THE SHOCKING COST OF AN 838 MILE JOURNEY IN AN ELECTRIC CAR! 

SO MANY “a diesel is more economical than that!!!1” comments from confused people. I said the cost per mile of the EV on this journey WAS EQUIVELANT TO X miles per gallon using diesel - I didn’t at any point say that this was a representative consumption figure for any vehicle other than the EV. Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, your diesel is probably cheaper. 🤦‍♂️

I find it incredible that you can charge up and not know how much it has cost until you get the reciept. Petrol stations have the price on a big illuminated sign outside and the price displayed on the pump. No way would I just pump a tank full of petrol with no idea of the cost!

Ill be honest ive only two more years, with my electric Cupra Born and i carnt wait tohand it back, ill never buy an electric car again

Thanks, this proves The MacMasters point on EVs ..... 👍

People living in flatted accommodation and places with no access to off-road parking at their property are going to be reliant on the public charging infrastructure. This is where cost becomes the killer and a serious disincentive to going EV.

Absolutely shocking cost. Could drive from john o groats to lands end and back to john o groats for that price in my car.

Well done for not sugarcoating this. We all know that public charging these days is expensive. The plus is that most EV drivers normally charge at home, possibly at 7.5pence a kWh ( or 2pence per mile). The minus is that if you can’t have a home charger then you will spend more than diesel. It could be seen that this is potentially a tax on the poor ( terraced house, no driveway, no choice). Things do need to change as the costs are a legitimate concern.

Excellent, balanced video. At present the vast majority of my driving is commuting that could be home charged but soon I expect the balance to dramatically shift, after retirement, to less frequent, but far longer, journeys, and those public charging prices would be unaffordable. The cost difference is actually greater than you estimate. I get 70mpg from my diesel giving a 700 mile range. Realistically I never need to use anything other than the cheapest local station... currently 142.9 pence per litre.A cost of 9.3 pence per mile. There are many reasons to choose electric but sadly, for me, cost isn't one of them.

Interesting costs and I like the points on how you could have made it cheaper but then faced delays by using other sites. This is what Lee found, it was cheaper but he faced delays because everyone else wanted it cheaper too. I've done a splash and dash at motorway services but only putting in enough to get me off the motorway and to a cheaper fuel station but I think if in an electric car that might be harder to do.

Well this has confirmed something for me. A couple of weeks ago i did a 240 mile round trip in my mg4 which seemed to cost a lot because I recharged at the mid point. I thought it would have been cheaper in my old diesel Bongo campervan. Following this video, I calculated the costs and yes it is cheaper for me to run a 23 year old campervan barely capable of doing 35mpg than my brand new ev. At least I know now: if I'll have to public charge; use the old van.

That electric charging and pricing structures looks like one big crazy and expensive puzzle to me. Im blissfully happy with my 33 year old VW Passat 1.6 Turbo diesel. 56mpg @ 60 mph. Its 25 gallon tank gives a range of exactly 1400 miles at 60mph. I could leave home here in mid Wales with a full tank and drive non stop to Lands End, turn right around and then drive to JoG non stop and still have nearly 200 miles worth still in the tank. I wonder how your Poletart or any other EV will be holding up when its 33 years old. My whole life vehicles cost just continue to get smaller and smaller by the day.

I'm still watching but your cat is the star of the show :P

Well done on taking up the challenge and your balanced videos. Our experience is even more dire here in Australia, and our trips tend to be a lot longer. I think there is some merit in Lee's assessment, backed up by some of your observations from this trip, and it will be a long time before EVs are suitable for a lot of people here. Add in the cost and depreciation of EVs over ICE and it really is prohibitive. Thanks again for the vids!

Very honest video. Thanks for sharing the costs. 🙂👍🏻The next annoying thing is, when a high percentage of people have ev’s, do we all honestly think the charging prices will get cheaper? Of course not. Same as petrol they’re gonna rip us off. Just think back to the recent energy prices we’ve had. It’s horrendous. Same as petrol now. Prices are being kept high in U.K. always will be.

