6 May 2025
If you’re into EVs, chances are you’ve come across Gary Comerford, host of The EV Musings Podcast.
Gary’s been driving electric since 2018, when he travelled the country in his 30kWh Kia Soul with just 105 miles of range. He travels accross the country for exhibitions, conferences, and seminars talking, talking to drivers and experts alike to understand the challenges of going electric, and provide education about electric vehicles.
Alongside Sujith Kollamthodi, Director of the Policy, Strategy & Economics Practice at the strategic environmental and engineering consultancy, Ricardo, Gary joined our latest Members’ Town Hall on the Cost of Public Charging. In this blog post, Gary shares some key points from this session and advice on how to reduce your charging costs.
As an example, at Reading Services Westbound, there are ultra-rapid Gridserve chargers at a cost of 85p/kWh, but at the bp Pulse station on the way out, their chargers are priced at 74p/kWh.1 I bet you more people use the Gridserve ones than the bp Pulse ones, mainly because they are there in the parking area rather than on the way out in the garage.
At the same location, there are Tesla v4 superchargers open to the public at a rate of 56p/kWh peak and 47p/kWh off peak. But I’ve been there and seen people on the Gridserve chargers and the Tesla chargers almost empty (apart from Tesla drivers, obviously).
If we are to look at ways to reduce your public charging costs there are several things to look at.
Let’s look at these individually:
Not all CPOs have expensive charger tariffs. The average high power charging tariff (according to Zapmap) is now 80p/kWh for Rapid/ Ultra rapid and 53p/kWh for Slow/ Fast (ie AC charging)
If you use something like leccy.net, chargenet.co.uk or Zapmap‘s price filter, you can find little gems such as AE Renewables, who have a site in Checkley Wood near Leighton Buzzard that charges 39p/kWh for ultra-rapid charging. That’s because they have a huge wind turbine literally on-site providing power for their chargers.
Be.EV currently has a full-time rate of 65p/kWh for the next few months.
Bp Pulse has a standard rate of 63p/kWh if you’re charging on their 50kW chargers using contactless.
Tesla Superchargers that are open to the public have rates that vary between 36p/kWh and 56p/kWh depending on when and where you charge (You can get even lower rates than that but we’ll talk about that when we cover subscriptions.)
There are now lots of companies that provide off-peak rates.
The prime example is AC charging company Char.gy. The have lamppost chargers with a PAYG night time tariff of 39p/kWh.
Tesla, as we’ve already mentioned, has off-peak rates that can be as low as the mid-30p/kWh if you charge at the right time (usually the middle of the night. But their rates vary on a charger-by-charger basis).
Instavolt have a night-time tariff which is really good value but I’ll come back and talk about that shortly.
This is where the majority of the savings can be potentially be made.
If you do a lot of long-distance driving with plenty of public charging it’s worth looking at an Ionity subscription. They have several different flavours of subscription but the best is the Ionity Passport Power offering. It’s a little over £10 per month and it gives you a 42% discount down to 43p/kWh for ultra rapid charging everywhere across their network. They also have a slightly cheaper subscription – The Ionity Passport Motion – that is 53p/kWh and around £8 per month. This compares with 74p/kWh for ad-hoc charging.
Tesla also has subscriptions. For £9 per month, you can get a discount off the already cheap prices that Tesla charges. Peak pricing is then around the 48p/kWh level.
To put this in context 48p/kWh is around 15.5p/mile. Diesel is 14p/mile and Petrol is 15p/mile.
Bp Pulse has a subscription offering. It’s not quite as good as it was when they were still called Polar or Chargemaster and offered 9p/kWh charging with a £6.55 subscription (!), but now it’s 69p/kWh for ultra rapid charging with a subscription of £7.85/ month
There are also companies such as Plugshare, a roaming service, that offer subscriptions. These then allow you discounts on any charges within their roaming network.
OVO Energies’ OVO Charge Anywhere is similar. Via the app (or an RFID card), you can pay £2 per month for 10% off charging with their associated networks. Pay £8 per month for 15% of charging. Those two subscription values and discount rates would seem to be a little out of whack; Pay 4 times the subscription but only get 50% better discount.
So how do we know which one is worth it?
To work out whether a subscription is right for you or not, there’s a simple calculation to do. Subtract the subscription tariff from the pay-as-you-go tariff to give you a saving per kWh. Then divide that by the subscription fee. That’ll give you a number of kWhs. If you regularly charge more than that number of kWh in a single month, the subscription is worth it.
