The ESB’s e-Cars electric car charging service has recently raised its prices, across each cost band, by 7c per kWh. That’s a roughly 15 per cent rise, and it means that in some cases you could be paying €40 or more to charge an average family EV on a public charger.
Such costs are a serious barrier to EV uptake, as a huge part of the sales pitch for the switch to electric cars, quite apart from the climate change imperative, has been how much cheaper they are to ‘fuel’ than a diesel or petrol-powered car.
That price advantage, which has also been something of a reward for the less convenient nature of an EV (at least with the current charging network), is starting to be eroded now.
True, charging at home still allows you to make some fairly dramatic savings compared to the cost of running a combustion-engined car.
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As one EV expert recently told us: “You might double your electricity bill, but you’ll still be quids-in compared to the price of petrol or diesel.”
There’s a looming issue on the horizon, however. The cost of domestic electricity is being kept somewhat under control by the fact that, in the energy cost crisis which followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Irish Government cut the VAT on electricity from 13.5 per cent to 9 per cent.
That cut has been renewed over and over, but it’s due to run out on October 31st this year, which means people might be waking up to not only a Halloween hangover, but higher electricity – and therefore EV charging – costs.
How much extra is this going to cost you?
Well, let’s take as a baseline Electric Ireland’s headline per-kilowatt costs for domestic electricity.
Those are, currently, 30.53c per kWh on the day rate (8am to 11pm), 15.05c for night rate (11pm to 8am), and there’s a ‘night boost’ rate of 8.84c per kWh between 2am and 4am.
[ EV Q&A: How do I know if I’m getting good economy from an electric car?Opens in new window ]
So, let’s take a couple of popular electric cars. There’s the Volkswagen ID.4, which uses a 77kWh battery; a Hyundai Inster, which uses a 49kWh battery, and a Kia EV3, which in its basic form comes with a 58kWh battery.
So, at current rates, a 0-100 per cent charge in the VW will cost you €23 on the day rate, and €10.6 assuming you’re making the most of that ‘night boost’ two hours worth of charging.
The smaller Inster’s costs are €14.95 on the day rate, and just €6.44 overnight. The Kia EVs’s charging costs are €17.70 on day rate, and €7.63 on mixed night rate.
So, what happens to those figures when/if the VAT rate goes up?
Prices per kWh would rise to 31.79c for the day rate, 15.67c for the night rate, and 9.20c for the night boost. It means a full day-rate charge of the ID.4 rises to €24.47, and €11.10 on mixed night rate. The Hyundai’s figures become €15.57 day and €6.71 night, while the Kia’s rise to €18.43 day and €8.12 night.
Are these rises enough to nullify EV running costs versus petrol or diesel? Not even slightly. On a full charge, the VW ID.4 can generally offer around 450km of real-world range. The Hyundai should manage about 320km on a full charge, and the Kia about 360km.
The most efficient diesel- or hybrid-engined cars will return about five litres per 100km fuel consumption, which means you’d need to spend €39 on petrol, or €38 on diesel, to equal the VW’s range; €28.32 in petrol or €27.04 in diesel to match the Hyundai; and €31.86 in petrol or €30.42 in diesel to match the Kia.
Clearly from those figures, you’re making a significant saving when charging on the day rate, and cutting your fuel costs by between a half and a third on night rates.
When it comes to public charging, however, the cost calculation of running an EV is entirely turned on its head.
A return to 13.5 per cent VAT for public charging will mean that the standard ESB e-Cars rate for ‘slow’ kerbside chargers, of between 7.4 and 22kW AC power, will rise from the current 59c to 61.4c per kWh, while using a ‘fast’ charger of between 50kW and 150kW on DC power will climb to 66.6c per kWh, and ‘very fast’ 150kW+ DC chargers will rise to 68.72c per kWh.
This will be particularly bad news for anyone without access to a driveway or other off-street parking that allows them to charge overnight at home, such as those people who live in terraced housing, and who rely on public charging.
It means a full charge of the VW ID.4 on a kerbside ‘slow’ charger will, in October, rise to €47.27, considerably more than you’d have to pay if you were running on petrol or diesel.
For the Hyundai, that cost would be €30, and for the Kia it will rise to €36.22; again, both are in theory more expensive than an equivalent combustion-engined car for the same notional mileage.
For fast charging, the news is also bad. Most users will use fast chargers to top up their batteries as a ‘get you home’ measure, so the amount of energy, in kWh, taken on each time will vary considerably between one driver and another. However, we can use the baseline 10-80 per cent charge to give us an idea of the potential costs.
In the VW, a 10-80 per cent charge, assuming you’re using a 150kW charger, and assuming that the VAT change goes through, will cost you €35.89, for an estimated 315km of range (assuming that 450km real-world range figure).
For the same distance, assuming once again average fuel economy of five litres per 100km in the most efficient diesel or hybrid cars, that would cost you €27.87 in petrol or €26.60 in diesel.
For the Hyundai, the charging cost on a 150kW charger will be €22.80, gaining you about 224km of range, which would in theory cost you €19.80 in petrol, or €18.90 in diesel.
For the Kia, the figures are €27 of charging for about 250km of range, which would cost you roughly €22.10 in petrol, or €21.12 in diesel.
You can reduce the cost of charging at an ESB public charger by signing up for a €4.79 monthly subscription. This would bring down the cost, assuming a return to the 13.5 per cent VAT rate, to 56.1c for slow chargers, 61.44c for fast chargers and 63.5c for very fast chargers.
That means a 0-100 per cent slow charge would cost €43.19 for the VW; €27.48 for the Hyundai; and €32.53 for the Kia. Fast charging, assuming you use a 150kW charger and charge from 10-80 per cent, would cost €32.50 for the VW; €21.07 for the Hyundai; and €25.12 for the Kia.
In terms of other providers, a return to the 13.5 per cent VAT rate would push the price of charging at Ionity, on its very fast 350kW chargers, from 73c per kWh to 76c per kWh (or from 53c to 55.18c per kWh if you have a monthly Ionity subscription).
That would mean a cost of €40.96 for a 10-80 per cent charge in the VW (€29.70 with subscription); €26 for the Hyundai (€18.92 on subscription); and €30.08 for the Kia (€22.40 on subscription).
It is, of course, worth remembering that those are notional figures, and your actual experience of electric range versus petrol or diesel fuel economy may vary considerably, but it should give you some idea of just how expensive public charging of an electric car has become, and what an important factor it is to have home charging.
It also underlines the cold corner, in EV terms, into which those with no access to off-street parking at home have been pushed.
The Irish Times has been told by Cork City Council, for instance, that when it comes to figuring out what to do for people who can’t charge at home: “The strategy does not make provision to allow private electric vehicle charging cables either in pavement or overhead to be installed across public footpaths or roads to facilitate home charging.”
In other words, those people will just have to rely on a public charging network, which is becoming so expensive that it makes no financial sense to switch to an EV.
Whether or not VAT on electricity returns to 13.5 per cent in October, that’s a serious bar to EV adoption, which will have to be tackled.
