FuelFoxElectric vs petrol — running cost, fairly compared
Per-mile fuel cost is a question of pence-per-kWh against pence-per-litre, divided by how far each takes you. Here is that maths done honestly, with current UK numbers and no thumb on the scale.
The honest version of this comparison has three numbers in it: the price of fuel per kWh-equivalent, how efficient the car is, and how often you charge at home rather than at a public rapid charger. Get those three right and the maths is simple. Skip any of them and the answer flips.
Petrol, in pence per mile
UK petrol on 15 April 2026 is around 145p / litre. A reasonably efficient family petrol car does about 45 real-world MPG. That gives:
Electric on a home tariff
The Q2 2026 Ofgem cap puts a typical single-rate home tariff around 27p / kWh. A typical EV does about 3.5 miles per kWh in mixed driving. So:
On an off-peak EV tariff (somewhere around 8p / kWh overnight), that drops to roughly 2.3p per mile— about a sixth of the petrol cost. This is where the "EVs are cheap to run" story comes from.
Electric on a public rapid charger
Public rapid charging is in a different league: 70–85p / kWh is common. At 80p:
That's materially more than petrol. If you live in a flat without a home charger and rely on rapid chargers, the running-cost case for an EV largely disappears.
| Petrol (45 MPG, 145p) | ≈14.6p / mile |
| EV (home tariff, 27p) | ≈7.7p / mile |
| EV (off-peak tariff, 8p) | ≈2.3p / mile |
| EV (rapid charger, 80p) | ≈22.9p / mile |
What this doesn't cover
Per-mile fuel cost is the easy bit. It does not include depreciation, insurance, vehicle excise duty, or the front-of-driveway cost of a charger. Those are the layers that decide whether an EV is cheaper to own. Run-cost is only one chapter of the book.
Where the numbers came from.
Every figure in this guide has a primary source — a UK government dataset, a regulator, or a long-running industry monitor. We don't cite blog posts.
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