Well done you have highlighted the biggest problem facing ev owners. The cost of public charging! I run a Zoe and pay 29p a KW at work which is the same cost as running my previous Dacia bi fuel! But I'm retiring so have managed to install an outside 13amp socket at my rented flat and will have to charge via a granny charger. 7.5p this means I won't using the car on long journeys! I could buy I hate being ripped off so I'm looking at using my bus pass and a £30 rail card for two or a coach holiday. The government can't lose all the fuel duty when we are forced to go all electric so that means road charging per mile on top! The end of personal transport for the masses is coming to an end! But least when insurance companies will be able to monitor your driving and charge you more immediately if you don't stick to the rules! I'm glad my driving days are limited anyway. We have had the best of our freedoms unless you can afford to pay a fortune to keep it.

"There was a way I could of saved some money" - Yes you could of bought a BMW 330D - @ £1.53/L and I get 560-580 miles of range so I could drive from John o' Groats all the way to Birmingham before my first fill up up which would take 20 mins including buying a sandwich then another 290 miles and I`m in Land`s End - if I went in my wife X6 I get even more miles out of a tank.

My personal situation, in answer to your final question: Most of my driving over the year is home>work>home + evening use, which is easily covered by home charging at 7.5p/kWh, or just under 2p/mile. The weekend trips out, same deal, usually within 150-200 miles, covered at 7.5p/kWh or just under 2p/mile. I have family in Cornwall, I can charge there and they're just outside of my car's range, so I generally leave home at 100%, stop half way to have a wee, get a coffee and charge, 10 minutes max. This would be at 37p/kWh maybe 20kWh, about 70-80 miles worth at 9p/mile (because Tesla prices). Average p/mile is still very good for the overall trip. BUT, heavy reliance on public charging, especially non-Tesla public charging would clearly tilt the balance the other way quite quickly.

Times money at an average of say £20 + per hour lost time waiting to charge, car depreciation at thousands of pounds per month and sky rocketing insurance costs, plus a new battery in about 5 years at a cost of £20000. Must be mad to consider an ev.

I know you don't particulally like Tesla, but they have got it right in terms of Charging infrastructure, cost, efficency and reliability. America has woken up to this and adopted the Tesla standard across the board (nearly). The v4's superchargers will be open to all in the rest of the world, as will the the entire network eventually so I don't see how the other networks at will compete on avaliability, reliability and cost.

Thank you for your honesty and as someone who cannot charge at home or at work I will hold on to my diesel

As much as evangelists hate him, Lee (macmaster) shows the reality of owning and running an ev, he doesn’t hide anything or sugarcoat it & you get to see what the experience is really like from the perspective of someone who uses his car to travel around different places - outside of the normal range of the car and all that that entails in terms of costs, getting to chargers and they’re all full with folks waiting, or they’re not working, or they’re slow chargers etc etc & the costs involved! I don’t think anyone can argue with how poor the current charging Infrastructure is, things really do need to get significantly better if mass ev adoption is going to become viable. When you add everything together, cost of charging on public chargers, the poor current infrastructure, the time it takes to actually charge (assuming you can just drop on the chargers without having to wait about) then for me ev’s don’t make sense if you regularly travel outside of the range of the battery &/or you can’t charge at home, not when you also add in the ridiculously high initial purchase price of the cars too!

As someone who has never learnt to drive (in my mid 60s) I watch the other channels partly for the old cars and the EV but also the entertainment. I felt your video was very fair and can see that you could have saved money, but I always find that in hindsight when I spend money. I think the agreement is if you can normally charge at home and don't travel over your range each day an EV maybe worth looking at( unlike the people in my road of Victorian terrace houses) where if during the week if home after 5pm may not be able to park in the road let alone outside your house. I think a lot will change in the future some good, lower cost better cheaper batteries. I understand around half the cost of petrol and diesel is tax, so how long will the Government put up with 20% or 5% for home charging. We are all supposed to have smart meters and those who charge EVs a smart charger, so how difficult would it be to add different tax levels depending on what you are using the electricity for. From that I feel channels like yours and others I watch will be important in this time of change and perhaps sometimes a lack of trust in what we are being told. All the best.

