Use an on-the-road price from a configurator or a real dealer quote, not just the "from" headline price.
CONSIDERED EV TOOLKIT
EV vs Petrol & Diesel Cost Calculator
Work out whether switching to electric actually saves you money, once you include a home charger, realistic charging costs, road tax and the pay-per-mile charge arriving in 2028.
This calculator compares:
⚡ Running costs🏠 Home charger🛠 Road tax↻ 2028 pay-per-mile
✓ Works whether or not you can charge at home
✓ Includes the confirmed 2028 pay-per-mile charge
✓ You control every price and assumption
Built independently by Dale from Considered.
Every figure below is an editable UK estimate, not a quotation. Referral links never change the calculations. This remains an illustration, not financial advice.
Start the calculator
A DIFFERENT WAY TO LOOK AT IT
If electric had come first, would anyone have invented the petrol engine?
The advertising strategist and Spectator columnist Rory Sutherland has set out a thought experiment worth sitting with before the numbers below. Imagine a world where every car is already electric, and an engineer turns up pitching a new invention: it runs by burning a liquid fuel refined offshore and trucked out to thousands of pressurised, flammable storage sites across the country. It turns roughly a fifth of that energy into motion and wastes the rest as heat and noise. It needs around 2,000 moving parts, regular oil changes and a working exhaust system just to stay legal and safe. Sutherland's challenge to the sceptics in that scenario: “Where's the upside?”
Reversing the order things arrived in doesn't settle whether an EV is right for your driving, budget and access to charging today — that's what the calculator below is for. But it's a useful check on how much of the "petrol just makes sense" feeling is familiarity rather than a considered comparison.
Read Rory Sutherland's original piece in The Spectator ↗Need help finding your figures?Where to find prices, mileage, tariffs and charging costs
You can start with the illustrative defaults below and replace them with your own figures as you find them.
Use your local forecourt price or a national average tracker. It moves week to week, so revisit it.
Check your supplier app for your off-peak/EV tariff rate and the hours it applies, such as Octopus Intelligent Go.
Check a roaming app such as Zap-Map for typical rapid and ultra-rapid pricing on routes you actually drive.
Get a real installer quote, including any consumer-unit or DNO work your property needs.
Check gov.uk for your exact VED band and get real insurance quotes for both cars, not assumed averages.
BUILD YOUR COMPARISON
Tell the calculator about your driving and options
Set your mileage, the two cars, and how you'd realistically charge. The results below update automatically.
YOUR COMPARISON
Assumptions
EXAMPLE STARTING POINTS
Choose a comparison, then edit any figure
Presets are illustrative examples, not recommendations or specific models.
Your driving
The two cars
⛽ Petrol / diesel car
⚡ Electric car
Charging setup
BE REALISTIC ABOUT CHARGING
How would you actually charge it?
Pick the closest match, then fine-tune the split and rates below.
Tax, insurance & servicing
Resale value (optional)
Depreciation is usually the single biggest cost of running any car, and the least predictable. Treat this as an illustrative estimate, not a forecast.
YOUR RESULTS
See what your comparison could mean
Start with the headline figures, then use the graph and breakdown to explore the trade-offs.
YOUR COMPARISON
Calculating…
IF YOU BUY TODAY AND KEEP IT THE FULL PERIOD
Comparing total cost of ownership over 5 years
ELECTRIC CAR£0
Purchase price, charger, electricity, tax, insurance and servicing, minus resale value.
VS
PETROL / DIESEL CAR£0
Purchase price, fuel, tax, insurance and servicing, minus resale value.
This assumes a cash purchase and does not model finance, loan interest or leasing, which change the comparison considerably.
WHAT THE MODEL SUGGESTS
The result is sensitive to your assumptions
LONG JOURNEYS & CHARGING STOPS
Range fit
THE HOME-CHARGING EFFECT
What your charging mix is really worth
Same electricity price assumptions, shown at the extremes, so the value of a driveway and a charger is visible even in a mixed scenario.
Cumulative cost over time
Running total spent on each car, including purchase price and charger, before resale value.
