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Analysis: EVs are now nine times cheaper than petrol or diesel to drive in UK

66 points · 107 comments · xbmcuser

  1. spiclk · · focus · HN ↗
    Hopefully the article authors are only attempting to reach their target audience, but please don't encourage numerical illiteracy!

    One-tenth the (fuel) cost, or 90% cheaper.

    (That is, if you own a house with off-street parking).

    1. consp · · focus · HN ↗
      I've had this discussion many times. Unless you own a house, with solar panels and your own parking spot any cost/km gains on fuel with EV are marginal. Gas get's adjusted more quickly but eventually the roadside charge prices will catch up. And many "researchers" take the average price (not any better metric) which is heavily skewed by "public" chargers which you cannot use since they are inaccessible on private property but are public for tax reasons.
      1. spiclk · · focus · HN ↗
        The primary cause of this current price differential is the enormous taxation applied to diesel and petrol in the UK. Obviously this situation won't last.
        1. consp · · focus · HN ↗
          For me (not UK, no price cap on either electricity or petrol) the taxes for the equivalent in EV vs petrol is about half of the taxes for petrol are also applied to EV in km equivalent (11ct/kwh, 84ct/L, assuming my plug in hybrid usage).

          My main point is that even with happy hour prices this is only viable for people which do not have to rely on external chargers, which is the majority. Currently EV is cheaper again, due to rapid rise of fuel prices, but the power companies with street side chargers generally "adjust" prices every year to match petrol and it's been for a long time cheaper to run petrol. Also: getting petrol from a few km away for cheap is easy, you are not going to park in the next village overnight to charge your car.

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