EVs are cheaper to run than ICE cars – its official

Over 14 years after the first electric vehicle (EV) – the Nissan Leaf – was launched in the UK the industry continues to evaluate the running costs of a zero-emissions car compared with an ICE car – and generally the numbers continue to work out in the EV’s favour.

We have used our Journey Cost Calculator supplied by ZapMap to build up the picture of charging and fuel costs in more detail on an electric versus petrol basis.

EVs are charging ahead

The only thing drivers have to worry about when they have a Tusker EV, is charging. All the other running costs like insurance and maintenance are all included in their single monthly amount.

So, how much cheaper is it to run an EV over a petrol car? Using an average domestic electricity charge of 24.5p per kWh* it costs around £15 to charge a 60kWh car with 200 miles of range. That compares with a 40mpg petrol car using £31.36 of fuel at an average price of £1.38 per litre* to cover the same amount of miles.

While this is already saving the EV driver some money compared to the petrol driver, it doesn’t take into account the additional savings if you’re able to have an EV tariff for your electricity, which can bring the costs down even further. A number of electricity providers have these available now, with costs as low as 6.7p per kWh**

It also doesn’t take into account charging your EV away from home using a rapid charger typically costs around 75p per kWh, three times more than the average domestic electricity costs.

It’s easy to work out the cost of a full charge for your EV by using the following formulae:

Tariff (24.5p/kWh) x Your car’s battery size (60kWh) divided by 100 = £14.70.

Annual charging/fuel cost comparisons – EV versus petrol

We have used Tusker’s Fuel Cost Calculator to help us compare the differences between the costs of charging five different EVs with the petrol equivalent or similar.

An interesting comparison was the cost of charging some of the UKs most popular cars in both the petrol and electric version of the model (or it’s nearest comparison).

The electric Peugeot 208’s charging cost per mile is more than half the cost of the petrol 208 which translates into a £530 saving per annum when covering 8,161 miles which is based on the Department of Transport national travel survey’s average UK driver mileage***.

Based on the same mileage the electric iX3 is around one third cheaper to charge at 7.2p per mile than the petrol X3 which provides drivers with a £1,060 saving.

The popular VW Golf’s electric equivalent is the ID.3 and when we compared their charging/fuel costs the ID.3 was £628 cheaper over 12 months than the Golf.

There is no direct petrol equivalent to the popular Kia EV6, so we pitched it against the equally popular Volvo petrol X40. Based on an annual average mileage of 8,161 miles the EV6 works out nearly £1,000 cheaper to run over a 12-month period.

Generally, the bigger the car the more savings EV drivers can make as our final comparison between the electric BMW i7 and petrol Mercedes S Class suggests. Drivers of the i7 would pay £1,830 less to charge their car than the petrol S Class driver would spend on fuel.

It is worth noting the initial cost of installing a home charger if you don’t have one already. A typical home charger installation costs around £1,000, but depending on the miles you drive, in general you will still be making savings even within your first year of driving an EV.

Carry out your own fuel cost comparisons at https://tuskercars.com/ev-hub/journey-cost-calculator/

* Based on an average domestic energy cost per unit and average cost of unleaded petrol in March 2025.

**correct on 24.3.25 using gocompare.com

***Based on Dept of Transport national travel survey average driver mileage in 2023.

All costs generated by the Zap Map Journey Cost Calculator which is located on Tusker’s EV Hub.