Maybe that's UK problem, here in Finland we have prices like 15, 17, 33 and 35 euro cents/kwh, and there might still be few free chargers somewhere. Then we have more expensive chargers, but I never use those.

MacMaster was right!

Good, honest video. I've had an EV for 4 years and use home charging 98% of the time. I would charge in the wild more if I needed to but they are making it very expensive to really TRAVEL with an EV.

Wait until they do away with off peak.

I think your video was balanced. The costs for non home charging are eye watering. While a lot of journeys can be done within home range there will always be these longer journeys as thats part of life. The thing is that when doing these journeys EV owners have to think about things that wouldn't even need to cross an ICE owners mind. Life is busy enough without the charger route planning faff, the additional time and the cost. I very much hope i can end my motoring days in an ICE or non plug in hybrid.

I really appreciate your honesty, most EV coverage either unashamedly gushes over the positives our damns the negatives. For me the Byzantine mess of apps, cards and tariffs is a barrier - I don't have to take my ageing Mondeo to a Ford pump to fill it up (indeed, nobody's stopping me putting diesel in my petrol tank if I really want to). I live in a small, traffic-clogged city so cycling and/ or walking makes sense fit most local journeys, leaving the Mondeo for longer journeys so it's a 'no' (or at least, a 'not yet') from me on EVs.

If you are able to charge at home then the running costs are undoubtedly cheaper, however currently initial purchase cost and depreciation need to be considered along with servicing etc. I think the elephant in the room is currently the taxman collects 52.95 pence (+vat) on every litre of petrol and diesel. As people swap to BEV’s this “loss” will have to be made up from somewhere.

Great summary and I fully agree. Thanks for a clear and honest video. I’m glad to be able to charge at home, and would still be in my diesel if I could only use public enroute charging. 2000 miles in my Model Y charging at home is about £50, Vs about £300 for my diesel. I keep the math simple by assuming 45mpg, so £1.55/litre is 15.5p/mile (love U.K. unit chaos MPG efficiency and litres dispensed!!). For electric I divide cost/kWh by 3 mile in Winter and 4 in Summer. By this logic 46p/kWh is my diesel equivalent break even cost in Winter, or as much as 62p in Summer - it’s too expensive to charge on anything other than the Tesla network for me, but with 24000 miles per year maybe only 4000 is long road trips, so I’ll take the diesel cost parity (or maybe a smidge more) for the road trips if it gives me 3p per mile on my 20000 miles worth of commute, savings of £250 per month over diesel are hard to ignore.

Very thorough and thoughtful piece. I'll be interested to see how pricing evolves over the next 5 years.

Great to show the detail, fits with what I find. 30k a year driving with one trip over 2k miles a year to south of france (where the electricity is a lot cheaper but still more than home charging) and several to see the in laws at about 250 miles return with driving around and last year my first staycation with a weeks driving around. Generally find that my monthly fuel bill has come down about £180 however February and August are a bit of a shocker. Probably spend no more than £40 a month on the road and £30 at home.

You have done a very good job of carrying out this bit of research. It's a very important subject and I just hope that there are more membership schemes do become available but I do find it rather odd that the government does not have an oversight of where chargers (apparently there are 60 or so companies across Britain) are to be places because some areas of the country are very badly serviced. I was researching on the Octopus Electroverse web site the other day and it seems that the cost of the French charging system is about half of the charging system here in England. Form what you are saying it looks as if Scotland charges around 2/3rds of the English price. Again it looks like the tory's have been asleep at the wheel yet again.

I would like to see you doing some videos with the Mac master and Geoff buys car

my diesel old get 70mpg 970miles on a full tank at 90ish pounds

Your honesty is appreciated. The extra cost of buying an EV, and realistically not being cheaper to 'fuel' than a petrol or diesel based on your numbers, adding to that the insurance generally being more expensive, and the wasted/inconvenience of time in charging, not to mention the monumental depreciation costs, I still believe EV's are not the answer. Even if there was a slightly higher cost in owning an ICE car, which it doesn't appear to be much, if at all, I'll stick with it. Just not worth the hassles of what I see EV owners go through.

