The promise of an electric car is cheap running costs, but how cheap depends enormously on where you plug in. Home electricity prices across the big English-speaking countries differ by more than three times, and that changes the whole sum. We gathered the numbers and worked out what a typical EV actually costs to charge in each.
Home charging is where the savings live
Almost all the value of an electric car comes from charging at home, ideally overnight on a cheaper rate. But home electricity itself is priced very differently country to country. Below are recent average household prices, converted to US dollars per unit so you can compare them directly, alongside what it costs to add about a hundred kilometres of range to a typical electric car.
| Country | Home electricity (approx, US$/kWh) | Charge ~100 km at home (typical EV) |
|---|---|---|
| United States | $0.18 | about $3.10 |
| United Kingdom | $0.40 | about $6.80 |
| Ireland | $0.45 | about $7.60 |
| Canada | $0.12 | about $2.10 |
| Australia | $0.26 | about $4.40 |
| New Zealand | $0.21 | about $3.50 |
Assumes a typical EV using around 17 units of electricity per 100 km and charging at home. Public rapid charging costs more. Electricity prices are 2023 to 2025 averages and vary by tariff and time of day.
Why the gap is so wide
Canada has some of the cheapest electricity of any developed country, so home charging there is remarkably cheap. The United States and New Zealand sit in the middle. Ireland and the United Kingdom have the priciest power of the six, so while charging is still cheaper than petrol, the advantage is smaller. The takeaway is that the same electric car can be twice as cheap to run in one country as another, purely because of the price of electricity.
Public charging changes the maths
The figures above are for home charging. Public rapid charging, the kind you use on long trips, costs considerably more per unit, sometimes two or three times the home rate. If you cannot charge at home and rely on public chargers, an electric car still works, but much of the running-cost advantage shrinks. This is the single biggest factor in whether an EV saves you money, which is why our EV buying checklist puts it first.
Even so, electric usually still wins
Despite the spread, home charging almost always beats petrol on cost per mile, because electric cars turn energy into distance far more efficiently than engines do. The question is not usually whether electric is cheaper to run, but by how much, and that depends on your electricity price and whether you can charge at home. See it for your own situation with the EV vs petrol calculator and learn the basics in our EV charging guide.
Run your own numbers
Figures are approximate and drawn from public price trackers and official sources, mostly 2025 to mid-2026 averages. Prices, taxes and incentives change often, always confirm the current position with a local source before making a decision.
