Hope no one minds me asking this here. I don't own an EV, I have a 2.0 TSI Karoq, but having just had two days driving a BMW IX, with a very limited experience of chargers I am interested to know what Enyaq owners do for charging. I drove about 130 miles in the IX over two days. I needed to charge it from 50% to 75% which equated to adding 100 miles. Firstly I tried a 7kw charger the estimated time to reach 75% was nearly 5 hours so I found a 50 kw charger and it was charged in just 35 minutes. The cost per mile was 29 pence using the 50 kw charger and 23 pence if I'd used the 7kw charger. Now I know that on street chargers are going to be more expensive than home chargers but unleaded petrol is £1.34 per litre and my Karoq easily does 7 miles per litre which is less than 20 pence per mile. I was rather shocked as I expected the running cost of an EV to be significantly lower. I realise that an IX is a heavy vehicle with a very powerful electric motor, so heavier and more powerful than the Enyaq, so is the per mile cost of an Enyaq lower (i.e. better) than the the IX and what do most owners do for charging.

Public chargers vary in price, the slow ones tend to be around 50-60p per kw/h, fast ones are closer to 75-95p. some are a bit cheaper where competition exists, and for certain brands can get lower rates by opening a contract.

Home charging is closer to 6.5-7p on overnight tariffs, or around 4 times that or normal daytime electricity.

Depending on how you drive, traffic levels, temperature, etc a 50kw charge will generally give around 220 miles. For ease it is about half the distance you would get on a full fuel tank (brim to empty).

so comparison is full fuel tank, costs around £60-90 depending on model.

or 2 charges of 50kw/h which is 100kw/h

at 6.7p (overnight electricity) is £6.70

at 26p (daytime electricity) is £26

at 55p (slow charger) is £55

at 85p (fast charger) is £85

so if you charge at home and rarely do more than 200 miles (so normally don't need to top up at public charger) is about tenth of the cost. Someone doing say 10k miles a year would be saving about £1000 per year in fuel. If you can get free electricity at work etc then would save whole fuel cost.

if regularly using slow public chargers, electricity will be cheaper, probably saving 20-30%. But you would be paying virtually same using fast chargers.

Being blunt if you have home charger, you will save, if you need to use public chargers then not going to save much going electric. Saving £1000 per year on fuel and cheaper servicing adds up over few years.

Of course if you are thinking of going electric, then exact comparison will depend on model, and petrol and electricity prices for next few years, so might as well use the basic comparison above.

It is likely to cost around £1000 to install a home charger, (bit more if very long cable run or your home supply is old/poor so needs work), so this tends to offset first year savings. Although if buying a new car, they might contribute big chunk of this installation cost depending on offers that come and go.

Edited 28 July, 202528 Jul by SurreyJohn
improve grammar to read better

Not sure how you got your numbers, but most chargers are rated in pence per kWhr.

At home charger is the cheapest (say 25p /kWhr standard rate but most suppliers have some sort of discounted rate for charging at specified off-peak times (ours is 12p /kwHr Sat/Sun 11:00-16:00)

So we nearly always charge at home, just using the fast chargers when on a long Journey

(UltraFast chargers on the motorways etc, charge around 87p/kWhr)

Our Car is actually an Elroq 85, (similar drivertrain to the Enyaq) and we get between 3.5 and 6 miles per kWhr, so to add 100miles costs us around £6 or £3 at off-peak rate. (Elroq range is at least 300miles, more in the summer)

The only initial cost is installing a home charger costing around £1k, sometimes discounted by the dealer when selling you the car.

Edited 28 July, 202528 Jul by barrieb
added cheap rate cost

The key to cheaper running costs is charging at home on domestic electricity rates. If you get on a cheap overnight tariff and charge using the cheap rate of say 7p / kWh (Octopus overnight EV rate) then you will be paying 2-3p/mile. If you are stuck on the standard electricity rate of say 26p/kWh it will cost approximately 6.5-8.5p/mile. ( @SurreyJohn beat me to the punch)

Just to say if you are home every night, you will rarely use public chargers, so it makes little impact on your overall average cost per mile. I've done 56K miles at 5.16p/mile for fuel in my VW ID.4 - the first 3.5 years on the standard rate for electricity. (I've averaged 2.5p/mile since getting on an overnight EV tariff)

Edited 28 July, 202528 Jul by Luckypants
Overstated mileage by 1K

@thamestrader I see your current car is a Karoq. My car prior to my ID.4 was a Karoq 2.0 TDI DSG 4x4. Both vehicles have been doing the same mileage and types of journeys, so a comparison is quite valid. The Karoq did 10 miles a litre solidly through the 3 years we ran it and would cost me 14p/mile now at our local diesel prices. Compare that to my lifetime cost of 5.16p/mile (including all rapid charging I've needed) for the ID.4 and current costs of 2.5p/mile by charging mainly at home.

