A £6 pumpkin spice latte might be your autumn treat, but put the same money towards driving and how far will it take you? According to home charger company Ohme, the answer ranges from just over 30 miles in a petrol car to 300 miles in an electric one.
The trick is what you pay when you plug in. Those 300 miles depend on charging an electric car at home on a cheap smart energy tariff. Plug the same car in at the standard electricity rate and that £6 would cover around 90 miles instead, according to the company’s calculations.
The comparison comes as petrol and diesel prices reach a new high, and ahead of a rise in the standard electricity rate to 26.32p per kilowatt hour on 1 October. Ohme’s cheaper example uses an 8p/kWh rate through a smart tariff such as Intelligent Octopus Go, showing how much the price you pay for electricity changes the cost of each journey.
The electric car figures work out at four miles for every kilowatt hour of electricity. At the cheaper rate, that means each mile costs 2p, compared with 6.58p on the standard tariff and roughly 19p for the petrol car in Ohme’s comparison.
Over a year, the gap between petrol and electricity becomes rather bigger than the cost of a coffee. Ohme calculates that someone driving 6,800 miles a year would spend £1,314.10 on petrol, compared with £447.44 charging an EV at the new standard rate. That’s a difference of £866.66, even without the cheaper charging deal.
Using the 8p/kWh smart tariff brings the annual electricity bill for those miles down to £136, or about £11.33 a month. That’s £1,178.10 less than the petrol example and £311.44 less than charging the same EV at the standard rate.
Ohme chief executive David Watson said, “With pump prices rising once again and more pressures on the cost of living, the latest rise in electricity prices is a great time for drivers to look at switching to an EV.”
The company’s smart chargers allow drivers to charge at cheaper, off-peak times. Their role is to take advantage of lower electricity prices, rather than make the car itself more efficient, so it’s the combination of the charging rate and how much electricity the car uses that delivers the saving.
The coffee budget stays the same; how far it takes you depends on what you drive and what you pay to power it. In Ohme’s example, choosing the cheaper charging tariff more than triples the miles your £6 will buy.
