Average Cost to Charge an Electric Car 2024

The cost to fully charge an electric car ranges from £4-5 (Smart EQ, Citroen C-Zero) up to £20 or more (e.g. luxury Audi. Tesla and Porsche cars), assuming the unit cost of electricity is 24.5 pence per kWh (the effective cap in early summer of 2024). But those with an EV electricity tariff can potentially pay 70% to charge their cars.

In addition to your EV tariff, charging costs largely depend on the size of the car battery. A smaller battery is like a smaller petrol tank, in that it takes less energy to 'fill up'. (And on a related note: because smaller batteries store less energy, they deliver less range.)

The battery size for EVs in the UK ranges from the smallest batteries at just 16.7kWh (Smart EQ fortwo) up to the largest batteries with 107.8kWh (Mercedes ESQ 450+ and AMG 53 4MATIC+) or more as new cars come into the market.

Cost to Fully Charge an Electric Car UK

Let's first look at the cost to fully charge different types of cars: luxury cars with bigger batteries and non-luxury cars.

Luxury cars typically have larger batteries, so cost more to charge—but they deliver more range as a result. On the other hand, non-luxury cars usually deliver less range, having smaller batteries that cost less to charge.

We've checked the range and battery size on dozens of UK models, from budget cars to high-end luxury models, and found the following that typical charging costs range from £12 to £24, based on the following typical battery sizes:

We can also look more into how the cost to charge an electric car changes for specific battery sizes. For example, a car with an advertised battery size of 30 kWh will cost up to £9 to fully charge (depending on how much of the battery is 'usable'); a 100 kWh battery would cost up to around £30 to charge (100kWh battery times 30p/kWh cost of electricity).

An additional consideration is where you charge. Using a public charge point can be very expensive, especially for ultra-fast charging. For example, Ionity ultra-rapid EV charging costs 69 pence per kWh—more than 4X as much as home charging—but they haven't raised the price in years, despite rising electricity prices.

Electric Car Charging Cost Per Mile

Per mile, electric cars cost around 9 pence to power in the current high-electricity-cost environment on a regular electricity tariff. (Note, despite rising electricity costs, this is still about half the cost per mile of a petrol car!) Heavy, luxury cars cost more—around 10 pence per mile—while lighter-weight, non-luxury cars cost around 8 pence per mile.

But if you have an EV tariff, you might be able to save ~70% on your charging costs, as you can see in the following comparison:

These figures were calculated in line with the following example:

A vehicle with a 40.7kWh usable battery can travel an average of around 152 miles. At an electricity price of 24.5p/kWh, a 40.7kWh battery costs around £9.98 to fill up. The cost per mile is calculated by dividing the cost to fill the tank (£9.98) by the range (152 miles) yielding £0.08/mile.

Charging an EV on an EV Tariff

Those with a time of use tariff providing cheaper nighttime electricity rates will be able to charge their EVs for a fraction of these costs. If this is you, reduce the figures in this article accordingly. For example, Octopus recently quoted us a nighttime rate on an EV tariff of just 7.5p/kWh, which is around 75% cheaper than the going rate. This means you could charge your EV for 75% less, or potentially as little as:

Any questions, please let us know in the comments box below!

Shortcomings

The figures in this article are estimates to give our readers an idea of electric car charging costs. In the sections on luxury and non-luxury cars, we adjusted the battery capacity to reflect 'usable' battery capacity, because not all of a battery is usable. On average, the usable battery is 93% of the battery capacity of an electric car. To calculate the cost to fully charge a car, we therefore multiplied the advertised battery capacity of a car by 93% to find the usable capacity, then applied the unit cost of electricity. This is not an exact science, but should give a good ballpark sense of charging costs.

Data

The following figures are based on home electricity charging costs of 24.5p/kWh: