Public charging means charging your EV at public charging stations you can use when you’re out and about. The cost isn’t just the electricity—it also includes the station’s setup and running costs.
Wholesale price is the bulk price of electricity before it gets broken down into retail pricing. The point here is that public charging costs aren’t determined only by this bulk electricity price.
A charging hub is a place with lots of chargers in one location. Building and maintaining those sites—especially connecting them to the power grid—can be expensive.
Grid connection is how the charging station gets electricity from the local power network. If the site needs to deliver a lot of power quickly, the grid connection has to be strong enough, which can cost a lot to set up.
InstaVolt is a company that runs EV charging. The “Super Hub” in Winchester is an example of a big charging location, and the episode explains how expensive projects like that can be.
Battery storage means putting electricity into batteries so it can be used later. At a charging site, it can help handle busy periods when lots of people are charging at once.
Ultra-rapid chargers are the fast chargers that can charge an EV much quicker than normal public chargers. Because they deliver a lot of power, they usually require expensive electrical setup.
Standing charges are the fixed fees you pay just for having an electricity connection, even if you don’t use much power. The host says these add to the cost of running charging.
Capacity charges are extra costs tied to how much electricity the charging site can supply. If the operator has to reserve or upgrade power for future or simultaneous charging, those costs can show up in the price you pay.
A kilowatt hour (kWh) is the amount of electricity used. If the price is per kWh, your bill goes up or down based on how much energy you pull into the battery.
VAT is a tax added to the cost of charging. The episode notes that public charging and home charging can have different VAT rates, which affects the total price.
This is a UK law change that affects how much it costs to install public EV chargers. The host says it removes certain fees that charge point operators used to have to pay for licensing.
A section 50 licence is a permission/approval process tied to installing chargers, especially when digging is involved. The episode says it can add extra upfront cost for operators.
“Maximum power” is the top charging speed the station can provide. The episode is saying some sites pay extra so that, if many cars plug in together, everyone can still charge at the best possible rate.
“Pence per mile” is just the cost of driving one mile. For EVs, it’s calculated from how much electricity you buy and how efficiently your car uses it.
Off-peak electricity is the cheaper electricity price you get at certain times, usually overnight. Charging your EV during those hours can make your electricity bill much lower.
Peak rate electricity is the higher-priced electricity period, usually when lots of people are using power. Charging then costs more than charging overnight.
The public network is the set of EV chargers anyone can use. It can cost more and vary more than charging at home, so the hosts talk about ways to reduce those costs.
Company
BEV overnight
“BEV overnight” refers to a cheaper charging option during nighttime hours. It’s meant to show that charging at the right time can lower your cost.
An AC charger is a type of public charger that sends electricity in a form the car can use. It’s often used for slower charging, like overnight while you’re parked.
This is a paid membership for charging that can make the electricity price cheaper. You typically have to sign up first, and it may not be worth it if you don’t charge often.
An RFID card is a small card you tap or present to the charger so it knows it’s you. It’s often used to start charging without needing to do everything in an app.
lekkie.net is a website that helps you compare EV charging prices from different charging networks. The idea is to make it easier to find cheaper charging.
Instead of comparing electricity prices directly, this turns them into an estimated cost per mile you drive. It uses a guessed efficiency so different chargers can be compared more easily.
Tesla is the car brand, and it also runs its own charging network. In this segment, Tesla owners get cheaper charging at certain times, while non-Tesla drivers usually pay higher prices.
The Dodge Charger is a car that’s built for performance and power. If someone is talking about charging, they mean you may need to stop at a charging station and wait while the battery fills up. The “sit there for 30 to 45 minutes” part is the time it can take to add enough energy to keep driving.
Company
Instable
Instable is a company running charging stations. They’re described as using their own solar power and batteries to offer cheaper charging at certain times.
Utilization just means how often the chargers get used. If more people charge there, the operator can cover their costs more efficiently.