You're on to something, using your delightful cat as your co-presenter. Loved it. And, as an EV driver who covers longish distances and can't charge at home, I loved it even more. Thanks so much!

Well done for your honest trial!

So many EV issues including depreciation are a uk problem. Here in Spain it’s a different experience

I owned a Seat Mii electric for 2 years and only ever charged at home, mostly for 5p kWh. I could not run an ICE car anywhere near as cheap. I now have an MG4 which will be charged mainly at home for 9p kWh. So whilst I know (and accept) public charging is expensive, I know overall I will be saving hundreds compared to any petrol/diesel.

I can charge at home and it's waaay cheaper than running an ice car and I really like driving the car locally. Road trips however are way too stressful given the lack of public chargers here in Ireland and the associated problems that caused us to cancel upcoming road trips We bought a new petrol car last Thursday (new to us 2022) which will relegate the EV to local trips and hopefully mean enjoying longer trips once more. However, we have found the public charging costs here (so far) have not been that far removed from costs of diesel in previous car, mostly a few quid either way.

Doesn't this prove MacMaster was indeed correct in saying that EV's are great as run-arounds when your fortunate enough to own a home and can home charge, but as a replacement for ICE on long journeys they are not suitable right now, too slow and too expensive? They've marketed EV's all wrong from the beginning and given them a needlessly bad rep, they should have produced cheap run arounds and made ICE the luxury vehicles, not the other way round.

I did Aberdeenshire to London, and back, in September and I was £106 on superchargers. The more the Tesla network opens up hopefully a price war starts. According to my charge stats in the last year 88% home charging. Add superchargers for Tesla owners being half the price of other networks and I'm quite happy with my cost per mile over the last few years.

Fair play on your 'experiment' and for not spinning the results. That 838 mile journey in my Volvo V50 1.6D would have involved one stop to refuel and would have cost around £105 at current pump prices. I drive from East Anglia to North Scotland to visit family on a regular basis and comfort breaks can be taken when needed, with the driving split between two, rather than being forced to stop for 45 mins due to the need to recharge. Until EVs can match an efficient diesel for range (~650 miles for my V50) and charging times don't involve sitting around for 40 mins or waiting for a charge bay to become available to start your 40 minutes wait, I will continue to drive my 'polluting' diesel ( with VEL rate of £0 ). Still cannot believe it only cost £20 a day for the Polestar!!!...

I was not at all surprised at how much your trip cost! I think you ought to have added the £120 for the car hire. Just saying. I do have an EV and use it only for local trips doing actually doing more mile per year than my oil burner which I use for long trips. My Pug 508 diesel returns 64mpg on a long run and would have done that journey on just less than one tank full at around £100, one way of course. That's around 8p per mile. In the winter (now) my leaf does about 3m/kwh normal driving. That means I'd be lucky to get 23p per mile at 69p/kwh once my home charge is used up. So that would be north of £160! I bought my EV never intending to use it for long trips and public charging anyway. I knew the high cost before I even thought about getting an EV however I have loads of solar in the summer so that is free traveling for me. Thanks for your honesty with figures because so many EV evangelists are not!

Your cat is magic

I have the Octopus Go tariff at home and use it for about 85% of my charging. When on holiday touring or driving to Heathrow from Lancashire I use whatever is available when I need it. This increased cost is part of the holiday and I want convenience, speed and reliability. When i had a diesel Juke I would use motorway service stations. TBH driving an EV is a much more relaxing experience that driving fossil car and for that reason alone I am not going to change. Thanks for your video.

Regarding filling up on motorway services, I’ve done it once in 47 years of driving and I drive down to Cornwall and Hampshire quite a lot from Staffordshire. I’ve filled up on more services abroad than in the Uk as there doesn’t seem to be the cost penalty abroad.

