Do you need a smart meter for an EV tariff?

An ordinary meter counts units. It has no idea whether you used them at teatime or in the small hours, so the only fair price a supplier can give you is one price for everything. An EV tariff is the opposite idea: Intelligent Octopus Go sells electricity at 8p a kWh between 11.30pm and 5.30am and a lot more the rest of the day. To bill that, the supplier needs a reading for every half hour, and that is what a smart meter sends, on its own, over its own network.

So there is no EV tariff without one, on any supplier. The good news is that this is now the normal meter: the government's June 2026 count puts 42 million smart and advanced meters in homes and small businesses, 72% of all meters, so the odds are you already have one. The question is whether it's the right kind, and whether it's working.

There are two generations. SMETS2 meters, fitted since about 2018, talk to a national network run by the Data Communications Company, so any supplier can read them and they keep working when you switch. SMETS1 meters, the first wave, were tied to the supplier that fitted them and went “dumb” if you moved. The DCC has spent years migrating them: 10 million had been moved by January 2023, and the DCC now says the vast majority of eligible SMETS1 meters are on the network and keep sending readings after a switch.

Suppliers still hedge on the first generation. Octopus says it can connect to any SMETS2 meter and some SMETS1 meters, naming those made by Secure, and its Go tariff page says the same. The practical test is simpler than the acronym: log in to your supplier's app or account. If it shows a reading for every half hour, you have a meter that counts. If it shows one reading a month, or nothing since you switched, you have a meter in “dumb” mode, and the fix is the same as having no smart meter at all.

Working matters as much as the generation. Of the 40 million smart meters in the June 2026 count, 92% were operating in smart mode. The other 8% look smart on the wall and aren't, and an EV tariff needs the working kind.

You ask, and your supplier fits it. Smart Energy GB puts it plainly: smart meters are provided at no extra cost, so you won't pay the installer, and each meter takes about an hour, or about two hours if gas and electricity go in together. Citizens Advice adds that you don't have to accept one if you don't want one, which is the opposite of your problem.

The wait is now regulated. Under Ofgem's rules from February 2026, if you ask for a smart meter and the supplier can't offer an appointment within six weeks, it owes you £40 automatically, another £40 if the installation fails through its own fault, and £40 again if it hasn't given you a plan to fix a problem within five working days of you reporting it. Citizens Advice's older figure was 30 working days, which is about the same six weeks. So the honest timetable is: ask today, fitted within six weeks, usually sooner.

Then there's the tariff itself. The supplier has to see half-hourly readings arriving before it will put you on an EV rate, so allow a week or two after the fitting before the 8p starts. If you're switching supplier to get the tariff, do the switch and the meter request in the same week; the new supplier can take over an existing smart meter without a visit.

Don't put off the car for the meter. On the October to December 2026 price cap electricity is 26.32p a kWh, which at 3.4 miles per kWh is about 8p a mile, or £620 for 8,000 miles a year. That is dearer than the £190 the same miles cost on an EV tariff, but it's still less than half the price of petrol, and it's only for a few weeks.

A three-pin cable is fine for the gap. Indra puts a granny charger at 2.3kW, which adds 6 to 8 miles of range an hour, so an evening and a night on a plain socket is 80 miles or so. Use a socket on its own circuit, keep the cable out of the rain, and don't run it through an extension lead. If you've ordered a wallbox, get it fitted now: it doesn't care about the meter, and it means the cheap window is useful from the first night the tariff is live. The scheduling guide shows how to set the car so it waits for the window.

One thing to decide before the meter arrives is which tariff. The comparison ranks them; if your car or charger is on the smart list, Intelligent Go against plain Go is the usual choice, and if it isn't, a fixed-window tariff works with any car and any charger.

The one meter that offers a night rate without being smart is Economy 7, the two-register meter from the storage-heater era. It gives roughly seven off-peak hours, usually somewhere between midnight and 7am, at a lower unit rate and a higher day rate. Ofgem caps the pair together rather than publishing one national off-peak figure, so the rate depends on your region and supplier, and it isn't close to the 6.99p to 8p the EV tariffs charge. If you already have one, use the night window for the car and ask for a smart meter anyway.

Everything else needs the meter. There is no supplier that will sell you 8p electricity on trust, and no app that can tell them when the car charged without a meter reading behind it. If you can't have a smart meter at all, because the signal doesn't reach your cupboard or the landlord won't allow it, the sums on the home charging cost guide still work at 26.32p, and an EV still costs less to fuel than petrol. It just costs £430 a year more than it needs to.