Term
contribution margin
Contribution margin is a business idea: after paying the costs that change with each sale, what’s left goes toward covering the fixed costs. In this case, more charging can help cover the station’s overhead.
Raw Charging is a charging company mentioned as part of the episode’s discussion. The hosts are talking about how their pricing works compared with other networks.
Zatmap is an app for finding EV chargers and showing prices. The hosts say it was updated so you can see the cost right on the map pins.
Term
AC
AC charging is usually the slower kind of charging. Here they’re saying the app might show the AC price even if DC (faster) charging is more expensive.
Term
DC
DC charging is usually the faster charging option. In this episode, they’re warning that the map pin might show the cheaper AC price even when the DC price is higher.
CarPlay is Apple’s system for using certain phone features on your car screen. Here, they’re saying that when using CarPlay, the app doesn’t currently show charging prices.
CPOs are the companies that run public EV chargers. Some charging discounts only work on certain charger networks, so you may need to find the right operator.
A subscription account is something you sign up for (often paid) to get special benefits. Here, it’s mentioned because some charging discounts may only be available if you’ve set up the account first.
someone has to pay for that. And then there's the non-electricity costs
related to supplying electricity. We all pay standing charges on our meters.
And for a home supply, that's in the region of pennies per day and mines around £45 a day.
For a site such as a hub with a lot of charges, that could be £36,000 a year.
Then there's the cost of ensuring that the site gets the full amount of energy it requires.
These are called capacity charges and they all add up. Include maintenance, helpline,
profit contribution and suddenly it's an expensive service to provide.
Which is why some of the smaller charge point operators that focus primarily on cheaper
AC only installs can provide this at a lower rate. You're not going to want to pay £89
per kilowatt hour to plug your car into a charging unit on the side of the street, are you?
There is of course the VAT aspect where public charging is subject to a 20%
VAT and home charging only 5%. But as I've said on the show before,
dropping VAT from 20% down to 5% on a tariff of £89 a kilowatt hour is still going to leave you with
a tariff of almost £78 a kilowatt hour. Better than £89 of course,
but still nowhere near as being cost effective as petrol or diesel.
Well that comparison is getting a lot closer given the current Middle East situation.
Luckily things are changing a little. The new Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 came into
force last year and one thing it did is remove the £500 to £2000 install costs that CPOs have
to pay for a section 50 licence. They're required to get this when a charge point installation
requires some digging. It's not a lot of course, but if you're putting a thousand charges into a
city and each one requires something like this for a licence, that can soon add up.
But in Europe a lot of the costs associated with installing charging hubs are not as
onerous as they are in the UK. The grid doesn't demand thousands of pounds per year per unit now,
just to pay for the cost of upgrading the grid so that a charge point operator can add an additional
10 units in 10 years time. Nor do they charge huge capacity charges to ensure that if a CPO has
10 500 kilowatt units at a site, they all receive the maximum power if they're all plugged in at
the same time. Which does make me wonder about those sites that have lots of charges installed,
but not enough power to allow them all to run at maximum capacity at the same time.
Are they also paying capacity fees for those sites? Hashtag if you know you know.
There are still people who'll tell you that charging costs around 90 pence a kilowatt hour,
and that's right for some of the top charge point operators. But there are also people who've been
on the podcast who charge their cars 100% in public for 10 or 12 pence a mile, which is less
than diesel, much less nowadays of course. So let's look at this from two points of view.
What are the costs of doing a long distance journey in the UK paying full price?
And how does that differ if you start to look at various cheaper charge point operators
that are available? Now if you can charge at home, a long distance journey is still going to
work out cheaper than using petrol or diesel, especially if you're going abroad where the
price in public charging is less onerous. If we assume you can fill your car up overnight with
cheap off-peak electricity at 7 pence a kilowatt hour, that brings your price down to around 2
pence a mile. Even if you use your peak rate electricity to charge up, that's around 30 pence
a kilowatt hour, and it makes your average around 7.5 pence a mile. For price parity,
we need to beat 15 pence a mile for diesel, 16 pence for petrol as per Zatmap.
