I bought my electric car in March.
For nine months, my EV life was calm, smug even. I charged at home, usually overnight, often at 7p per kWh on a smart tariff. I nodded politely while others talked about “range anxiety” and “charger chaos”, secure in the quiet knowledge that my driveway and a wall-mounted charger had turned motoring into a minor administrative task.
In early December, I headed south to watch my team, Southampton, play. It was the kind of trip I have done dozens of times over the years. The A34 on the way down, optimism in the glove box, and ninety minutes of football that, mercifully, ended with a 3–1 win over Birmingham City.
It was on the way back, with ecstacy doing battle with fatigue, that reality intervened.
Our destination, St Mary’s Stadium. A rare evening when the theatre of tears stayed closed, only for me to shed tears for a different reason on the A34, on the journey home.
At Chieveley Services, I did what millions of drivers without driveways do every week.
I plugged in.
The screen lit up.
89p per kWh.
I stared at it, convinced I had misunderstood something. Ewan stared at it too, in the way journalists do when they sense a story forming and a debit card about to develop opinions.
“Is that… normal?” I asked.
“It’s normal,” Ewan said. “It’s just not supposed to be said out loud.”
This was my first encounter with public EV charging. For many people, it is the only encounter they ever have.
A shock, and then a realisation
The shock is genuine. At 89p per kWh, an electric car charged on the motorway can cost as much, or more, per mile than a modern petrol or hybrid car. The arithmetic is simple and deeply unromantic.
What follows the shock, if you sit with it for a moment, is something more awkward.
My surprise came from privilege.
For drivers who cannot charge at home, renters, flat dwellers, people without driveways, people in terraced streets with a lamp post and a quiet sense of resignation, this is not a nasty surprise. It is the price of admission.
On-street EV charging in a UK town. For drivers without driveways, this is not a convenience, it is the only option, and often the most expensive way to run an electric car.
Ewan put it more bluntly. “You didn’t discover expensive charging,” he said. “You just joined everyone else.”
That matters, because much of the EV conversation quietly assumes access to cheap electricity. In reality, access is uneven, and cost follows inequality with impressive consistency.
What are you actually paying for at 89p?
The first thing to say, and it matters, is that 89p per kWh is not the price of electricity.
When you charge at home, you are buying energy. When you charge publicly, particularly at a rapid or ultra-rapid charger, you are paying for an entire roadside energy business.
That price includes:
High grid connection and reinforcement costs, often running into hundreds of thousands of pounds
Capacity and demand charges applied whether the charger is busy or not
Land leases at motorway services or retail sites
Hardware that can cost tens of thousands of pounds per unit
Installation, civils, and ongoing maintenance
Software platforms, payment systems, roaming fees, and customer support
Financing costs on assets that may take years to pay back
Unlike petrol pumps, many rapid chargers still operate at relatively low utilisation. The charger has to earn its keep even when no one is plugged in, which is a poor business model but an excellent explanation.
None of this makes the price feel any kinder while you are standing in the cold watching the total rise faster than your confidence, but it does explain why the number on the screen is not simply greed multiplied by electrons.
The VAT problem nobody mentions loudly enough
There is one part of the price that deserves far more attention than it gets.
VAT.
Electricity used at home is taxed at 5 percent VAT.
Electricity sold through public chargers is taxed at 20 percent VAT.
That difference alone can add 10 to 15p per kWh to the cost of public charging.
Ewan described it as “a tax on not owning a driveway”, which is not how HM Treasury would phrase it, but is not wildly inaccurate either.
People without access to home charging, who are more likely to be renters or lower-income households, pay more tax to run a cleaner vehicle. If fairness matters in the energy transition, this cannot be dismissed as a technical footnote. It is doing real work in the final bill.
When EVs really do cost more to run
There is a line often repeated in EV discussions that electric cars are “always cheaper to run”.
That line needs a condition attached.
If you can charge at home, particularly on a smart tariff, EVs are usually far cheaper per mile than petrol or diesel cars.
If you rely heavily on public rapid charging at 79 to 89p per kWh, the equation can flip.
At motorway prices, an EV can cost around 20 to 25p per mile.
A modern efficient petrol hybrid may sit closer to 15 to 18p per mile.
“This is the bit people hate hearing,” Ewan said, “because it sounds like heresy. But it’s just maths.”
This does not mean EVs are a technological failure. It means the infrastructure and pricing model is uneven, and the burden falls hardest on those with the fewest alternatives.
Empty chargers tell their own story. Infrastructure built for a future that has not fully arrived, with today’s costs recovered one expensive session at a time.
“So are charging operators profiteering?”
This is the question people ask, usually while still standing beside the charger, phone in one hand, mild resentment in the other.
The honest answer is that there is no clear evidence of widespread profiteering in public charging today.
Most charge point operators are not energy suppliers. They buy electricity at commercial rates, pay full VAT, absorb grid and land costs, and operate in a market where utilisation is still building. Many sites, particularly outside major motorway hubs, are not yet highly profitable.
What is evident is something familiar to anyone who has followed infrastructure for long enough.
We have built a system where:
High upfront costs are recovered through per-unit prices
Grid upgrades are slow, expensive, and risk-laden
Financial risk is pushed onto individual charging sessions rather than shared across the system
“This isn’t a scandal,” Ewan said. “It’s just a design you’d never choose if you were starting again.”
The question that does not go away
The uncomfortable question is what happens next.
If public charging prices remain high even as electric cars become commonplace, then today’s explanation stops working. At that point, the issue will no longer be start-up costs or low utilisation, but whether competition and regulation are doing their job.
That is not a question for drivers at the plug. It is a question for policymakers, regulators, and anyone serious about a fair transition.
A tale of two EV drivers
By the time we unplugged at Chieveley, Southampton had already done their part and the three points were safely banked. The charging bill, however, lingered.
The difference between me and many other EV drivers was not the car. It was the driveway.
Home charging turns EV ownership into a bargain and a pleasure. Public charging turns it into a calculation, sometimes an anxious one.
If the electric transition is to work for everyone, that gap cannot be ignored.
Because 89p per kWh is not just a price. It is a signal. And at the moment, it is telling a large part of the country that cleaner transport costs more if you do not own the right kind of front door.
