How much does it cost to charge an electric car

How much does it cost to charge an electric car

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In short, the EV charging costs significantly vary depending on the EV battery capacity and a charging scheme. To clarify, in this post, a charging scheme implies choosing one of two options: either home or public charging. So, here, we do not consider a workplace scheme as the costs here may differ depending on the employer policy but are unlikely to be higher than with a home or public scheme.

Also, as the battery size also affect the costs, in this post, we calculate examples for the most popular electric car makes and models. These electric cars have different battery sizes and, thus, can help you to get a clear vision of the full picture.
The vehicles we consider in our examples include both battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids (in brackets – usable battery capacity):

• BMV 530E (9.2 kW)
• Outlander PHEV (11 kW)
• Nissan Leaf (36 kW)
• BMW i3 (38 kW)
• Renault Zoe (52 kW)
• Tesla Model S (95 kW)

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Home charging costs

Typically, home charging expenses are the most common ones. Because it is very convenient to feed one’s car when one is at home. To clarify, one doesn’t have to distract oneself from home tasks or just home relaxing in order to top up the battery. Moreover, when you get an installation of an EV charger, you can even sleep while feeding your car.

So, to start with, how much you will need to pay for charging your car depends not only on your EV battery size but on the electricity rates you have to deal with. To be more specific, let’s take the average UK rates and calculate charging costs with differentiated and non-differentiated tariffs.

Charging costs with differentiated rates

Let’s suppose you have a differentiated tariff and pay £0.2 per kWh at the daytime or £0.1 per kWh at night. Though these rates are average and may not match your exact ones, you can apply your own rate proportions and use the figures we provide to do your numbers.
So, with charging in peak periods, your costs for the following cars would be:

• BMV 530E – £1.8
• Outlander PHEV – £2.2
• Nissan Leaf – £7.2
• BMW i3 – £7.6
• Renault Zoe – £10.4
• Tesla Model S – £19.0

In contrast, with overnight charging, your costs for the following cars would be:

• BMV 530E – £0.9
• Outlander PHEV – £1.1
• Nissan Leaf – £3.6
• BMW i3 – £3.8
• Renault Zoe – £5.2
• Tesla Model S – £9.5​

So, as you can see, filling up the battery at night is more economical than doing it during the day. That’s why for those who have a differentiated tariff overnight EV charging is standard practice.

Charging costs with non-differentiated rates

Let’s suppose you have a non-differentiated tariff and pay £0.16 per kWh regardless of at what time you charge your car. In this case, your expenses for one session (providing you fill the battery in full) would be as follows:

• BMV 530E – £1.5
• Outlander PHEV – £1.8
• Nissan Leaf – £5.8
• BMW i3 – £6.1
• Renault Zoe – £8.3
• Tesla Model S – £15.2

So, as with a non-differentiated tariff your EV charging expenses don’t differ, you can not bother with catching the best time for the session.

Note, we provide numbers conditional to a well-functioning EV charger. However, if it becomes faulty you may experience certain electricity transmission losses. In this case, the costs may be higher. That is why we recommend track your session costs and do not delay if you need an EV charging station repair.

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Public charging costs

Here, we do not take into consideration free charging facilities. Instead, we consider only the public EV charging points that are based on the payment system. Different networks have different rates. So, for our example, we took £0.3 per kWh as the most common price in the UK.
Here are the prices to fill in an EV battery for the following electric cars

• BMV 530E – £2.8
• Outlander PHEV – £13.3
• Nissan Leaf – £10.8
• BMW i3 – £11.4
• Renault Zoe – £15.6
• Tesla Model S – £28.5

As you can see, public charging costs are more than one and a half times higher than when charging at home at peak periods or with a non-differentiated tariff. Moreover, it is thrice higher than for an overnight session with a differentiated tariff.

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Charging costs per 100 miles

While it could be highly interesting how much it costs to fill in a battery in full, it is more important to know how much you need to pay per 100 miles. Therefore, we calculated these numbers as well for all the aforementioned models both for home and public charging options. The results are provided in the following sequence with a slash as a divider:

• Home daytime session with a differentiated tariff
• Home overnight session a with differentiated tariff
• Home session with a non-differentiated tariff
• Session at public point

So, the charging costs per 100 miles are as follows:

• BMV 530E – £8.76 / £4.38 / £7.01 / £13.05
  
• Outlander PHEV – £9.57 / £4.78 / £7,65 / £14.25
  
• Nissan Leaf – £5.33 / £2.66 / £4.27 / £7.95
  
• BMW i3 – £5.24 / £2.62 / £4.19 / £7.8
  
• Renault Zoe – £5.2 / £ 2.6/ £4.16 / £7.8
  
• ​Tesla Model S – £5.85 / £2.92 / £4.67 / £8.7

To conclude, based on these numbers, we can say the plug-in hybrids are the most thriftless vehicles. The cost per 100 miles here is almost twice higher in comparison to fully electric vehicles. Also, benchmarking battery electric vehicles shows Renault Zoe to be the most economical and Tesla Model S to be the less economical of the cars in our list.