“Charged my car last night. Cost me about £4. Filled up my wife’s car. Cost £73. We will be changing it to an

EV soon.”

1 hour ago, skomaz said:

Have you declared being retired as thats probably the main reason for the reduction?

No not yet, now would br a good tine to do that although half expect to be made an offer to go back in to work.

Cheers.

42 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

“Charged my car last night. Cost me about £4. Filled up my wife’s car. Cost £73. We will be changing it to an

EV soon.”

Things like that may be true but the comparison isn't quite as simplistic as you make out.

If we assume an average price of 10p kWh for the electricity that suggests about 40kWh charged. At an average of 3.5kWh/mile (what my Cupra gets on average at the moment) then thats 140 miles worth of 'fuel'.

£73 would get you almost exactly 50 litres of diesel based on pump prices in my area at the moment. My Superb which does about 55mpg when driven in a similar way to how I drive the Cupra could go about 605 miles with 11 gallons (near enough 50 litres) of fuel that £73 bought you. That will cost you at least £17 to charge an EV at home with to get the same number of miles.

And if straying further from home then that could mean some charging on public rapid chargers where the gap will further narrow.

And then you have the rarely cited additional cost of charging at home in the form of inflated electricity prices outside of your off peak pricing. Looking at EDF, Octopus, EON etc they all charge in the region of 31-35p kWh during all other hours which is quite a bit more than most are currently paying. Whilst some may be able to shift a bit of usage to the cheap period to lower the average, most will experience a partial offset in their savings due to the increased cost of cooking, washing, lighting etc at home.

Not everyone has the funds or desire to invest in solar or home batteries etc to reduce this further.

I'm not denying that in the overall EVs have lower running costs but when looked at in detail the gap is, in my opinion, normally smaller than the headline numbers suggest.

Mine is definitely saving me money but when I did the sums it wasn't that much - and at the moment I'm getting all my charging done for free at work.

Ultimately I took it because it would give me a (slightly) larger car and a few years newer than what I already had.

@Dieselgate That is the main problem with many of the main EV drivers/owners participating in this "the truth about electric cars" topic. Very few of them can even bring themselves to deviate from the narrative that all things electric are good and burning dino juice fuel is bad and anyone burning diesel is nothing short of a knuggledragger.

If all BIK and salary sacrifice schemes, cheap or free charging at work etc., grants towards buying an EV and the cheap electric tariffs for home charging were removed. If showroom prices were on an even keel with their combustion variants, the cars would have to stand on their own merits, and people would make the choices based on their own personal preferences and which type of motive power best suited their needs.

Edited 11 March11 Mar by Graham Butcher

8 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

@Dieselgate That is the main problem with many of the main EV drivers/owners participating in this "the truth about electric cars" topic. Very few of them can even bring themselves to deviate from the narrative that all things electric are good and burning dino juice fuel is bad and anyone burning diesel is nothing short of a knuggledragger.

If all BIK and salary sacrifice schemes, cheap or free charging at work etc., grants towards buying an EV and the cheap electric tariffs for home charging were removed. If showroom prices were on an even keel with their combustion variants, the cars would have to stand on their own merits, and people would make the choices based on their own personal preferences and which type of motive power best suited their needs.

The market is without a doubt being turbocharged by taxation assistance. I know a lot of EV owners and none of them have any particular aversion to ICE cars. They have EVs for tax purposes/running costs only. In fact I don't think any EV owner I know actually has bought one with their own money, all are company cars/salary sacrifice.

Just noticed that EVs only had 24.2% market share in new registrations for February. The second consecutive month where it's behind last years numbers (25.3% in February 2025).

A LOT of catching up to do to meet the 33% target this year.

28 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

@Dieselgate That is the main problem with many of the main EV drivers/owners participating in this "the truth about electric cars" topic. Very few of them can even bring themselves to deviate from the narrative that all things electric are good and burning dino juice fuel is bad and anyone burning diesel is nothing short of a knuggledragger.