A normal driver doing the majority of their driving from home and filling overnight is
paying between 2 and 7.5 pence a mile on home charging, and that's at least half the cost of
wet fuel. So if you take the occasional longer journey where they need to pay higher public
charging costs of 65, 75, 85 pence a kilowatt hour, they're still better off than if they're buying
petrol or diesel 100% of the time. But what about those that can't charge at home? All those that
have home charging but also cover a large number of miles per year on the public network, the
math showed above starts to break down fairly quickly, which is where the cheaper charging
options come into play. Now these fall into two main areas, CPOs that charge less per kilowatt
hour as a baseline, and offerings that reduce the price per kilowatt hour. Now in the first group we
have off-peak rates such as those offered by companies like Instavolt and BEV overnight or
late evening and early morning, and this means you can get a good charge for a lot less than if
you plug in during the day. Then there's companies that run overnight charging on AC. If you're parked
overnight somewhere that has an AC charger on pavement, you can use rates such as charges 39
pence a kilowatt hour overnight offering, and that equates to around 9.5 pence a mile. There are
even places such as the local pod, formerly pod point charger at a nearby alley that can drop to
around 25 pence a kilowatt hour, about the same or even cheaper than home charging. Now if you
don't want to head out and charge overnight, you can take advantage of subscription services to
dramatically drop your charging costs. They honestly have a power plus subscription which
for 10.99 a month drops their tariff from 74 pence a kilowatt hour to 43 pence a kilowatt hour, and
that's around 11 pence a mile. BEV of a similar subscription offering that drops their price down
to 39 pence a kilowatt hour during the day, 9.5 pence a mile. Even Tesla, the granddaddy of cheap
charging, have a subscription offering which can drop their tariff down to as little as
23 pence a kilowatt hour. Even their peak rate drops to 41 pence a kilowatt hour or 10 pence a mile.
But these aren't the only ways you can get cheaper charging, but unfortunately all ways
involve a little friction. Now I'm studying a couple of economics principles at the moment,
and one book I'm reading gave the following example about a concept known as the pricing
hurdle. The author had booked a hotel room at £100 per night, and when he checked in,
he saw a sign behind the receptionist saying, ask about our special rates. So he asked and
she gave him a 25% discount. On the face of it, that's a fairly innocuous story, but what it does
do is it introduces this concept of a pricing hurdle. It's something which people who are
looking for a good price are willing to jump over, but people for whom price is not an issue
won't even attempt or just don't care. Now the hotel example is a little shrine and simple,
asking you shall receive. But here's an example that's a little closer to what a lot of us
understand. Back in 2007, the price of a single journey on the London Underground was £4,
but if you paid with an Oyster card which had recently been introduced,
the same journey would cost you £1.50. But in order to do that, you need to jump the pricing
hurdle. In this case, that hurdle involved filling in a form and applying for a card in advance.
Those people who are price sensitive will jump that hurdle in order to save £2.50 per journey.
Others that are not sensitive won't jump that hurdle and will pay the full price.
In the charging world, the hurdle that many people have to jump comes in various forms,
hunting for a ChargePoint operator in a unit that offers cheaper charging rather than using the
closest one, downloading and setting up an app and an associated account with all the profile
and password creation that that entails, setting up and paying for a subscription,
applying for an RFID card, waiting for it to arrive and authorizing it on a web page or app.
Now if you are price sensitive, that's something you'll do for a lot of people though.
Price is not a driver. Patrick Dunn from Smart Charge told us on this very show
that when they surveyed their users, price was not the top driver when it came to charging.
It was either second or third without hunting back through the episode. I'm not sure which one
it was. Feel free to check. For a lot of business users who were expensing their charging back to
their company, the price is often not an issue, although it might be to the accountants running
that company. For some people with limited time, the need to faff around and set up apps and accounts
and subscriptions is too much of a hurdle and they'll settle for paying whatever the ad hoc
charging price is, providing they can just waive their contactless payment card and go.
