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77p or 8.6p: the two-tier cost of driving an electric car
Public rapid charging averages 77p per kWh while home EV tariffs sit near 8.6p. The gap is real, but there is a ladder between them. Here is how to climb it.
There are now two electric car economies in Britain, and the difference between them is roughly nine times. A driver who charges at home on a dedicated EV tariff pays about 8.6p per kWh. A driver who relies on the public rapid network pays a weighted average of 77p per kWh. Both are driving electric cars. Only one of them is saving any money against petrol, and the dividing line is whether you have somewhere to plug in at night.
The numbers behind the divide
The figures come from Zapmap's Price Index, updated on 4 September 2026, built from more than two million charging sessions a month across roughly three quarters of the UK's public chargers. In August 2026 it put rapid and ultra-rapid public charging at a weighted average of 77p per kWh, against a typical home EV tariff of 8.6p per kWh. Standard and standard-plus public chargers, the lower-powered units on residential streets and at destinations, averaged 54p per kWh.
Translated into motoring terms, Zapmap calculates an average electric car costs about 16p a mile on a standard public charger and 23p a mile on a rapid. The AA's quarterly read on the market frames the same divide against petrol rather than electricity: home charging is 66% cheaper per mile than petrol, while ultra-rapid public charging is around 15% dearer per mile than petrol. Read that again, because it is the single most important sentence in EV running costs right now. The fastest public chargers cost more per mile than filling up with unleaded.
The consequence shows up in Zapmap's own driver profiles. A couple who charge almost entirely at home save around £1,030 a year against an equivalent petrol car. A driver with no home charging option who relies entirely on the public network saves nothing on charging costs at all. They keep the other advantages of electric ownership, lower servicing and tax among them, but the headline fuel saving that persuades most buyers to switch evaporates without a driveway.
The price ladder
The good news is that 77p is an average, not a wall, and very few drivers actually live at either extreme. Between the 8.6p home tariff and the motorway rapid sits a ladder of cheaper options, and climbing one rung changes the maths more than most people expect.
Supermarket charging is the most useful middle rung, and it is getting cheaper. Lidl cut its Lidl Plus loyalty tariff from 62p to 59p per kWh in September, with non-members paying 74p, alongside another £10m investment adding around 100 rapid chargers at its stores. Lidl owns its chargers outright rather than hosting a third-party operator, which is unusual among supermarkets and gives it room to price aggressively. At 59p, its member rate sits about 23% below the 77p national average, and because rapid charging at a supermarket happens while you shop, the time cost is close to zero.
Above the supermarkets but below the headline average, the network itself is uneven. The same Zapmap data shows several operators pricing rapid charging well under 77p, with some options in the low 60s and Tesla Superchargers open to all drivers averaging 63p per kWh. The spread between the cheapest and most expensive rapid networks is wider than the gap between some supermarket and motorway chargers, which means the single easiest saving is simply knowing which network you are pulling into before you plug in.
At the bottom of the ladder sits the home tariff, and it has no real competition. Overnight EV tariffs near 8.5p per kWh are the cheapest motoring energy in the country, full stop. If you have off-street parking and have not switched to a dedicated EV tariff, that is the highest-value ten minutes you can spend on your energy account.
What the divide means for buyers
The policy world has noticed. The government's £200m chargepoint funding from the Budget is aimed substantially at on-street and destination charging, and the Ofgem price cap arriving on 1 October will reshape the home energy side for standard tariff users, which we covered in our price cap preview. But public charging prices sit outside the cap entirely, set by each operator, so the 77p average is a market outcome rather than a regulated one.
For anyone choosing a car this autumn, the practical advice is to price your own driving before you price the car. Estimate what share of your charging would be at home, at a supermarket, and on the road. A driver who can home-charge most weeks is looking at running costs that beat any petrol car comfortably. A driver in a flat with no driveway should assume rapid and standard public rates, run the sums honestly against their current fuel bill, and lean on our public charging price tracker and per-kWh charging price guide to find the cheap networks near them. For the practical workarounds, from lamppost chargers to workplace bays, our charging without a driveway guide covers the options.
The two-tier divide is real and the numbers are stark. But it is a spectrum, not a cliff, and every driver sits somewhere specific on it. Find your rung, then shop the networks. The gap is widest for people who do nothing at all.