As an example: Say you went for the Ionity Passport Power subscription. Remember that’s £10.50 per month with a tariff of 43p/kWh. That’s a discount of 31p/kWh on their ad-hoc rate. Divide the £10.50 by the 31p saving and this will give you approximately 34. That’s the number of kWhs of energy you will need to charge on the Ionity network every subscription period to benefit from using the subscription. If you regularly charge more that than number of kWh (which, let’s face it is probably quite easy to do) on public charging AND you can move to Ionity for all of that, it’s a no-brainer.
Easy when you know how, right?
Occasionally, some CPOs will drop the price at certain chargers for certain periods of time for… reasons.
Did you know, for example, that if you were to charge at the bp Pulse station at Reading Westbound services, last year you would have paid 47p/kWh? The price has risen somewhat now – it’s up to 74p/kWh. But that’s still cheaper than the same charger on the Eastbound MSA which is at 89p/kWh (the difference being that there isn’t a Tesla Supercharger open to the public on the Eastbound but there is on the Westbound!). Bp Pulse also apply the 74p/kWh rate to their newly opened Cromwell road site – whereas if you go, literally 900m further into Central London and stop at their Hammersmith Flyover site you’ll be paying 89p/kWh
A lot of CPOs now have apps. Back in the day, the app was a way of locating the chargers for that company and allowing you to start and stop the charge. Nowadays, they’re a lot more sophisticated, showing you charge curves, route planning, etc. But one thing they can also do is offer you a reduced price for charging if you use the app to start and stop the charge.
A great example is Instavolt. I mentioned earlier that they have a night-time tariff. Currently that’s 54p/kWh at any of their locations. That’s a substantial discount on their ad-hoc tariff of 85p/kWh. The only catch is that you need to start and stop the charge via their app.
Gridserve do something similar. When it was launched, their app gave users a reasonable discount on any charge if they used it to start and stop the charge.
Be.EV also have discounted rates for drivers when using their app to start and stop charges. Currently they have an offer at 65p/kWh for ad-hoc charging everywhere. But if you use the app you get 5p/kWh off that rate for 50kW chargers and 10p/kWh off that rate for overnight charging on all rapid chargers. So it’s possible to combine offers with off-peak rates
Now I’ll be quite open and honest. I have a big problem with needing a different app for every CPO. It benefits the company more than the driver, and it leads to the proliferation of apps across a user’s phone. That’s not to say that I don’t use apps, but I limit the apps to certain key CPOs that I want to use regularly, rather than downloading a new app at each charger (I’ve got 3 in total)
But there are other apps that you can use that will reduce your cost of charging:
Home charging
For home charging, those who can charge at home have a relative smorgasbord of options for cheaper charging costs. Companies such as Octopus Energy and OVO energy have specific tariffs aimed at enabling cheap charging for EV owners who can park off street.
Octopus has a rate of 7.5p/kWH via tariffs like Octopus Go and Intelligent Octopus go. But that only applies at certain times defined by your tariff.
OVO Energy has a flat rate 7p/kWH that is available 24/7 with no peak/off-peak limitations.
Most of the big energy operators have some sort of home charging tariff. Each has advantages and disadvantages so check them all out.
Fleets
I had a discussion recently with Russ Boulton, who works with a fleet provider and brought up an issue I never really considered. Let’s take an Amazon delivery truck, for example – that van has to be mobile and working, and every minute it’s not working is costing the company money. They have a downtime cost that’s calculated to account for things like breakdowns, traffic jams and, funnily enough, charging. Let’s assume that’s £60/hour or £1 per minute.
Every minute that van isn’t working is costing somebody £1. So if you’re a driver looking for cheap charging, and the nearest ‘cheap charger’ is 10 minutes off your route, but there’s a more expensive charger literally right where you are. It’s often cheaper from a company point of view to pay more for your charging and lose less downtime finding a cheaper charger than it is to spend ten minutes finding a cheaper charger and saving 10p/ kWh
The things you learn, eh?
People currently charge on convenience, not cost. But, if you’re willing to look more at cost and less at convenience, there are many different ways you can reduce your charging costs.
At EVA England, we’re here to help drivers navigate the evolving EV landscape, while we work to influence policy and push for fairer, more transparent public charging across the country.
If you’ve found these tips helpful, consider joining us and becoming part of shaping a better future for electric vehicle drivers across England. Your support strengthens the case for better pricing, simpler access, and a charging network that works for everyone
Join EVA England today, and together we can make the voice of EV drivers heard.