I don't think the Polestar 2 is really comparable to a diesel car, more a high end petrol SUV. I almost never public charge and I often charge for free, I just know where to go and when to charge. Interesting statistics. I do think public charging is expensive. Your journey is not typical, most drivers would start a journey fully charged at home, and have one or two public charges on a journey. Overall my motoring is cheaper with our new EV than with our former petrol Focus.

Very good explanation of the massive difference in costs between home charging and public charging. I'm saving £2,000 a year in fuel costs because nearly all my charging is at home at 7.5p kWh. If I had solar I could save even more. Whereas for someone who is unable to charge at home, there are very little if any savings in fuel costs. The Government could help by reducing the VAT on public charging to the same level as home charging. (5%)

Fantastic series of videos....I charge my Model Y at home using intelligent octopus go, therefore the admittedly high cost of public charging has only a tiny impact on my annual usage, and is largely irrelevant to me and many others. You elucidate this scenario extremely well. Home charging an absolute must in my opinion. Reducing the 20% VAT rate for public charging would be a good start.....

My experience of driving to Scotland and back using ultra-rapid hubs was that the cost was extremely high given I was using the base Mercedes no-subscription charge plan - I had expected that having checked the pricing on Zap-Map and the cashflow advantage was (using my Mercedes RFID card) I did not get billed until the start of the following month - only downside was that GridServe and MFG are not included and so it was a quite a big hop from Ionity Carlisle to Ionity Stafford However that is a once every year trip and your point about home charging completely turning the cost model on its head is correct with my Mercedes SUV costing less per mile than my wife’s Suzuki Swift when I charge from home

Really interesting video, thanks very much. Very fair, can't really argue with your conclusions. The cost is really steep and will drive a wedge between those who can charge at home and those who can't. That doesn't look like being solved any time soon, so EVs are unlikely to be the preserve of everyone. The outcome of your critique of how you overcharged is also something that I can't really handle. Driving shouldn't involve constant maths. Just fill and go. Once that is fixed and at a publicly available rate that's comparable with charging at home (half the population currently marginalised), then EVs have a bigger market potential. Thanks again.

What a lovely cat you have!

One thought I did have on those who can't charge at home. I have seen that some home chargers have RFID cards. I wonder if there could be a system that would allow a neighbour to tap their card (linked to their home tariff) and charge that way. There are already services that allow you to rent your drive via an app so just need a system like that to book a slot. Then the charger owner could get a few quid for renting the drive/charger. You could block out times when you needed to charge but would be a way for housing estates where you have a mix of houses with drives and flats to share their resources. There shouldn't be a split in the future between the haves/have nots where those with a drive can drive for 3-4 times less than those without. Just a thought.

I think an issue that needs to be addressed is the VAT on public charging. 5% VAT for domestic use and 20% VAT on public charging, seems the government don't walk the walk 😂. If the network provider has battery storage, therefore charging the battery off peak and selling during the day, in the future, after capex is completed, we should see public charging become more competitive. You just need to look at the queues at Costco petrol pumps to see what strong competition can do.

Thumbs up for the kitty! 🥰 Just wait until they start to tax EV mileage, and they will when the fuel tax revenue decreases.

If you factor-in the overall cost of ownership, including depreciation, servicing, tyres, insurance and the inevitable cost of a replacement battery. it would probably be cheaper to travel by taxi.

Cat fell off the shelf when it heard how much it costs to charge on the road :)

There are too many complications in travelling with an ev. The constant fear of being able to charge. Are the chargers working? The constant downtime involved in waiting. The cost, which you don’t get a receipt for ! To me, they are totally impractical. What can be easier than filling up with diesel or petrol ? A 3 minute task ! I will stick with diesel with both my car and van for ever thanks.