For some people on the specific timetable, charging now at a higher tariff is preferable
to charging in two hours time when the tariff has dropped to a lower off-peak time of day tariff.
That's the hurdle they refuse to jump. So let's look at what's out there and bear
in mind the pricing hurdle concept as we discuss them. Now I've mentioned lekkie.net before on
this show. Now alongside chargenet.co.uk it's one of the top online sources of pricing for
all ChargePoint operators in the UK. With lekkie.net you can look at all prices and sort them by price
per mile equivalent, assuming an EV with an efficiency of 3.5 miles per kilowatt hour,
or display and sort them by pence per kilowatt hour. And what this does allow is it allows you to
identify those cheap CPOs that can offer cheaper charging and under what conditions. So let's take
a look at some of the pricing offers. We'll start with some slow AC charging. Select the filter,
price per kilowatt hour and we can see that the cheap is shown is chargey with their pay-to-go
basic day tariff for 39 pence a kilowatt hour. There's no hurdle there. If you're at a charge unit,
that's what you pay. Pod, formerly Podpoint, also offers 7 kilowatt charging at a Tesco
for 44 pence a kilowatt hour. The hurdle here is that you have to be at a Tesco site. Total
energy is formally sourced London, also offered 22 kilowatt resident rate of 49 pence a kilowatt hour,
although this is a calculated rate as the actual tariff consists of
various prices that apply. So see the total energy website for more details. Now the hurdle here is
that you need to be in London and have been set up as a resident on their system to receive that
rate. Now if we swap over to the fast charging tab, we can see charging prices for quote-quote
fast charging. Top of the page with the lowest rate is BEV and their phenomenal 39 pence a kilowatt
hour subscription, $9.99 a month, $247 charging, 39 pence a kilowatt hour. The hurdle here is the
subscription aspect. Chargy again ranked really highly on this page with their 39 pence a kilowatt
hour rate. Little come next with their 40 pence fast AC with a little plus offering. This involves
downloading an upgrade in an account, getting a 15 pence a kilowatt hour discount on their standard
AC charging rate. Let's go up another level to rapid charging and this is where we start to get
serious charging at unserious pricing. Top of the table with the bottom of the table pricing
is Tesla for members or owners. If you own a Tesla you can get off peak charging at all the
Tesla sites around the country for a price that ranges from around 22 pence a kilowatt hour to
27 pence a kilowatt hour. Each site has a slightly different pricing structure so you'll need to check
your in-car display about what the price is going to be. If you don't own a Tesla and you have to
turn up without a subscription the price will rise to between about 30 pence and 38 pence a kilowatt
hour if you charge off peak. Teslas off peak times vary by site but you're usually looking at around
11 p.m to 7 a.m but some sites in midnight to 9 a.m. If you turn up at peak times are you during the
day you can now be paying up to 63 pence a kilowatt hour for Tesla charging. One of the days of Tesla
is half the price of other CPOs. Now the hurdle for these low prices as a non-Tesla driver is the
need to set up a subscription and access the system via an app. Next on our list of Jeep providers
is Ionity with their Passport power subscription we mentioned earlier 10.99 a month. You get a
discount from 81 pence a kilowatt hour down to 42 pence a kilowatt hour. Now I'm not going to go
through every different offer and combination but I do want to say something about the general
trend that I think I'm seeing. With a number of charge point operators and I include Instable,
BEV, RAW charging and Tesla in this list they've gone for a pricing model that allows for tiered
pricing depending on the time of day. If you're willing to wait for an off-peak time you can get
a discount on charging. This is the pricing hurdle we talked about earlier. Are you willing to wait
up until a set time drive out to a charger and sit there for 30 minutes 45 minutes or an hour
in order to get cheap charging? It wasn't more than a few years back when this wasn't even
in consideration. For the most part the price was the price regardless of when you plugged in.
