A lot of people are making the switch to electric cars, and even with some additional vehicle taxes having been announced, people will save a lot of money choosing an EV over a conventional petrol or diesel car.
This is why over a quarter of new car registrations are battery electric vehicles, and over half use some form of electric powertrain.
Historically, the tradeoff is that whilst EVs are more expensive as an upfront purchase, they pay for themselves through much lower running costs, although the Electric Car Grant is attempting to help with this.
This is true, but you can turbocharge these benefits with a home EV charging station, as opposed to relying on public chargers.
According to the RAC Charge Watch, charging your EV at home costs half the price per mile as petrol or diesel, and a third of the price of charging at a public chargepoint on average.
The RAC assumes that you are using a typical 7kW charger and are paying the energy price cap in its estimations, so if you have a lower tariff, use solar panels or have an overnight tariff that lowers your energy bills further, you could be paying even less per mile.
Like-for-like comparisons are difficult because people will tend to charge their cars in very different ways from how they would refuel a petrol or diesel car, often charging overnight or topping up with a charger at work or in a nearby public station.
However, the cost to charge at home is so much cheaper than public charging stations, some of which can be more expensive per mile than petrol or diesel in the wrong circumstances.
Even with the proposed introduction of a pay-per-mile tax on EVs, drivers are far better off in the long run with an EV, particularly if they choose to charge at home most of the time rather than rely on chargers in service stations.