If all BIK and salary sacrifice schemes, cheap or free charging at work etc., grants towards buying an EV and the cheap electric tariffs for home charging were removed. If showroom prices were on an even keel with their combustion variants, the cars would have to stand on their own merits, and people would make the choices based on their own personal preferences and which type of motive power best suited their needs.

I agree all the grants and inducements should be stopped and the money invested into a National battery storage project to bring the overall cost of energy away from being linked to fossil fuels and prove that it will be cheaper.

We cannot justify more wind/solar power infrastructure if there are already times when it is wasted or paid for but not used.

13 minutes ago, Dieselgate said:

In fact I don't think any EV owner I know actually has bought one with their own money

I'm spartacus

11 minutes ago, Stonekeeper said:

I agree all the grants and inducements should be stopped and the money invested into a National battery storage project to bring the overall cost of energy away from being linked to fossil fuels and prove that it will be cheaper.

We cannot justify more wind/solar power infrastructure if there are already times when it is wasted or paid for but not used.

I'm spartacus

I agree with the solar aspect; it has been mentioned before here by me that they occupy prime farmland that we should be using for producing food. It was also pointed out to me that these solar farms grow food between the rows of panels and beneath them. All of the new solar farms, and there are loads of them springing up all the time; that clearly is not happening. The panels are all very close to each other in all directions. Less food production means more of our food has to be imported and even more pollution is being generated, so what one hand gives, the other takes away. You couldn't make it up could you?

1 hour ago, Dieselgate said:

The market is without a doubt being turbocharged by taxation assistance. I know a lot of EV owners and none of them have any particular aversion to ICE cars. They have EVs for tax purposes/running costs only. In fact I don't think any EV owner I know actually has bought one with their own money, all are company cars/salary sacrifice.

Just noticed that EVs only had 24.2% market share in new registrations for February. The second consecutive month where it's behind last years numbers (25.3% in February 2025).

A LOT of catching up to do to meet the 33% target this year.

Due to incentives and manufacturers looking to hit the EV mandate and avoid fines the car makers and sellers sell more EVs in Q4 of the year than Q1 each year. The December EC figures were big both in terms of numbers and percentages ie over 47k BEVs registered. Sales in Feb 2026, overall, were less than half Dec. Lets see if the recent hikes in fuel costs, and the upcoming drops in home charging costs, along with the new registration coming in 1st of March, all these factors have an impact ?

December
	2025	2024	% change	Mkt share ’25	Mkt share ’24
BEV	47,139	43,656	8.0%	32.2%	31.0%
HEV	18,430	17,899	3.0%	12.6%	12.7%
PHEV	16,898	12,716	32.9%	11.6%	9.0%
PETROL	57,607	59,455	-3.1%	39.4%	42.2%
DIESEL	6,175	7,060	-12.5%	4.2%	5%	5.0%
TOTAL	146,249	140,786	3.9

https://www.smmt.co.uk/uk-new-car-market-breaches-two-million-as-almost-one-in-four-buyers-go-electric/

1 hour ago, Stonekeeper said:

I agree all the grants and inducements should be stopped and the money invested into a National battery storage project to bring the overall cost of energy away from being linked to fossil fuels and prove that it will be cheaper. We cannot justify more wind/solar power infrastructure if there are already times when it is wasted or paid for but not used.

---

I'm spartacus

I'm Spartacus.

The Renault 5 I put 40% down, rest of zero percent finance and I will buy the car when balloon come due.

Edited 11 March11 Mar by lol-lol

Electric vehicle registrations rose 2.8% to 21,840 units, but market share dipped to 24.2%, marking the second month of year-on-year decline. This partly reflects the strong start to 2025, when buyers rushed to register EVs ahead of April tax changes.

https://www.carwow.co.uk/news/10361/smmt-new-car-registrations-february-2026

16 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

Due to incentives and manufacturers looking to hit the EV mandate and avoid fines the car makers and sellers sell more EVs in Q4 of the year than Q1 each year. The December EC figures were big both in terms of numbers and percentages ie over 47k BEVs registered. Sales in Feb 2026, overall, were less than half Dec.