ElectricPetrol / diesel
Estimated first year
- Electricity cost
- £0
- Fuel cost
- £0
- EV road tax (VED)
- £0
- Petrol/diesel road tax (VED)
- £0
- Home charger (one-off)
- £0
Over the full period
- Total EV running costs
- £0
- Total petrol/diesel running costs
- £0
- 2028 pay-per-mile total (if included)
- £0
- EV resale value
- £0
- Petrol/diesel resale value
- £0
How this estimate works
The model multiplies your annual mileage by fuel economy and fuel price for the petrol/diesel car, and by efficiency and a blended electricity rate (your home/public split) for the electric car. Servicing, insurance, fuel and electricity costs are increased each year by your chosen inflation rate; road tax is not, since VED is a fixed government rate that changes by policy decision rather than inflation.
Road tax: from April 2025 both electric and petrol/diesel cars pay the same standard VED rate of £200/year from their second year of registration. Electric cars pay £10 in their first year; petrol/diesel first-year rates vary by CO2 band, so this is an editable estimate. An expensive-car supplement of £440/year applies for years two to six where the original list price was over £40,000 (petrol/diesel) or £50,000 (electric).
2028 pay-per-mile charge: the government confirmed in July 2026 that electric cars will pay an additional 3p per mile (plug-in hybrids 1.5p per mile) from April 2028, collected alongside VED renewal based on a reported mileage. This calculator applies it from the ownership year in which April 2028 falls, if enabled.
What isn't modelled: finance and loan interest, charging while away from home for reasons other than range (e.g. workplace charging), congestion or clean air zone charges, company car tax, breakdown cover, tyre wear differences, and the resale-value effect of battery health or model-specific demand. Depreciation is estimated as a simple percentage of the original price, which is a considerable simplification of a genuinely volatile market.
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Help keep useful tools like this free
This calculator is free to use. If it has helped you make a better decision, you can support the research, testing and ongoing development behind Considered in whichever way suits you.
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Referral disclosure: some links can financially benefit Considered. They are clearly marked and never change the calculator, its assumptions or its results.
DECISION SUMMARY
Your scenario at a glance
Purchase, charger, running costs and tax, minus resale.
Purchase, running costs and tax, minus resale.
Positive means the electric car is estimated to cost less.
When the EV's running-cost advantage overtakes its higher purchase price.
WHY THIS RESULT?
Updating…
WHAT MATTERS MOST
Charging mix, annual mileage and the price gap between the two cars typically move this result the most.
UNDERSTANDING THE RESULT
Is an EV actually cheaper than petrol or diesel in the UK?
There is no single UK-wide answer. It depends heavily on whether you can charge at home overnight, how many miles you drive, the price gap between the two cars you're comparing, and what happens to road tax and the incoming pay-per-mile charge over the years you own it. This calculator is designed to make those assumptions visible rather than relying on a generic headline figure.
Do I need a home charger to make an EV worth it?
Not necessarily, but it makes a large difference. Charging overnight on an off-peak tariff can cost roughly a tenth of relying entirely on public rapid charging. If you can't charge at home, the running-cost advantage over petrol or diesel narrows considerably and may disappear on some tariffs.
Compare home vs public-only chargingWhat is eVED, the 2028 pay-per-mile charge?
eVED is a new charge confirmed by the government in July 2026: electric cars will pay 3p per mile (plug-in hybrids 1.5p per mile) from April 2028, in addition to standard road tax. It's intended to replace some of the fuel duty that petrol and diesel drivers already pay through the pump price.
See it applied to your scenarioIs EV road tax the same as petrol and diesel now?
Largely, yes. Since April 2025, electric cars lost their long-standing VED exemption and now pay the same £200 standard annual rate as petrol and diesel cars from their second year, plus a similar expensive-car supplement above a higher price threshold.
Read the full tax assumptionsHow much does a home EV charger cost to install?
A typical 7kW smart charger fitted in the UK costs roughly £800–£1,500, averaging around £1,100. Owner-occupiers are no longer eligible for a government grant, though renters and flat owners can still claim support.
Include it in your comparisonDoes this include how much the car will be worth later?
