As the number of EVs on our roads increases so does the need to charge them in public spaces. However, drivers could be spending more than twenty times as much charging in public than at home.

Research carried out by Allstar, one of the UKs leading business expense and fuel companies, found that home tariffs can be as low as 4p per kWh, whereas public rates can exceed GBP1 – over twenty times as much.

Allstar research has also highlighted that geographical location can play a significant part when it comes to charging rates. Among the ten cheapest UK areas for charging were Norfolk, Cornwall, Belfast, Orkney and the Isle of Wight.

We spoke to Ashley Tate, MD, Allstar Chargepass UK, to learn more about the research as well as to discuss why location matters when charging.

Just Auto (JA): Could you tell me about your role?

Ashley Tate (AT): My journey started into this field in 2020. I founded Mina, a business that focused on how to solve the problem of how businesses pay for charging at home.

We identified straight away that fuel is very easy; you get the fuel and you pay at the fuel station. For EVs it’s a whole different ball-game because the cheapest electricity is at home, but enabling or allowing businesses to pay for that electricity is challenging because ultimately, it's the homeowner’s own electricity bill that it is being charged through.

Mina had software that presented a solution. In 2023, Mina was acquired by Allstar. Now that technology forms part of what we call ‘Allstar Charge Pass’. That enables drivers to not only fuel, but they can charge at home, they can charge in public. It unlocks almost every option for EV charging an provides much-needed transparency.

Your research found that public charge points can be up to 20x more expensive; could you explain why?

Our report highlights just how variable the cost of electricity can be. In some cases, charging in public 100% of the time can cost more than equivalent petrol or diesel. Being able to charge at home, if not all the time, but as much as possible, is essential for fleets to be able to roll out EVs and get a return on their investment.

You need a home charger and you need your employees to be bought in to the fact that this is going to work. Ultimately, that's been our key focus; building trust with the drivers, meaning that they're not out of pocket, that they've got transparency and clarity around when they plug their business vehicle in. It’s about the amount of electricity used, the charge and how it is paid for.

We have seen cases where businesses have told employees to take the vehicles home, charge or even charge them on the road and just expense that payment. It's a little difficult because when you go to a fuel station you get a receipt when you pay for the fuel. That doesn't happen when you charge an EV at home.

Are there any other sections of the report you would like to discuss?

Nobody else in the industry can produce a report in this level of detail. I think we are the only company, in the UK certainly, that can cover millions of fuel transactions and EV transactions and bring that all together. We've been able to analyse the cost of various vehicle types and what it would cost to run electric versus petrol.

Generally, charging in public stations is much more expensive than petrol, but what's interesting is when you combine the average mix of home charging and public charging throughout every example in the report; EVs are still cheaper overall.

This is what's quite challenging I think for fleets and businesses - when they try to realise total life costs or the return on investment of an electric vehicle.

Let’s take a headline figure of, for example, 70 pence per kilowatt charging public. If you take that figure and work it through, you might think that an EV is an expensive proposition. What you've got is this huge variance. You could do workplace charging, which is slightly cheaper than public, or again, if you can push your driver’s charger home, the cheapest tariff we found within our network is four pence per kilowatt.

That's why we've kind of left this headline of it can be twenty times more expensive to charging versus at home.

To be clear - we are not trying to discredit the public network. It has a place of course and it is also a significant part of our business model. What we're trying to highlight is that there isn't a simple one size fits all here. You can't just say, get an EV and charge it publicly. You have to be able to unlock that super cheap, super convenient home charging wherever possible.

Why are some geographical locations more expensive to charge in than others?

We've surveyed everything from the cost of charging in the Orkney Isles down to the Isle of Wight. Interestingly, some of the most rural locations can be the cheapest, but they can also be relatively expensive.

The variable rates are partly explained by the cost of putting the charging infrastructure in, but also, how much some of the councils in some of these local areas may be subsidising some of these heavy costs.

Interestingly, while London is generally considered to be an expensive city in which to live, it is actually one of the cheapest places to charge publicly.

One thing that people should factor in is that sometimes there is a cost of both charging and parking, when charging. There is so much variability in what builds to the end cost.

What do you see the future holding for charging infrastructure?

You read some of the headlines and there’s a pretty constant narritive: “There's not enough charging infrastructure for EVs.” Maybe in some areas, that's true, but we've never seen so many charge points going into the ground as we did in 2023.

I think what's keeping some of the prices high now is not only the initial installation cost, but also the relationship between supply and demand in use. If there's one charge point serving a wide area, it’s unlikely that they're going to be dropping the pence per kilowatt price, but once we start installing multiple charge points in the same location, that will drive down the cost.