Is an electric car actually cheaper to run than petrol in the UK?

Cheaper on a driveway, dearer on the public network. At the Department for Transport's assumed 3.5 miles per kWh, an overnight home tariff works out at about 2.2p a mile and the Ofgem-capped home rate at about 7.5p, against about 19.8p for petrol at 40 miles per gallon. Public rapid charging comes to about 26.3p a mile, which is more per mile than petrol.

The three prices, and which one is yours

There is no single cost of charging an electric car. There are at least three, and the dearest is about 12 times the cheapest. Which one you pay is settled by where the car is plugged in, not by the car itself.

You can put your own mileage and tariff into the EV charging cost calculator or the EV vs petrol calculator rather than relying on the assumptions above.

Why the driveway decides it

The cheapest number in the table is not available to everyone. An overnight off-peak tariff of the kind quoted — Intelligent Octopus Go, 23:30–05:30 — requires a smart meter and an eligible vehicle or charger, and it requires somewhere the car can sit plugged in for those hours. In practice that means off-street parking: a driveway, a garage, or an allocated space you can run a charger to.

If you park on the street, the 2.2p figure is not your figure and neither, mostly, is the 7.5p one. Your comparison is the public column against petrol, and on that comparison the electric car is dearer per mile to fuel. Public tariffs tracked here run from 55 pence per kWh (InstaVolt, rapid / ultra-rapid, off-peak) to 92 pence per kWh (InstaVolt, rapid / ultra-rapid, peak), checked 9 September 2026. Operators have to post a price per kWh on the unit, so that posted price, not an average, is the one to check before you plug in.

One number that is often misread here is HMRC's Advisory Electricity Rate: 7p a mile for home charging and 15p a mile for public charging from 1 September 2026. That is the rate an employer may reimburse for business mileage in a company car without a tax charge. It is a tax convention, not a private motorist's cost.

The VAT split between home and public charging

Part of the gap between home and public charging is tax, and it falls on the driver with nowhere to charge at home. In Great Britain, domestic electricity is zero-rated for VAT from 1 October 2026 to 30 June 2027; the normal rate is the reduced rate of 5%, which Northern Ireland keeps throughout. Electricity from a public charge point is standard-rated at 20%. Same energy, different rate, decided by where the socket is.

The Great Britain zero rate is temporary: from 30 June 2027 it is expected to return to 5% afterwards — expected rather than confirmed, because Budget 2026 extended the window and said nothing about what follows it. That is why the current capped figure of 26.32 pence per kWh (Ofgem price cap, Direct Debit, Great Britain average, 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Dec 2026 — excludes VAT (GB domestic electricity is zero-rated 1 Oct 2026 – 30 Jun 2027)) cannot be compared straight across cap periods; Ofgem says so itself. The public rate is not in that window: it stays standard-rated across it.

The 20% on public charging is what you are charged today and what HMRC publishes. In Charge My Street Ltd v HMRC the First-tier Tribunal held the 5% reduced rate could apply to supplies of up to 1,000 kWh a month, but at Budget 2026 the government announced legislation confirming that electricity from publicly accessible charge points is standard-rated at 20% from 1 November 2026. Every public figure on this page is worked out at 20% for that reason.

Northern Ireland is regulated separately

The Ofgem cap covers Great Britain only. In Northern Ireland the Utility Regulator (UREGNI) sets a maximum average price for Power NI through a price control and a tariff review — a maximum average charge per unit across that one supplier's tariff, rather than Ofgem's cap on the unit rate and standing charge of every licensed supplier in Great Britain. Under it a domestic customer using 3,200 kWh of electricity a year on the standard tariff pays about £1,093 a year. That consumption basis is what makes the figure mean anything, and no payment type is stated, so it is neither a credit-customer nor a Direct Debit number. VAT on domestic electricity there stays at 5% throughout the Great Britain zero-rate window. A driver in Belfast quoted the Great Britain capped figure is being given the wrong number twice over.