I have no home charging but we do have a bp pulse charger close by so we're on a subscription, £7.50 a month, 55p a kWh. Car is Ioniq 38kWh we dont do enormous mileage as a rule and the Ioniq has great economy so were still paying way less than our old 1.2litre petrol. We also have an Octopus Electroverse card but rately have to use it. No home charging, no problem here and the Ioniq is so much more pleasant to drive and travel in peace👍

Totally honest and realistic price analysis. I am under no illusion that my EV will cost me considerable more when travelling longer distances and having the convenience of rapid charging, however it's the similar case for my diesel yeti - fill up at our local supermarket forecourts but accept higher prices on the motorway. Plus i chose a "compromise" EV - does 280-300 range in summer, 250 in winter but the vast majority of our travel is local and averages perhaps 20-25 miles per day. Foot in both camps enables me to take a balanced view!

That is a huge cost for a car that is expensive in the first place! A fifth of people live in flats in the UK. That is a huge percentage who might struggle to charge at home. Plus anyone who has a house with no drive (lots of them too). This unfortunately seems like technology that is out of reach for a very large number of people.

Thanks for tip about cheaper rate IONITY chargers. Polestar app says 30p/kwhr but I’ll watch out for the crowds due to the cheaper rates. We charge 90/10 or even 95/05 home to away as most of our journeys are less than 100 miles round trip.

Thanks Gary for a very informative video, I too was a bit shocked at the cost. We are lucky enough to have home charging at .075 per kw and a 95% home charging usage pattern, but there is no way I’d have an EV if we didn’t have home charging capability. And this is from someone who genuinely prefers how EVs drive when compared to ICE vehicle. I only tested an EV in 2019 so I could say with authority how rubbish they are, but was blown away and both our daily drivers are now BEVs! Keep up the good work 👍🏻

Hi, great vids. I went from Ironbridge, shropshire to lands end and back again for £60. This was a few years back and was getting 90 miles a gallon in a fully loaded 07 focus tdci, 3 people and full camping gear + roof box.

Thanks for doing this, it just makes the choice of keeping my 12 year old diesel Peugeot a lot easier for now, the public charging is so expensive. I appreciate you taking the time to do the job TV motor journalists seldom do. I have to say RU-vid is far better for consumer reports like this,; and are a lot more informative and show real life scenarios.

I have told many friends that if you park off road and can charge at home, then an EV is a no brainer for most people. Over 90% of my charging is done at home with only a few longer trips needing a top up of enough electricity to get me home. I feel that the Government and local councils have let down anyone without a driveway as they have been ignored. There needs to be a way for those living in a terraced house to still benefit from cheap overnight electricity. Only then is it fair for all. Rapid charging costs are crazy and not to be half the cost.

I am convinced that freedom of movement is the ultimate aim by making driving so unattractive that we all give up.

I was expecting you to sugarcoat this. I stand corrected. This has been an interesting series of videos. Thanks. As you say, access to home charging for the majority of the time is the key. Not everyone will have this.

I don’t know why people thing public charging should be cheap. The companies building and running these sites have to get their money back for the massive investment that they are making and there are only two ways that this can happen. Either the Government pays, which means higher taxes for everyone, or the person charging their EV pays. Worcester University has recently opened 100 charging points at their site. They were awarded £3 million in a grant from the Council to do this. That works out to £30,000 per charger, assuming that the University didn’t put any money towards it. They charge (no pun intended) 79p per kWh for rapid charging, so if each charger was occupied for 24 hours per day it would take over 4 years just to recover the installation cost. Given that it is extremely unlikely that the charger will be in use 24/7 if we took a 10-hour usage per day that means that each charger installation will take over 10 years just to recover the cost.

I regularly run from my home in Wales to Anstruther in Fife in my trusty Peugeot 3008 1.6 diesel. The milage is 420 (half your journey) My car does the journey at 47 mpg overall and uses 9 gallons @ £7.00 a gallon. The tank holds more than enough fuel for the journey so i stop only for comfort breaks. This is £63.00. For the technical i run the car at a 70 ish MPH and due to the high gear ratios (6 gears) of these cars the average RPM is aprox 2650 rpm. Its got 187000 miles on the clock and as with many diesel vehicles will cover many more miles when serviced and maintained. How could i even justify an EV, it's just money down the drain. Thank you for the Vid. It is excellently presented.

