A few weeks ago, we had a small party at home. One of the guests arrived a little late in their brand new EV and their first greeting was to ask whether we could swap some of the cars around that were parked on the drive, so that they could plug their pride and joy into our charging point.
They explained that they’d done a rather longer journey than anticipated, and only had some five miles range left. It was a reasonably sunny day, and we happen to have solar electric installed, so no problem – it was not as if it was going to cost us much.
Coincidentally, we’d been at somebody else’s house for a birthday gathering a month or so earlier, where exactly the same thing had happened. A different guest arrived desperate to plug-in with no range left, etc. Presumably there is, or will soon have to be, some sort of new social etiquette around this subject, but that’s not for here.
Accompanied by much amusement from others present there ensued a long discussion about EV charging between the ‘petrol heads’ and the ‘green brigade’.
Now this is purely anecdotal, but a couple of interesting points were mentioned. Firstly, only about 50% of those present driving EVs had a charging point available at home. In most cases this was simply due to living in properties with no direct parking space of their own, and trailing a 13-amp extension down the street was an obvious no-no. They relied on public charging facilities of various sorts.
The second thing that all of the EV fans brought up was the cost of charging. Those with their own chargers happily proclaimed that it was “free”, or ”much cheaper than petrol or diesel” – but that was at home, or occasionally, at work. And no, not one of them had actually worked out the price in detail.
But they all complained bitterly about the price of charging at commercial charging points, or more precisely those at motorway service areas. And even with there supposedly being 100,000 public charging points at 34,200 locations around the UK, there were still complaints about how few of these seemed to be at petrol stations.
Which really brings us to the subject of this month’s column – sorry, it has taken a while to get here. And that is of EV charging prices compared to traditional fuel retailing. Not so much the actual unit price itself, but the apparently conflicting requirements of showing those prices to consumers, either via the traditional pole sign, or even the fuel price comparison websites.
The government and bodies like the CMA have made much noise about requiring all oil retailers to make their fuel prices not only cleary visible, but widely known, reporting updates to an appointed aggregator within 30 minutes of making a change in the forthcoming Fuel Finder scheme. But there is apparently no such requirement in respect of EV charging points.
As far as I’m aware, the only major forecourt operator that currently displays charging prices alongside their petrol/diesel ones is EG On The Move, as well as the Westmorland Group, which runs motorway service areas. As far as non-forecourt sites are concerned, such as supermarket carparks, I haven’t seen any openly advertising their charging prices except at the charger itself.
As from November 2024 all new charging points have had to display the price of charging, either on a screen, or on an app or a payment website. But there is no requirement to make prices easily visible to potential users while they drive past the location.
Why the double standard? It does go a long way to explaining why many EV users can’t really tell me what typical charging costs are. There appears to be a huge range in prices, much of it based on the power/speed of the charger, as well as the location, meaning that when the typical EV user actually has to stop somewhere and use one, they simply pay whatever that particular outlet demands – because very often, by that time they simply don’t have enough range left to go driving around looking for somewhere that might be cheaper. And when did you last hear that from a petrol head?
- Jan Mikula represents nationwide franchise accounting company EKW Group – ekwgroup.co.uk