Electric cars now pay vehicle tax

The old exemption is gone. An electric car first registered on or after 1 April 2017 pays the 2026/27 standard rate of £200 a year, the same as a petrol car of the same era. A zero emission car first registered on or after 1 April 2026 pays £10 in its first year. An older electric car — one first registered between 1 March 2001 and 31 March 2017, which covers most of the cheap used electric stock — is not on the standard rate at all: it sits in the earlier graduated CO2 bands and pays the band A rate of £20, a band that used to be free and no longer is.

The Expensive Car Supplement is the part that catches used buyers out. It adds £440 a year in years two to six, and it is triggered by the list price when the car was new — not by what you pay for it. For zero emission cars first registered on or after 1 April 2025 the threshold is £50,000, effective from 1 April 2026; for petrol, diesel and alternative-fuel cars the threshold is £40,000. An electric car first registered between 1 April 2017 and 31 March 2025 pays £200 and no supplement at any list price.

A used listing does not normally carry the original list price, so the supplement can be invisible until the DVLA reminder arrives — the supplement on used electric cars works through which cars it catches. Vehicle tax also does not transfer when a car is sold: it is cancelled and refunded to the seller, and the buyer must tax the car before driving it or declare it off the road. The car tax calculator and the guide to vehicle tax when buying a used car cover the mechanics. Rates from the GOV.UK vehicle tax rate tables.

Charges that fall on one side only

Fully electric cars are exempt from every UK clean air zone and from the ULEZ, which is a real running-cost difference for some drivers and none at all for others. The ULEZ charge is £12.50 a day for a non-compliant car, covering all London boroughs and the City of London, every day except Christmas Day. Outside London the zones that charge private cars are Bristol at £9 a day and Birmingham at £8 a day. England's other Clean Air Zones are Class B or C and do not charge private cars at all, and Greater Manchester has no charging zone. Oxford runs a separate scheme, the Oxford Zero Emission Zone, where even a compliant petrol car pays and a zero-emission car pays nothing.

Scotland's Low Emission Zones in Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh and Aberdeen work differently again: there is no daily charge you can choose to pay, only a penalty. It starts at £60 and doubles on each further contravention, capped at £480 for a car and reset after 90 clear days, with a 50% reduction if paid within 14 days. Northern Ireland has no ULEZ, Clean Air Zone or Low Emission Zone. Check a specific registration with the clean air zone checker before assuming either way.

What the per-mile figures do not include

Fuel is one line of a running cost, and the per-mile figures above cover only that line.

• How far you actually drive. Whichever per-mile figure applies to you gets multiplied by your mileage. In the Department for Transport's National Travel Survey for England in 2025, self-estimated average annual mileage was 7,100 miles for all cars, 6,200 for petrol, 8,000 for diesel, 8,100 for hybrid and 9,400 for battery electric. Those are self-reported averages across a sample, not a prediction for you.
• Insurance. The Association of British Insurers reported an average annual motor premium paid of £566 in the second quarter of 2026, published on 29 July 2026, covering private comprehensive cover on privately owned cars, excluding paid add-ons such as legal protection. That is a price paid rather than quoted, and it is not broken down by fuel type, so it cannot settle whether an electric car costs more or less to insure than a petrol one.
• Depreciation. We have no used-car depreciation figure we can source, so we show none. How much a car loses depends on the model, its age and its mileage.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Ofgem energy price cap unit rates and standing charges — Great Britain domestic electricity.
• Department for Energy Security and Net Zero weekly road fuel prices — UK average pump price, week commencing 26 October 2026 (DESNZ).
• GOV.UK vehicle tax rate tables — 2026/27 rates.
• Utility Regulator, regulated electricity and gas tariffs — Northern Ireland.
• HMRC advisory fuel rates — Advisory Electricity Rate from 1 September 2026.
• Department for Transport National Travel Survey, table NTS0901a — England, 2025; annual mileage per car, self-estimated by respondents.