Public vs home charging: what a mile really costs

Two numbers matter. The Ofgem price cap puts standard electricity at 26.32p a kWh from October to December 2026, so a full 50kWh charge at that rate is about £13, or 8p a mile. An EV tariff is the trick: Intelligent Octopus Go is 8p a kWh from October 2026, between 11.30pm and 5.30am, so the same charge is £4, or 2p a mile.

That 2p is why people say EVs are cheap to run, and it's the number you can't get at without a driveway or a pavement channel. Everything below is the cost of not having it.

The two big on-street networks price by time. char.gy is 59p a kWh from 7am to midnight and 39p from midnight to 7am in September 2026. ubitricity, from 1 April 2026, is 44p off-peak (midnight to 7am), 55p standard, and 66p at the 4pm to 8pm peak. So the same overnight charge that costs £4 on a driveway costs £20 to £22 on the street, and £30 if you plug in at teatime.

The lesson is in the timing. If your car sits on the street all night anyway, a network that drops its price after midnight and a car that can delay its own charging turn 17p a mile into 11p. That one habit is worth about £450 a year at 8,000 miles.

Zapmap's price index for August 2026 puts the weighted average at 77p a kWh for chargers of 50kW and above, and 54p for the slower public chargers from 3kW to 49kW. That's 23p and 16p a mile. Among the ten biggest rapid networks the range was 59p to 92p, so it's worth knowing which one is on your way home: the difference between the cheapest and dearest is 10p a mile.

For comparison, a 45mpg petrol car at 172p a litre, the UK average in September 2026, is about 17p a mile. Rapid-only charging costs more than petrol. Street charging, especially overnight, costs less. That's the whole picture in one sentence.

Multiply the pence per mile by your miles. The table above does it for 8,000, which is about what most people who can manage without a driveway do; at 12,000 add half again. A mix is normal: two overnight lamppost charges a week and a rapid when the week goes wrong lands around £1,000 to £1,100 a year.

Against a petrol car at £1,390 for the same miles, that's £300 to £400 a year saved on fuel, before servicing and tax. Against a driveway, you're paying £700 to £900 a year for not having one.

• Plug in after midnight. char.gy's 39p and ubitricity's 44p are only for the small hours. Set the car to start charging at midnight and it does the waiting for you.
• Ask work. A charger in the work car park is the closest thing to a driveway there is, and the grant makes it cheap for them. See how to ask.
• Use the shop. An hour on a 7kW supermarket charger is 25 miles, sometimes free, and it's time you were spending anyway.
• Know your networks. Live prices are on the Zapmap map. A 59p rapid on the way home beats an 92p one on the way out.
• Do the sums for a channel. If you park outside your own front door, a cross-pavement channel pays for itself in two to three years at these prices.