Of course, but the same applied last January & February.

18 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

Lets see if the recent hikes in fuel costs, and the upcoming drops in home charging costs, along with the new registration coming in 1st of March, all these factors have an impact ?

Of course - though from what I've seen so far home charging costs have gone up rather than down so far this year. I was on IOG for a while at the end of last year and into January this year and was paying 7p kWh off peak and 29p peak rates. The current rates are 8p kWh off peak and 36p peak. So a roughly 14% increase in off peak rates and a 20% increase in peak rates.

Petrol & diesel have gone up in recent weeks but not by that much - yet.

2 minutes ago, Dieselgate said:

Of course, but the same applied last January & February.

Of course - though from what I've seen so far home charging costs have gone up rather than down so far this year. I was on IOG for a while at the end of last year and into January this year and was paying 7p kWh off peak and 29p peak rates. The current rates are 8p kWh off peak and 36p peak. So a roughly 14% increase in off peak rates and a 20% increase in peak rates.

Petrol & diesel have gone up in recent weeks but not by that much - yet.

I prefer working on pence per mile cost rather than percentage. I am still paying 8.5p per KWh so on my quite efficient I am only paying about 2.2p per mile. On my last ICE cars the fuel cost was over 10 p per mile so even with a company fuel card it was bringing it down to 4p per miles so EVs were still the clear winner.

The above does not include all those free energy sessions where for an hour or two the charging was free.

Luckily, or good planning, I have two wall-box chargers and a 13A Granny charger, fill you boots and it might bring cost down to below 2p per mile. £64M question is what is going to be the rate when the 3.5p per KWH is suppose to come off the costs ???????

Edited 11 March11 Mar by lol-lol

38 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

Due to incentives and manufacturers looking to hit the EV mandate and avoid fines the car makers and sellers sell more EVs in Q4 of the year than Q1 each year. The December EC figures were big both in terms of numbers and percentages ie over 47k BEVs registered. Sales in Feb 2026, overall, were less than half Dec. Lets see if the recent hikes in fuel costs, and the upcoming drops in home charging costs, along with the new registration coming in 1st of March, all these factors have an impact ?

December
	2025	2024	% change	Mkt share ’25	Mkt share ’24
BEV	47,139	43,656	8.0%	32.2%	31.0%
HEV	18,430	17,899	3.0%	12.6%	12.7%
PHEV	16,898	12,716	32.9%	11.6%	9.0%
PETROL	57,607	59,455	-3.1%	39.4%	42.2%
DIESEL	6,175	7,060	-12.5%	4.2%	5%	5.0%
TOTAL	146,249	140,786	3.9

https://www.smmt.co.uk/uk-new-car-market-breaches-two-million-as-almost-one-in-four-buyers-go-electric/

What these figures show you is not actual sales but registrations, which we know is not a sale but a way of massaging the figures to appear to be doing better than they actually are to avoid having to pay so much out in fines for missing their quotas. Working on the basis that it is far and away better to take maybe a £5k hit on selling the car later as a demo car, etc., rather than the £18k fine per car below the quota.

Do the SMMT and all of those who will not accept the actual truth believe the rest of us cannot see through the smoke and mirrors and subterfuge that they are creating?

You only have to go on Autotrader and you will find plenty of cars on there, being listed by dealers that are 2 years or more old with basically delivery miles on, listed as new with massive discounts, and the price drops weekly on them. Who wants to buy a new "old" car thats been in storage and now comes without a manufacturer's warranty, etc.?

The battery may or may not have kept charged during that period, whatever happens, it has already lost 2 years of its life.

Very few private buyers of electric cars, partly maybe as they are still really unproven technology and the public are in a way doing the type testing for them and this can also be seen by the speed of the progress with the improvements in the batteries, etc., along with the very poor support in the event that something goes wrong and most dealers have loads of cars awaiting repairs / spares for cars that have already experienced problems.