And there you have it,Ev's are more expensive to buy and runand dangerous.😂😂😂

Nice mic. The sound is so much better these days. This channel gets better and better

Again good honest video. As an EV owner in Ireland, how on earth is it so expensive to use public chargers in the UK! Those prices seem insane.

Interesting pricing. Last week l had to drive 350 miles from Gloucester to Lytham St Annes. Cost in fuel 20p/mile. I really think the cost of public charging should be related to the rate at which you can charge, not cost per kilowatt.

I'm pretty sure that nearly everybody agrees that the fuel cost of an EV is lower than a diesel when you charge it at home, but the argument was about the cost on a long journey, when you're at the mercy of whatever charges you can find conveniently along the way, and you found out that it was worse than you thought. The two downsides of doing such a journey in an EV are the lack of convenience and the cost of charging. It's too complicated and stressful for most people, including me.

I have a little 2010 Honda CR-Z hybrid that I bought back in May with full service history and 58k miles. I reckon the running costs of my car make it far cheaper to use than an EV. VED on it is £25 per year, insurance is pretty cheap (£343 in my case) and I have just had a service and an advisory-free MOT, the total cost both was just £265. I get nearly 40mpg around town and a bit more on a motorway. ULEZ compliant as well. For comparison, I drive from Sunderland to Cheltenham to visit my brother regularly, which is about 510 miles for a round trip. It costs me about £65 in premium E95 fuel for this journey.

I have not yet bought an EV despite desperately wanting one and believing they are the future because I can't charge at home...there needs to be workable solutions to allow people with no off-street parking the opportunity to use their own electricity supply to charge their cars. And it's eminently solvable as an engineering problem.

Very clear and concise presentation. Thank you! In my modest, not particularly efficient 2016 1.6 petrol vehicle, I can still easily average 48mpg on a long run at 60mph/motorway speeds. That's around 14p per mile at current pump prices. I can't charge at home so if I were to trade it in for an electric car, not only would long distance travel be slower and prohibitively expensive, the huge environmental cost involved in manufacturing that EV would dwarf the emissions made by my vehicle over the next 10 years. If you already drive a relatively modern and economical ICE car, save the planet by keeping it on the road!

Interesting stuff. And much more worth listening to from someone that is trying to give an honest factual account of this journey. Personally, I can’t charge at home, but I bought an older 2016 Tesla Model S with free Supercharging. I recently drove from Devon to Southern Italy, spent 6 weeks in Italy before driving back. Covering just over 5,500 miles. I did use the Enel X Way AC charger in the town square where I was staying at a rather pricey €0.64 per kW. And like you I used it much more than I really needed to. Which meant I spent just shy of €70 during my trip away. I’m not sure what that is in diesel mpg, but it will have to be pretty frugal!

As a tesla charge member I can get power as low as 35p per KWH. That I understand significantly reduces the number of cars visiting nearby non Tesla charging stations. Why pay 50p per KWH over the going rate? The only problem is charging in North East Yorkshire is a desert. A good sized Tesla station would kick the competitors up the jacksie good and proper.

I’ve watched your trip ….. and I think your assessment was very fair and truthful…… driving a diesel I don’t have problems with EV’s….. it’s a shame the suppliers of the charging points seem to want to shoot themselves in the foot regarding costs. I’d be fortunate if I went EV as I’ve access to charging at home but as you say a lot of people have not.

Before I bought my ID.3 in Feb, I kept a little spreadsheet with my old Skoda Yeti diesel vs ID.3 charging costs. It was obvious even then with more expensive fuel prices, that parity between diesel and public charging was reached at around 65p/KWh, and anything over that would result in a journey being more expensive for an EV. I think your numbers are bang-on and I'm not sure what can be done about it other than huge subsidies from central government. The initial buildout of the infrastructure needs to be paid for somehow.

I like your cat! Good series of videos, well balanced and informative.

