Debunking EV running costs

If you don't own an electric car, you probably know someone who does. So, if you want to see the truth about running one, what will you do, ask someone you know for first-hand knowledge, or believe the tripe that some news outlets put out there?

I now regularly get questions from friends and contacts who want to check about the EV experience before committing to making their own decisions and I am always happy to share my insights. Only the other day, a friend was asking about the cost of charging and, who knows, maybe it's because they had seen headlines like the frankly ludicrous one that popped up in my Google newsfeed over the weekend from the paper I love to hate these days, The Daily Telegraph. Do they expect their readers to believe that all of us EV drivers are so dumb that we happily drive around in cars that cost twice as much to run, and yet, bizarrely, 92% of EV drivers choose another EV when they return their first one and another 6% choose a plug-in hybrid over going back to combustion engines?

So, let's look at the claim in their article. The entire basis of their suggestion that running an EV costs twice as much as a petrol car is based on one journey, a return drive from London to Penzance! So if anyone reads beyond the headline, they should immediately be questioning how the "journalist" has reached this conclusion on the basis of one trip. The average UK driver covers around 7,400 miles a year, so at 610 miles, the quoted journey would be less than 10% of their annual driving....hardly representative.

They claim that an average EV does 3.3 miles /kWh and that using rapid public chargers for the whole route at c/79p per kWh would cost the driver £148 for the round trip, vs £77 for petrol in a typical car. And certainly, if the owner of this car was dim-witted enough to leave home with just enough charge to get to the first rapid charger and then use these for the whole journey, then yes it could possibly cost them that much. But if they have half a brain, here's what they would more likely do.

First of all, if the cost of driving is important to them, as The Telegraph assumes it is, then they will have done their homework and chosen an EV that is more efficient. A relatively typical mid-range EV, such as the VW ID3, for example, typically returns 3.8 miles/kWh. Knowing they had a long journey ahead they would make an exception to the rule and charge the car to 100% at home before they set off (manufacturer advice is normally to restrict charging to 90% to preserve battery life, but occasionally charges to 100% will do no harm). If they are fortunate enough to have a private parking space, such as a driveway, at home, then they will have a special EV tariff for their home electricity, which can charge for about 12p/kWh. Hopefully, they will keep to the national speed limits on their journey to ensure they get at least 3.8 miles/kWh. 

Nevertheless, they will need to charge before they get down to Cornwall and as it is predicted by Google Maps to be at least a 6-hour drive, they will probably want to stop for something to eat and drink and a comfort break. Using an app like ZapMap, or these days just  Google Maps, it is easy to find charging points en route and to see their charging speed and cost. If you are doing a 6-hour drive to Cornwall then you might want to have a longer stop on the way than just 15 minutes for a super-rapid charge.  You can filter your navigation, therefore, to look for the slightly slower stations at 50kWh that will take more like half an hour to get you enough juice to reach Penzance comfortably and only charge more like 55p/kWh or even less if you look carefully and use the right cards and apps that will get you a bit more discount off the regular tariff.

Once down in Cornwall, I assume the driver isn’t just staying for the night and getting up the following day to drive straight back to London. presumably, if they were planning on something like that they would have taken the train, which unfortunately would have cost them a lot more than either a petrol car or EV!  So they might have booked either a hotel or private accommodation that provides EV charging.  A quick search on Hotels.com and Air BnB for a weekend in October shows a couple of hotels and about 14 B&B stays offering this facility, which should be cheaper than a rapid charger.  If not, whilst they are enjoying their stay in Cornwall they can make use of slower public chargers, 7 or 22kw for example that again are much cheaper than the 79P rapid stations that the newspaper has used for their exaggerated calculations. 

Heading home again, I expect our more intelligent EV tourists to make similar plans for the way back.  

Here’s how all that might add up:

Charging at home to 100% in 63kW VW ID3 (ID3 also comes in a longer range  84kWh version, but let’s assume the smaller battery to be fair) using an off-peak EV tariff @ 12p/kWh = £7.68

Drive 190 miles towards Cornwall until the battery is at c.20%

Charge battery to 80% on 50 kWh charger at 55p/kWh = £21.12

Drive the remaining journey to Penzance and stay at an Air BnB

Charge battery to 100% from c. 47% @ 55p/kWh = £18.65

Drive c. 190 miles back towards London.  Add 30kW to charge at 50kWh charger @55p/kWh = £16.50

Arrive back home in London with c. 40 miles of range left in the battery.

The total cost of charging for the trip is £63.95, compared to £77 for a typical petrol car.

Of course, if our EV driver was really clever, they would use an app like CoCharger and arrange to park their car on someone’s driveway to charge up in Cornwall at more like 40p/kWh. They may be lucky and have a generous B&B host, as we have often done in the past, who doesn’t charge you to plug your car in a standard 3-pin socket. 

Even if the driver is hell-bent on the journey each way, going as fast as possible with very short breaks and insists on using the super-rapid charge points at 79p/kWh, by making sure they leave home with a full charge, only taking on what charge they need en route, and charging more slowly while they are staying in the South West, the trip would only cost around £80, just £3 more than the petrol car.  

And let’s not forget that the whole headline is based on the premise of this one journey.  If we made similar assumptions for the rest of the year for an average UK driver based on the same charging and petrol prices and assuming that, for example, they did two runs to Penzance a year and the rest of their 7400 miles were local journeys within their 240 mile ID3 range, then the annual cost of running the EV would be £355. At the same time, the petrol car would have cost £925, more than two and a half times more. Meanwhile, the servicing costs will almost certainly be higher.

So, next time you see a headline like this in The Telegraph, or The Times (who they refer to as having conducted the original study), or The Daily Mail (because, let’s face it, they love to do the oil companies bidding and run trash like this too), stop and think about that friend you know who runs an EV, consider how stupid or otherwise you think they are, and then ask them before believing that the headline is anything more than click-bait designed to try and keep you in your combustion engine car and keep the media magnates fossil fuel buddies in fat profits.