EVs now cost nine times less to drive than petrol or diesel in the UK
Analysis: EVs are now nine times cheaper than petrol or diesel to drive in UK
Carbon Brief analysis shows that, after a 38% jump in diesel prices and a 31% rise in petrol prices since February, driving an EV in the UK now costs as little as 2.3p per mile with off-peak charging — up to nine times cheaper than diesel at 21p or petrol at 20.1p. Even at the domestic price cap, EVs cost around 7p per mile, and drivers could save roughly £80 per fill-up by charging at home.
Following the latest hike in fuel prices, these savings would now be even higher at £1,200 a year.
- cmiles8
Headline is misleading. Cheaper on per-mile operating costs but typically more expensive to purchase and insure. There’s also a nasty depreciation curve to contend with. Nobody wants a 10 year old Tesla, but a 10 year old well mentioned petrol car still has a ton of life left in it.
It still often ends up a bit cheaper across comparable vehicles but not a slam dunk and nowhere near as good as the headline suggests.
- spiclk
Hopefully the article authors are only attempting to reach their target audience, but please don't encourage numerical illiteracy!
One-tenth the (fuel) cost, or 90% cheaper.
(That is, if you own a house with off-street parking).
- cloudie78
Good, can’t wait to see what fertiliser and heating costs will be.
All it took was destruction of global energy markets and supplies.
Let’s celebrate!
- thelastgallon
Going through the comments, it looks like people in UK hate EVs. This is surprising, because the anti-EV arguments are mostly seen only in US (which is understandable, US is first and foremost a fossil fuel country).
All cars need parking and real-estate is wasted for parking at a humongous expense. Cars are next to some building. Usually, in most countries all building have electricity. UK has 230V, which means any outlet anywhere should work. All it needs is a cable from the nearest building to where the car is parked.
- phtrivier
Meta: As plenty of commenters have pointed out, this kind of statements (and similar ones like "PV electricity is the cheapest one", etc...) are entirely true _with some attached caveats_.
For example, an EV is both undoubtably cheaper to operate than a gas powered car ; and infinitely more expensive to operate if you can't afford to buy one in the first place.
Similarly, the price of kWh of PV-generated electricity is both lower than pretty much everything else as this point ; and, basically infinite when the sun is down and your 4h battery has run out.
Is there a proper math concept to fairly express those things ? "Mean", "Average" or "Median" fall short. Mean with very very large error bars ? "Average with substitution" ?
In the end, I can't wait for all those circumvoltions to be irrelevant (when EVs are just cheap to buy too, and electricity has enough storage to bake it into the price, etc...)