@SurreyJohn

The terms, slow and fast were as we use them not as EV terms used them.

2.3 or 7 (6.7) kW charging is SLOW but called FAST,

and that can include 11 kW AC and even 22 kW.

RAPID might just be 43 AC / 50 kW, not that Rapid unless you have a small battery.

50 kW plus to 80 / 100 kW might be called Ultra Rapid, and includes 125 kW plus

I have my Enyaq 85 and don't have any home charging.

My cost per mile is still cheaper than previous petrol and diesel cars thanks to a Tesla subscription (£90/yr) and Ionity (£10.50 per month). This brings charging on Ionity down to 43p per kWh, and Tesla 24-37p depending on time of day and charger. I will occasionally stretch to a 55p per kWh charger if there is nothing else nearby that is handy and cheaper. My cost per mile for the energy is usually <12p per mile.

If you charge at any random public charger, then be prepared for costs up to 89p per kWh...

Sure, you can do ICE motoring for less, but not in equivalent cars to my Enyaq... my purchase involved a quite extensive spreadsheet looking at the overall cost of ownership (car cost, servicing, VED, petrol vs electrons etc.), and it still worked out substantially cheaper than my previous car.

Edited 10 August, 202510 Aug by tickedon

Here's the snapshot for 2025 so far:

Distance covered: 7,157.54 miles
Number of trips: 61
Total charging cost: £230.89

The graph below covers both public charging and charging at home both on grid and from solar (which is why the Summer months show close to zero cost).

To put that in perspective: that’s about the cost of 2.7 fill-ups for my diesel VW T6 camper van — which would only get me around 1,168 miles. And that’s with a respectable 40 mpg, hauling beds, a cooker, fridge, and more.

Of course, the economics shift if you can’t charge at home. But for me, home charging not only makes the car cheaper to run — it also slashes our household energy costs. Compared to neighbours still using gas heating, our winter energy bills were around five times lower.

To echo what everyone else says, charge at home overnight where the rate of charge is almost irrelevant unless you are emptying the battery on consecutive days. Octopus intelligent go is 7.5p per kWh if you let them manage the charging and you get that rate for 6 hours for the rest of the house. This is <2p a mile at 4 miles/kWh

If you are going somewhere where the round trip is beyond the fully charged range and can make destination charging work then use that. As an example if I have to take the (much shorter range that the enyaq) e-up into Inverness and I'm there for a few hours I'll charge as much as I can on a 7kw charger while its parked and I'm busy in town. Charge place Scotland in the council car park is currently 35p kWh or <9p mile. This could take up 4 hours to add enough charge for the return journey so If I don't manage to get enough charge then I'll stop at a rapid charger on the way home and only add enough charge to get home. CPS is currently 64p Kwh so 16p mile. In this example an enyaq should manage the round trip without a charge.

With octopus you can get an electroverse card that adds any charging to your electricity bill and gives discounts on some networks and plunge pricing which is temporary reductions at participating chargers when there's lots of renewable generation on the grid.

When I was looking to get the enyaq I calculated that for 50mpg at 134.9 litre vs 4m/kWh then 49.061 p kWh was the cut off at which ICE is cheaper per mile. My excel spreadsheet had a formula where I could adjust the % of rapid (85p) vs home (7.5p) charging to see how much I saved in fuel a year, it needed to be over half my charging to cancel out any fuel saving based on my annual milage.

i have been thinking abut my next car (currently have a superb diesel and am a taxi driver), car is doing approx 55 to 60mpg average use and i was thinking or maybe getting an EV, an enyak being the suitable chioice, but i have never had an ev so have no idea of charging costs, i genuinely thought it would be a lot cheaper per mile with an EV but, after reading some of this, it seems i would be paying nearly double per mile? im currently paying around £200 per week in diesel...am i missing something ?