So as the Macmaster said. An EV for popping to the shops and charging from home is ideal. For company cars/vans and people who do big miles, forget it. I had no idea that public charging was so expensive until the Macmaster started pointing this out, so this was very informative and backs up his claims. Thank you. We know that cheap charging at home is not going to last. The taxman will want his share as more people are forced/persuaded/conned into an EV. We are also seeing requests not to use high powered electrical items at peak times, so that won't be long before we are restricted to how much electricity we are allowed to use in our homes and when we are allowed to use it. Being forced into having to buy an EV by 2035 is frightening. The grip on our freedom of movement is tightening.

If you factor in servicing costs over the ownership period that can change things a bit as well.

Most of my charge is from home at 12p .only when I go to London is when I require a rapid. In London I plug into a charger ran from solar. Only 12kw array but still punching out the energy even in winter.

To sum up: charging is most expensive for those who can least afford expensive charging. Nothing new there.

The extortionate public costs of charging, the faff of waiting 30+ minutes for each charge and the relative availability of charging stations meant that I decided to swerve buying a full EV this time around and opted for a 2022 BMW 230e active tourer PHEV. It does 45mpg on average on the motorway once the charge has depleted, it has a range of 40-50 miles on a charge for daily duties at a cost of £1.15 a charge and suits my personal driving profile of mainly city driving with 10-20 longer journeys per year. Maybe once EV’s have a real world motorway range of 500 miles then I would make the jump as this would mean most of my 10-20 longer trips could be done without having to use extortionate public charging.

Yesterday I watched Jonathan Porterfield drive a Zoe home via the A9 then onto Orkney ferry in sub-zero temperatures. What struck me was the number of older Chargeplace Scotland chargers that had not been maintained in remote locations, and they either didn't work at all or delivered almost no charge in one case. I have often wondered what the cost comparison is between maintaining petrol pumps and maintaining rapid EV public chargers over a given time period?

I was looking at an ev i do about 1100 miles a month i cant change at home no drive way i own my petrol car outright so the price of a used ev plus the public charging rip-off i would be like 400 plus a month out of pocket so will keep with petrol for as long as i can.

Electric cars now only make sense as a commuter or town car.

I have seen videos from france where they seem to have public chargers which are free for the first hour(mostly it appears in car parks) where is the encouragement in the uk for greener power/travel?

A good honest video. I wonder if we will see a system in the future where you have an RFID card or app which is linked to your home energy tariff (a little bit like the Octopus card) to bring the cost down. However, if wholesale energy prices sort themselves out and we can return to "normal" pricing then the cost issue falls away. I remember paying only 11p per kWh on the 7kW chargers and I think only 30-35p for the rapids when we first got our EV.

May I ask how much did your electric car cost? How old is it,? What is its value now? How much is your insurer quoting as of today? Thank you

That Exeter price is eye-watering! Charged on the Tesla points there recently for 37p/kWh. Not open to non-Tesla though. At Reading West the Tesla chargers are open to non-Tesla, directly opposite the Gridserve charge points, which are more expensive than the non-Tesla price at a Supercharger. Something needs to happen.

Question about the state of Tesla chargers for non Tesla's like my i3. Have they increased the length of their cables so that we do not have to park in the wrong stall so the cable will reach?

I’m fortunate to be able to charge both my EVs at home using Intelligent Octopus which provides at least 6 hours of off peak charging at 7.5 p kWh which works out at under 2p per mile. Done over 1500 miles of road trips recently in my Tesla with the most expensive cost,using Tesla superchargers being 45p kWh equating to 9p per mile - in reality with home charging at the start and finish and a small amount of free destination charging the actual cost was less than 5p a mile. I never had to wait to charge and my main problem is the Tesla charges too quickly that have to move it to avoid idle fees before have finished a comfort break and queued for a coffee etc. Thanks for an honest appraisal of the pros and cons of EV ownership.

I'm going from a PHEV to full EV soon. Most of my driving will be local with occasional long trips. Got Octopus Go as electric supplier so economic if charging at home. Happy to pay on the odd occasion at public chargers. However if I couldn't charge at home I wouldn't have an EV due to cost, reliability and hassle