg, i.e. 11.42 miles per litre). Using the average RAC at the time the research was carried out of £1.48 per litre, a petrol driver would fork out £128.76 a month, or £1,545.12 a year.
That’s a huge difference of £1,327.92 that could be saved by driving an electric vehicle and charging smartly at home.
The downside is the difference in the purchase costs of the two cars.
A 1.2-litre petrol Corsa costs from £18,505, while a battery-electric Corsa costs from £26,895.
However, with many new car buyers using PCP finance deals, the cheaper monthly fuel could be offset by the more expensive monthly electric vehicle payments to compare total ownership costs.
Standard domestic charging costs
While there are still savings to be made by charging at home without a smart charger, they only represent about a third of the savings with smart charging.
People who do not use a smart charger, or do not take advantage of EV-specific tariffs, pay a monthly cost of £56.35, based on Ofgem’s maximum average energy price standard tariff of 24.5p/kWh. This puts the annual costs at £676.20.
It can now be almost seven times more expensive to refuel a conventional gasoline car than to charge an electric vehicle with a smart charger at home, according to the Andersen Index.
Expensive moving freight ruins savings
There is a significant gap in the running costs of electric cars between those who can charge them at home and those who have to rely on public charging.
Savings on EV charging are lost if drivers only use public fast charging, according to Andersen’s analysis, which would cost an average of £180 a month, or £2,160 a year.
A recent independent report from the AA found that 8kW public charging costs were 52p/kWh on average, more than double the standard energy price cap rate.
Meanwhile, fast charging (8-49kW) costs 57p/kWh, fast charging (50 – 149kW) costs 71p/kWh and ultra-fast charging (150+kW) costs 78p/kWh.
In reality, most EV owners who did not have charging at home would primarily use cheaper but slower public charging points.
This comes as home charging provider Cord has found that 221,000 EV drivers do not have charging points at home, and 77,000 of them rely on charging with three-pin plugs.
The government recently opened up the EV home charger grant to drivers without access to vehicles, which is a welcome move to help them access cheaper charging.
David Martell, chief executive of Andersen EV, said: “65 per cent of homes have driveways or other off-street parking that allows them to install a home charger and now, thanks to the government’s electric vehicle subsidy introduced in March , those without access to vehicles can get £350 off the cost of an installation.
“This expands options for drivers, providing equal access to electric vehicles regardless of where they live.”
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