Even with known off-peak electricity rates being provided to domestic customers these were not
available to businesses so they had no opportunity to reduce their prices. But last year Instable at
their Winchester Super Hub decided that they would take the advantage of the solar power and battery
storage on site to offer a reduced off-peak rate of if I remember correctly about 50 pence a kilowatt
hour. I'm sure somebody will correct me without if I'm wrong. Since then as listed above a couple
of others have jumped on that bandwagon. It makes sense really because a charge point operator
is looking to increase utilization. If they can increase utilization at a time of low
current utilization they'll do that in order to reduce their unit cost per overhead. And by that
I mean that regardless of whether they sell one kilowatt hour of energy or one terawatt hour of
energy they still have fixed costs for wages, buildings and help tests to cover. The larger the
number of kilowatt hours dispensed the smaller the contribution of each kilowatt hour towards that
overhead. If it means they could do that without materially impacting their peak times it made
sense to do that. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in some of the meetings where pricing and
tariffs like this were discussed. On our recent conversation with Neil Broadband from Raw Charging
I asked him if anyone had looked at reducing pricing to increase utilization rather than
using increased utilization to reduce pricing. And he told me... It makes sense. I wouldn't say that
specific conversations happened partly because it's almost there are multiple conversations in
one go in many ways but I think it comes back to that certainty. So arguably there is a leap of
faith around price being the ultimate deciding factor. So again going back to our destination
heritage within our mindset and within our kind of thinking process. If you go to Blue Water
Shopping Centre we always use that as the best example. You aren't necessarily being driven by
price because it's a premium retail location. So perhaps your decision as to whether you do or
don't charge there would be based on how close the charging is to the shop that you want to go to
or how fast is the charging relative to the time that you're going to spend there.
So we do take a case by case or archetype by archetype approach to our pricing across our
network. So there are the more community local charging solutions. They are more driven perhaps
by price whereas in some locations drivers are much more about the experience. So perhaps someone
might have that conversation. Perhaps that's what BEV have done. They're currently blazing a
trail when it comes to cheap charging with their subscription offering giving you 24x7 charging at
39kWh or their off-peak tariff giving you the same 39kWh between 7pm and 7am. I will also remind
you the podcast sponsor Zatmap has recently updated their app to show prices on the little
map pins so you can see at a glance what the price is at a given charger. A couple of caveats
to note for that. If they're a cheap AC and expensive DC at a single site the app will display the
cheap AC price on the pin. If the CPO isn't sharing their price with Zatmap it won't show.
I'm looking at UBP Pulse and if you're trying to access it via carplay that interface won't allow
price display at the moment. So let's summarize what we've learned today. Primarily the headline of
public charging is expensive is both accurate and misleading. It's a little like saying buying
groceries is expensive and it can be if you buy at Harrods, Fortnum and Mason or Waitrose. If you're
buying Aldi, Little and Tesco probably going to be cheaper but there's also the pricing hurdle to
over which is that if you want to take advantage of some cheap offerings there's a little bit
of friction you might have to go through. This could be locating specific CPOs or needing to
use an app or setting up a subscription account beforehand. The question you need to ask yourself
is whether this hurdle is when you're willing to leap for a charging discount. The EV Musings
podcast is sponsored by Zatmap. The go-to app for EV drivers in the UK helping you find and pay for
public charging with confidence wherever you go. Download Zatmap and you'll get the UK's most
comprehensive charging map in your pocket with a range of filters so you can personalize the map
to suit your specific EV model. So it's easy to find the best charge for you whether you're
charging on street, en route or at your destination. You can even see live charger availability and
price information in the app helping you choose your charger at a glance and turn up with total
confidence that it will work, it will be available and it'll be in your budget. Plus you can pay
through the app or with a tap of the Zatmap charging card at thousands of charge points nationwide.
No need to download a different app for each charging network. You can download Zatmap for
free or check out Zatmap Premium for charging discounts, in-car compatibility and additional
filters. I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. If you've got any comments please let me know
either in the comments section below if you're on YouTube or by emailing me at info at evmusing.com.
