The average British EV motorist save £744 per year on recharging instead of refuelling
Based on the local costs of refuelling with petrol and recharging with public charging points, Mercedes-Benz looked at how much Brits can save annually by switching to an electric vehicle.
We investigated where longer-term savings can be made throughout Britain, based on how much motorists can expect to pay from charging a battery electric vehicle instead of refuelling a petrol car.
- Based on how many battery electric vehicles (BEV) are licensed on British roads this year, an estimated £153M can be saved collectively on recharging electric vehicles instead of refuelling petrol vehicles.
- The average Scottish motorist can save the most per year from charging instead of refuelling (£1,023), Welsh motorists can save £746 per year and English motorists can save £744 per year.
- The average motorist in the North East is saving £882 on recharging their cars every year – the highest savings per motorist in any of England’s regions.
- Motorists in the Shetland Islands save the most money annually (£1,176.7) of any local authority in Britain by recharging a battery electric vehicle instead of refuelling a petrol car.
- Between January 2020 and January 2021, Brighton and Hove saw an additional 200 publicly accessible charging stations installed in the area, which is the largest seen in any of Great Britain’s local authority areas during that time.
Please credit the data with a link to Mercedes-benz’s project page: https://www.mercedes-benz.co.uk/passengercars/mercedes-benz-cars/electric-vehicles/recharge-rates/intro.module.html
- British EV motorists could save £153M per year on recharging instead of refuelling
According to a 2021 YouGov survey, 26% of UK motorists cite the initial cost of purchasing electric vehicles as the main reason for not switching from a petrol or diesel vehicle. However, improvements in technology performance and cost reductions have continued to the point where a driver now has the potential to spend less money over a vehicle’s lifetime by choosing to drive electric.
- The average British motorists can save £744 per year on recharging an electric car compared to refuelling a petrol car. This breaks down to £1,023 for Scottish BEV owners, £746 per year for Welsh BEV motorists and £744 per year for English BEV motorists.
- Based on how many battery electric vehicles are licensed in Britain, owners of BEVs stand to make collective savings of £153,485,620 per year, which breaks down to £134,867,109 collectively for English BEV motorists, £15,154,563 for Scottish BEV motorists, and £3,463,948 for Welsh BEV motorists.
- We discovered that motorists in the South East can save in total £39M a year by recharging a battery electric vehicle (BEV) rather than refuelling a petrol vehicle, which is more than any other region.
| Region | Total Yearly Saving (EV vs Petrol) |
| South East | £39,315,683 |
| South West | £21,092,925 |
| East of England | £16,495,825 |
| North West | £15,761,156 |
| London | £12,602,247 |
| West Midlands | £12,275,379 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | £10,970,726 |
| East Midlands | £6,862,219 |
| North East | £3,150,632 |
* Savings are estimated according to the number of battery electric vehicles licensed on the road in 2021, and the average local costs of recharging vs refuelling a BEV vs a petrol vehicle to drive the same average annual distance of 9,435 miles.
- Drivers in the North East would save the most money on switching to electric vehicles
For every region in Britain, we compared the average cost of charging a BEV locally (based on a Mercedes-Benz EQA 250) with the average cost of refuelling an industry standard petrol vehicle. When ranked by highest to the lowest annual savings, the North East comes out on top – BEV drivers there can save £1,023 a year by charging their car instead of refuelling with petrol.
| Region | Average Yearly Saving (EV vs Petrol) |
| North East | £882 |
| East of England | £784 |
| South East | £768 |
| South West | £754 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | £749 |
| West Midlands | £727 |
| North West | £717 |
| East Midlands | £683 |
| London | £506 |
*Savings are estimated according to the average local costs of recharging vs refuelling a BEV vs a petrol vehicle to drive the same average annual distance of 9,435 miles.
- Motorists in the Shetland Islands save £1,177 a year of recharging
Motorists in the Shetland Islands can save the most money annually (£1,176.7) by recharging a battery electric vehicle (BEV) instead of refuelling a petrol car. We calculated this based on the average cost of recharging a battery electric vehicle at charging points throughout Britain compared to the local petrol prices of refuelling an industry standard petrol vehicle.
Scottish and Welsh local authority areas dominate our top ten ranking thanks to the average costs of their public charging stations. The only local authority in England that appears is South Holland in the Yorkshire and the Humber region.
| Ranking | Local Authority | Average Yearly Saving (EV vs Petrol) |
| 1 | Shetland Islands | £1,177 |
| 2 | Na h-Eileanan Siar | £1,145 |
| 3 | Vale of Glamorgan | £1,116 |
| 4 | South Holland | £1,113 |
| 5 | Merthyr Tydfil | £1,102 |
| 6 | Scottish Borders | £1,100 |
| 7 | Blaenau Gwent | £1,097 |
| 8 | Argyll and Bute | £1,096 |
| 9 | Aberdeenshire | £1,092 |
| 10 | Clackmannanshire | £1,086 |
* Savings are estimated according to the average local costs of recharging vs refuelling a BEV vs a petrol vehicle to drive the same average annual distance of 9,435 miles.
- Brighton and Hove has seen the biggest year-on-year increase in charging points.
Between January 2020 and January 2021, Brighton and Hove saw an additional 200 publicly accessible charging stations installed in the area. This year-on-year increase is the largest seen in any of Great Britain’s local authority areas during that time.
| Ranking | Local Authority | New Charging Points (2020 vs 2021) |
| 1 | Brighton and Hove | +200 |
| 2 | Camden | +186 |
| 3 | Wandsworth | +158 |
| 4 | Kensington and Chelsea | +143 |
| 5 | Westminster | +119 |
| 6 | Hammersmith and Fulham | +95 |
| 7 | Coventry | +90 |
| 8 | Southwark | +76 |
| 9 | Greenwich | +65 |
| 10 | Leeds | +60 |
Methodology
- Electric vehicle charging locations and prices for charging were sourced from Open Charge Map. Different pricing systems were normalised to calculate how much it would cost to fully charge a Mercedes-Benz EQA 250 (2021) using the recommended charging boundaries of 10% to 80% of the battery’s usable capacity.
- With a 66.5kWh usable battery, charging from 10% to 80% requires 46.55kw. With the price per kWh and power (kw) for each charging location in Great Britain, we could then calculate the cost of charging 46.55kw.
- A ‘free’ charging location was considered to cost £0.00, and considers: stations that require a BP Pulse (formerly Polar Plus) subscription with no additional charging costs; charging spots where parking fees apply but there are no additional costs; locations which were labelled as ‘free’; as well as a few other systems.
- Using the Mercedes-Benz EQA 250’s 15.7 kwh per 100km usage rate (converted to 100 miles), the charging costs to drive a journey (100 miles) were then calculated for each location. The same distance was used to calculate the cost of a journey for a petrol car based on the UK’s average fuel consumption of 5.7 litres per 100km as reported by the Department for Transport.
- Average petrol prices for each location were sourced from Allstar and are correct as of May 2021.
- Yearly recharge and refueling costs were calculated using the average annual mileage of electric cars at 9,435 miles per year. This figure was used to compare both electric and petrol vehicle examples.
- The total number of publicly accessible charging stations per local authority was sourced from the Department for Transport (correct as of January 2021). Median annual earnings per local authority were sourced from the Office For National Statistics (correct as of November 2020).