Edited 11 March11 Mar by Graham Butcher

23 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

I prefer working on pence per mile cost rather than percentage. I am still paying 8.5p per KWh so on my quite efficient I am only paying about 2.2p per mile. On my last ICE cars the fuel cost was over 10 p per mile so even with a company fuel card it was bringing it down to 4p per miles so EVs were still the clear winner.

The above does not include all those free energy sessions where for an hour or two the charging was free.

Sure - the ppm rates are cheap at face value but I calculated that based on my normal electricity usage, paying the penalty peak rate for 18 hours of the day would overall cost me about £500 extra per year. That's quite a chunk of cash off the savings.

Plus obviously most EV drivers have to use public chargers from time to time as well.

11 minutes ago, Dieselgate said:

Sure - the ppm rates are cheap at face value but I calculated that based on my normal electricity usage, paying the penalty peak rate for 18 hours of the day would overall cost me about £500 extra per year. That's quite a chunk of cash off the savings.

Plus obviously most EV drivers have to use public chargers from time to time as well.

With a few cheapish lithium Iron phosphate home power stations j have managed to get my overall cost of lecky down to the 11 to 12p per kwh average.

My main concern is making sure I treat the EVs batteries in the kindest way so new plan from April onwards will be to use the Wall boxes to charge the cars to 80 or maybe 85% and then only charge the EVs a bit more in the just before I leave stage, do any preconditioning if desire and push the charge level put ton90, 95 or 100% if journey actually going ahead. Couple of time charged to a high level only for the journey to be postponed.

I am not confident that Octopus will lower the Nightime rate to below 8p per KWh butvthey will reduce the Daytime rate by loads whichvwill make the small day time top up and preconditioning cheaper.

I reckon I spend only about £100 a year on public charging and that or less on charging not at the super cheap Night time rate and with the Freebie and Savings sessions offset much of that.

Edited 12 March12 Mar by lol-lol

19 hours ago, Dieselgate said:

The market is without a doubt being turbocharged by taxation assistance. I know a lot of EV owners and none of them have any particular aversion to ICE cars. They have EVs for tax purposes/running costs only. In fact I don't think any EV owner I know actually has bought one with their own money, all are company cars/salary sacrifice.

Just noticed that EVs only had 24.2% market share in new registrations for February. The second consecutive month where it's behind last years numbers (25.3% in February 2025).

A LOT of catching up to do to meet the 33% target this year.

Just dropped back in here, same old nonsense.

I’ve bought an EV with my own money.

For the record I don’t have solar or batteries. The EV costs 2p per mile in “fuel costs” (charging from home which is 95% of the time for me) compared to previous petrol and diesel costs of 15p per mile, on top of that maintenance costs are a fraction of petrol or diesel.

Sorry guys I love cars and engines but you are clinging on to the past.

Edited 12 March12 Mar by classic

8 minutes ago, classic said:

Just dropped back in here, same old nonsense.

I’ve bought an EV with my own money.

For the record I don’t have solar or batteries. The EV costs 2p per mile in “fuel costs” (charging from home which is 95% of the time for me) compared to previous petrol and diesel costs of 15p per mile, on top of that maintenance costs are a fraction of petrol or diesel.

Sorry guys I love cars and engines but you are clinging on to the past.

Really pleased for you as you have found the current ideal scenario, if charging at home, on a cheap tarriff running short local trips is right in most EVs' wheelhouse and is where combustion engines are at their most polluting. So I would suggest that you're looking to retain the car for longer than the normal 3-year cycle that company cars seem get swapped, I say that assuming that you don't want to take a rather heavy depreciation hit?

As to clinging onto the past, well lets see what transpires on that score with many of the car makers actively returning to combustion engines, and they are getting far more efficient and cleaner all the time.

I don’t run short local trips but generally operate within 200 miles of where I start. My minimum daily mileage is 65 miles round trip.

If it lasts 10 years, which will be 200k miles then I will be satisfied, that is the plan and the lifespan I did all my cost calculations on.

10 years makes sense, what car did you get then? Can you be sure that on most occasions that you will actually get that 200 miles comfortably from a single home charge?