If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages
to pass on to me I can be reached at info at evmusing.com. And on the socials I'm on
Blue Sky at evmusing.bsky.social. I'm also on Instagram at evmusing where I post short videos
and podcast extracts regularly so why not follow me there. Thanks everyone who supports me through
Patreon on a monthly basis and through coffee.com on an ad hoc one. If you enjoyed this episode
why not buy me a coffee? Go to coffee.com slash evmusing and you can do just that.
ko-fi.com slash evmusing. Takes out the pay too. Now regular listeners will know about my two evils
so you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable. First one of those has had a recent
update. You'll see it with a bright red image on the front just like I'm showing on the screen here.
Both of those are 99p each or equivalent and you can get them on the Amazon Kindle store.
Check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as the link to my regular
evmusing newsletter and associated articles. Now I know you're probably driving or walking
or jogging or in the shower or washing the car but if you can remember and you enjoyed this episode
proper review in iTunes really helps me out. I did go out and go in and have a look recently as some
of the most recent reviews. Thank you very much for those who took time to do that for me. If you've
reached this part of the podcast and are still listening thank you. Why not let me know you've
got to this point by messaging me at musingsv.com with the words cheaper than the headline says
hashtag if you know you know nothing else. Thanks as always to my co-founder Simon.
You know another quiet week from him. Thanks for listening. Bye bye now.
About this episode
Gary revisits the familiar complaint that UK public charging is expensive, then shows why that view is only partly true. He compares home off-peak charging, subscription deals, and operator pricing to show that cheaper options do exist, especially if drivers are willing to plan around time-of-day tariffs, apps, or memberships. The episode’s core tension is less about electricity wholesale costs and more about the practical hurdles people accept, or avoid, to get the lowest rates.
I wanted to revisit this topic because there’s still so much noise around the cost of charging an EV, especially if you rely on public networks.
In this episode, I take a fresh look at where we are with public charging costs in the UK, what’s actually driving those prices, and whether it’s really as expensive as people think. We also dig into something I’ve been exploring recently, the idea of the “pricing hurdle” and why cheaper charging options aren’t always as simple as they seem.
What You’ll Discover
- Why Public Charging Feels Expensive: It’s not just electricity, it’s infrastructure, grid costs, maintenance, and everything behind the scenes that drives prices up.
- The Pricing Hurdle Explained: Cheaper charging exists, but it often requires effort like apps, subscriptions, or charging at specific times.
- How to Actually Reduce Your Costs: From off-peak charging to subscriptions and destination charging, there are real ways to bring costs down if you’re willing to adapt.
What really stands out to me is how misleading the headline can be. Yes, public charging can be expensive, but that’s only part of the story. There are cheaper options out there, but they come with trade-offs. Time, effort, planning, or flexibility. And that’s where the real decision sits. Not just how much you pay, but what you’re willing to do to pay less.
There’s also a bigger shift happening. More operators are introducing off-peak pricing and subscription models, which is starting to change the landscape. It’s not perfect yet, but it does feel like things are moving in the right direction.
If you’re relying on public charging or trying to make the numbers work for an EV, this episode will help you see the full picture and make more informed choices.
The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence.
Download Zapmap and you’ll get the UK’s most comprehensive charging map in your pocket, with a range of filters so you can personalise the map to suit your specific EV model. So it’s easy to find the best charge for you, whether you’re charging on-street, en-route, or at your destination.
You can even see live charger availability and price information in the app, helping you choose your charger at-a-glance, and turn up with total confidence that it will work, it will be available, and it will be in your budget.
Plus you can pay through the app, or with a tap of the Zapmap charging card, at thousands of charge points nationwide. No need to download a different app for each charging network. You can download Zapmap for free, or check out Zapmap Premium for charging discounts, in-car compatibility, and additional filters
Zapmap
The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence. Zapmap is free to download and use, with subscription plans for enhanced features such as using Zapmap in-car on CarPlay or Android Auto, and discounted charging across thousands of charge points.
Download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store or find out more at www.zapmap.com.