5 minutes ago, dbolton said:

i have been thinking abut my next car (currently have a superb diesel and am a taxi driver), car is doing approx 55 to 60mpg average use and i was thinking or maybe getting an EV, an enyak being the suitable chioice, but i have never had an ev so have no idea of charging costs, i genuinely thought it would be a lot cheaper per mile with an EV but, after reading some of this, it seems i would be paying nearly double per mile? im currently paying around £200 per week in diesel...am i missing something ?

Could you get a home charger and charge at home?

How many miles do you drive per day?

drive anything from 120 to 350 per day,sometimes more if its long distance, sometimes 500 plus... (average 1200 a week) and i can probably get home charger but that seems to take forever to charge.

1 hour ago, dbolton said:

drive anything from 120 to 350 per day,sometimes more if its long distance, sometimes 500 plus... (average 1200 a week) and i can probably get home charger but that seems to take forever to charge.

unless you are driving 24 hours a day why is that an issue? Do you not sleep? That's when I charge. 7500 miles for £230 so far this year. Can't see fossil fuels touching that. 60 mpg is pretty poor compared with an EV which will be typically 130 mpge or more. Mine has been averaging 138 mpge over the Summer for example

15 hours ago, dbolton said:

drive anything from 120 to 350 per day,sometimes more if its long distance, sometimes 500 plus... (average 1200 a week) and i can probably get home charger but that seems to take forever to charge.

I have gone electric, back to ice and now back on ev.

Not a taxi driver but doing a minimum of 20k miles per year.

I can tell you that in my experience EV is better, currently charging at home for me costs 7p per kWh which equates to 2pence (£0.02) per mile. No oil and filter changes, no air filter, fuel filter, ad blue or timing belt. Brake wear is hardly measurable but probably every couple of years strip and clean front pads and calipers. Insurance cost exactly the same, road tax now the same.

Driving experience vastly better, quieter and easier - especially for taxi work.

Yes rapid charging is expensive but if the majority of charging is at home the overall cost is less than diesel or petrol.

I will parking in Manchester today and will top up at a car park 7kwh* charger which is £0.72 per kWh. I’ll arrive with 50% and could probably get home but I’ll top it up to 80% to be on the safe side (bad weather tonight, could get stuck or diverted etc). Even that expensive public charger only works out at 5p a mile more than petrol or diesel cost.

Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation that is bombarding everyone thinking about EV which makes people play safe and stick with what they know.

*Edit : car park charger is 22kwh ac, but car is 11kwh max on ac charging.

Edited 3 October, 20253 Oct by classic

@dbolton

A 3 pin cable charging at home might take for ever to charge 60 kWh into the battery.

200 miles or so.

But on a Wall Box then 10 hours max maybe.

6 or 7 hours at 7 pence a kWh and then 3 or 4 at Not off peak tariff.

Or even all 10 hours not off peak charging could be @ 30 pence a kWh if standard tariff. £18.00 for the 200 miles.

Or 15 hours to get 300 miles £27.00

thanks for that, im currently getting around 55-60mpg using diesel and so theres not a lot in it is there? Using it as a taxi just isnt going to work i dont think, range just isnt there and it takes too long to charge cheaply, if i use public chargers its going to be a lot more the cost of diesel, or even petrol ?

On 02/10/2025 at 20:51, domhnall said:

unless you are driving 24 hours a day why is that an issue? Do you not sleep? That's when I charge. 7500 miles for £230 so far this year. Can't see fossil fuels touching that. 60 mpg is pretty poor compared with an EV which will be typically 130 mpge or more. Mine has been averaging 138 mpge over the Summer for example

how can an EV get 138 mpg??

24 minutes ago, dbolton said:

how can an EV get 138 mpg??

Based on £6.11 a gallon diesel

138 miles = 4.4p per mile @ 4m/kwh achieved if average price per kwh is 17.6p

Actually a modest claim some would claim over 300 miles @2p, my average is 103 miles per equivalent gallon price

Comparing to a diesel taxi 300 mile a day scenario

To be less biased towards the EV call it 77kwh used (less than 4m/kwh)

42kwh from standard price £11.76 (28p/kwh)

35kwh from off peak price £02.45 (7p/kwh)

£14.21 (129mpg)

2.32 gallons of diesel

My 2litre diesel Mondeo did 34mpg round town used as a Private hire vehicle

On 18/10/2025 at 14:38, dbolton said:

how can an EV get 138 mpg??

I said MPGe, not MPG, it is a recognised unit of measurement, I can even set the car to display it