Škoda Elroq 60.

No issues getting 200 miles, in summer 250.

I’ve only charged it to 100% a couple of times in the last 10,000 miles. 80% has been fine even in winter.

This is what it is showing right now :

53 minutes ago, classic said:

Just dropped back in here, same old nonsense.

I’ve bought an EV with my own money.

For the record I don’t have solar or batteries. The EV costs 2p per mile in “fuel costs” (charging from home which is 95% of the time for me) compared to previous petrol and diesel costs of 15p per mile, on top of that maintenance costs are a fraction of petrol or diesel.

Sorry guys I love cars and engines but you are clinging on to the past.

To clarify a couple of things.

I have an EV myself through salary sacrifice.

I never said nobody buys an EV with their own money, only that I don't know anybody who has (I don't include people I only know through internet forums in that category).

I'm very glad if it's working out well for you - I'm very satisfied with mine myself but going EV only does not work for me right now for many different reasons, some of which I have been sharing on here (including simple factual data). As and when that changes I'll be happy to change.

Out of interest what EV charging tariff do you use?

Have you done any analysis on how much extra the peak rate is costing you on your general home electricity?

@Dieselgate I do apologise for my clumsy post, using your quote. I’ve dropped in and out of this thread and just saw it was the same old stuff being discussed .

I’m using OVO charge anytime which for now (not much longer) is 7p per kWh. I didn’t analyse the peak rate cost because I was already on a fixed deal with OVO and that stays the same, the charge anytime is an add on to whatever tariff plan you are on and credits a month in arrears to bring the EV charge costs to 7p.

8 minutes ago, classic said:

@Dieselgate I do apologise for my clumsy post, using your quote. I’ve dropped in and out of this thread and just saw it was the same old stuff being discussed .

I’m using OVO charge anytime which for now (not much longer) is 7p per kWh. I didn’t analyse the peak rate cost because I was already on a fixed deal with OVO and that stays the same, the charge anytime is an add on to whatever tariff plan you are on and credits a month in arrears to bring the EV charge costs to 7p.

No problem.

Yes OK that's understood. It seems there are a few similar 'add on' tariffs out there now which probably can work out cheaper for some.

My dad went with the EDF EV tariff as theirs didn't seem to impose much of a premium peak rate.

The OVO system is good, and I also got the OVO/vw group deal of 10,000 miles per year of EV charging for 3 years.

Regarding the truth of electric cars - the truth is the government (whichever colour) don’t want mass take up of EVs, the tax hit would be absolutely enormous. It is being stifled by lack of infrastructure and high public charging costs .

That is the truth. @Graham Butcher I accept that I’m lucky enough to fit into a niche that allows me to exploit what is available but it still amazes me that people who do way less mileage than me and rarely go further than 100 miles radius of their home (which could have a charger) are still happy to burn fuel and passively pay enormous sums of tax in fuel duty and vat.

Edited 12 March12 Mar by classic

5 minutes ago, classic said:

The OVO system is good, and I also got the OVO/vw group deal of 10,000 miles of EV charging for 3 years.

Regarding the truth of electric cars - the truth is the government (whichever colour) don’t want mass take up of EVs, the tax hit would be absolutely enormous. It is being stifled by lack of infrastructure and high public charging costs .

That is the truth. @Graham Butcher I accept that I’m lucky enough to fit into niche that allows me to exploit what is available but it still amazes me that people who do way less mileage than me and rarely go further than 100 miles radius of their home (which could have a charger) are still happy to burn fuel and passively pay enormous sums of tax in fuel duty and vat.

But generally speaking unless you are looking at long term ownership, there is little incentive for loads of people to switch. it is easier to do if you have off street parking and can home charge, but there is the onboard cost having the charger installed etc. With battery technology changing all the time, it could be the old Betamax/VHS scenario all over again.

That’s always going to be the case with technology. The batteries will improve like engines have. People still bought cars like Vauxhall Vivas in the 70’s and 20 years later the technology of vehicles was miles better. If your waiting for perfection it will be a long time coming.