Only as a simple, editable percentage of the purchase price. Real-world depreciation depends heavily on the specific model, mileage, battery health and market demand, and is one of the hardest costs to forecast for any car, electric or otherwise.
Adjust the resale assumptionsIs an EV still worth it with public charging only?
It can be, especially for lower-mileage drivers or where public rates are competitive, but the maths is much closer. Use the "no home charging" preset to see your own numbers rather than relying on a general rule of thumb.
Try the public-only scenarioCOMMON QUESTIONS
EV vs petrol and diesel cost questions
Does this calculator include finance or lease costs?
No. It assumes a cash purchase for both cars. Loan interest, PCP balloon payments and lease pricing structures would all change the comparison and are not modelled.
Why does the petrol/diesel first-year road tax need editing?
First-year VED for petrol and diesel cars is banded by CO2 emissions and can range from very low to several thousand pounds. Enter the figure for the specific car you're considering from gov.uk's vehicle tax rate tables.
What happens if I turn off the 2028 pay-per-mile charge?
The comparison runs as if only standard VED applied for the whole period. Leaving it on is more realistic for anyone keeping the car past April 2028.
Are the electricity and fuel prices guaranteed?
No. They're editable UK averages at the time of writing. Both move regularly, so replace them with current figures for the most accurate result.
Does the calculator recommend a specific car?
No. The presets are illustrative price gaps only, not named models or endorsements. Replace every figure with the real prices for the cars you're actually comparing.
CONSIDER THE TRADE-OFF
Cost is only one part of the decision
Charging access
A driveway or off-street parking with a charger changes this comparison more than almost any other single factor.
How you actually drive
High-mileage drivers see running-cost savings compound quickly; very low-mileage drivers may never recover a higher purchase price.
Policy is still moving
Road tax, the 2028 pay-per-mile charge and future incentives can all shift the numbers again before you've finished paying for the car.
Release notes and version history
ACTIVELY MAINTAINED
Calculator version history
This tool will continue to evolve as tariffs, technology and tax policy change.
SEO fixes: social preview and description length
This page had structured data (JSON-LD) but no Open Graph or Twitter Card tags at all, so sharing the link anywhere — a video description, a social post — showed no title, description or preview. Added both. The meta description was also 179 characters, long enough that Google would likely cut it off mid-sentence in search results; trimmed it to 140. No hero photo exists yet for this tool, so the social preview is text-only for now — a dedicated image (like the Investment Calculator has) would be a good future addition. Bumped the `?v=` cache-busting suffix to 14.
Added: long-journey charging note
The cost comparison only ever answered "which is cheaper" — it didn't address the charging-stop friction some drivers care about on long trips, which isn't really a cost question. Added a new "how often do you do a long round trip without a guaranteed charging stop" input, and a plain-language note alongside the results explaining what that means in practice: roughly 20–40 minutes at a rapid charger on those specific journeys, which a hybrid avoids entirely by refuelling like a normal car. This doesn't change any of the cost figures — it's shown separately as a practical consideration, not folded into the maths.
Fixed: cache-busting version not bumped
The "Your driving" / "The two cars" / "Charging setup" layout fix shipped in an earlier update, but the stylesheet's cache-busting suffix stayed at ?v=1, so browsers or intermediate caches that had already loaded the old stylesheet kept serving it indefinitely under the same URL — even after the fixed file was uploaded. Bumped the `?v=` suffix on styles.css and ev-cost-calculator.js to 12 so this and any future asset change is picked up. Also removed the Topics link from the header nav, matching the same change made across all Considered tools.
New vs used VED
Added a "buying it new" toggle for each car. The discounted first-year road tax rate is only ever paid once, by whoever registers the car new — a used car pays the standard rate from day one of the new owner's ownership. Previously every car was assumed to be bought new.
Initial release
Total cost of ownership modelling for electric vs petrol/diesel cars, covering home and public charging splits, a home charger purchase, road tax including the expensive-car supplement, the confirmed 2028 pay-per-mile charge, servicing, insurance, resale value and a cumulative-cost chart.