Key Insights

By 9 June 2026, the average UK petrol driver has spent £1,353 on fuel, more than the £592 an EV driver spends charging at home across the entire year.
Electric Car Day has arrived 24 days earlier than 2025's date of 3 July, driven almost entirely by higher petrol prices rather than cheaper electricity.
Drivers combining an overnight tariff with The Charge Scheme from The Electric Car Scheme run their cars at under 2p per mile, hitting the petrol-equivalent figure as early as 30 January.
By 23 February the average petrol car had already emitted more CO2 than an EV produces across a full year of charging, an 85% emissions gap that widens as the grid keeps decarbonising.

The average UK petrol driver has now spent as much on fuel in five months as an electric car driver spends on charging in twelve. Analysis by The Electric Car Scheme puts that crossover at 9 June 2026, the date it has named Electric Car Day. From today onwards, every litre a petrol driver buys is, in real terms, a surcharge for staying with a combustion engine. For anyone weighing up electric car salary sacrifice, the running-cost gap is the clearest signal yet that the economics have moved.

What Electric Car Day measures

Electric Car Day marks the point in the calendar when the average petrol driver's year-to-date fuel spend equals what an EV driver will spend on charging across the whole of 2026. The Electric Car Scheme has run the calculation every year since 2023 using a consistent methodology, which makes the year-on-year movement directly comparable.

This year the date is 9 June. In 2025 it fell on 3 July, so the crossover has moved forward by 24 days. The driver behind that shift is not a change in driving habits or a fall in electricity prices, but the rising cost of petrol at the pump. With forecourt prices unlikely to return to where they sat two years ago, the date has trended steadily earlier in the year.

The cost crossover in real numbers

Across 7,400 annual miles, the average petrol car costs £1,353 to fuel in 2026, which works out at £3.71 a day. The equivalent EV, charged at home on a standard tariff, costs £592 for the entire year. The table below sets the two side by side.

Measure	Average petrol car	Average EV (home, standard tariff)
Annual mileage	7,400 miles	7,400 miles
Cost per mile	18.3p	8p
Annual running cost	£1,353	£592
Daily fuel/charging spend	£3.71	£1.62

The petrol figure assumes fuel economy of 38.8 miles per gallon and an average 2026 pump price of £1.56 per litre, equivalent to £7.09 per gallon. The EV figure assumes consumption of 0.32 kWh per mile under the Ofgem Q2 2026 price cap of 24.67p per kWh. On those inputs, the petrol driver reaches the EV's full annual cost on 9 June and keeps paying for the remaining 205 days of the year.

Thom Groot, CEO and co-founder of The Electric Car Scheme, said,

“The economics of switching to electric keep moving in one direction, and 2026 has accelerated the trend. Petrol drivers are now spending the equivalent of a full year of EV running costs before we hit summer, which means everything they pay at the pump from 9 June onwards is, in real terms, a surcharge for choosing a combustion engine. With petrol prices unlikely to return to where they were two years ago, that surcharge keeps growing.”

“What genuinely interests me about this year’s figures is how far the early-adopter group has pulled ahead of the average. EV drivers on overnight tariffs combined with salary sacrifice charging are running their cars at under 2p a mile. That isn’t a marginal saving over petrol, it’s a different category of household expense entirely, and it’s now available to anyone whose employer offers the right benefits package.”

Salary sacrifice charging widens the gap

The gap stretches further for drivers who charge through The Charge Scheme, the salary sacrifice benefit that lets employees pay for EV charging from gross income at home, at work and in public. Paid before Income Tax and National Insurance, a higher-rate taxpayer keeps a marginal saving of 42% on the cost of every kWh.

Combine that with an overnight tariff of around 8p per kWh, reflecting off-peak pricing in April 2026, and effective running costs fall to under 2p per mile. At that rate the petrol-equivalent annual spend was reached on 30 January, before the end of the first month of the year. As Thom Groot, CEO and co-founder of The Electric Car Scheme, put it, that is not a marginal saving over petrol but "a different category of household expense entirely, and it's now available to anyone whose employer offers the right benefits package." Used alongside an electric car salary sacrifice agreement on the vehicle itself, where pure-EV Benefit-in-Kind sits at just 4% for the 2026/27 tax year, the combined effect is a total motoring cost most petrol drivers would struggle to match.

The carbon crossover has moved too

The cost picture has a carbon twin. The crossover point at which the average petrol car has emitted more CO2 than an EV will produce across a full year of charging now lands on 23 February 2026. In 2025 that date was 5 March, so the carbon crossover has moved ten days earlier.

The reason is the continued cleaning of the UK grid. Carbon intensity has fallen from 149 grams of CO2 per kWh in the 2023 data used for last year's calculation to 126 grams in the National Energy System Operator figures for 2025. At 0.32 kWh per mile, the average EV now emits 40 grams of CO2 per mile, or 298kg across 7,400 miles. The average petrol car emits 274.4 grams per mile, or 2,030kg over the same distance. That is an 85% emissions reduction for the EV, and because the grid keeps getting cleaner while tailpipe emissions do not, the gap grows every year.

How the figures were calculated

The methodology is published in full and held consistent with prior years so the dates can be compared like for like. Annual mileage is taken as 7,400 miles, drawn from the Department for Transport's 2019 figure, the last clean pre-pandemic year, which has been the campaign baseline since launch in 2023. Holding that baseline steady is a deliberately conservative choice: the Department for Transport's most recent figure for 2024 is 7,100 miles, and applying that more current number would push Electric Car Day into early June, earlier still. Petrol pricing comes from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero weekly road fuel prices series, fuel economy from Nimble Fins fleet averages, EV consumption from the EV Database, and grid carbon intensity from the National Energy System Operator. Using one set of inputs each year, and disclosing them in full, is what allows the comparison to hold up.

Running a petrol car will cost twice as much as electric this year

Electric Car Day 2026 is not a forecast but a line drawn under the year so far. By 9 June the average petrol driver has spent £1,353, more than a full year of EV charging at £592, and the carbon equivalent was passed back in February. For drivers who pair an overnight tariff with salary sacrifice charging, the crossover came and went in January. The Electric Car Scheme has helped employees at organisations including Holland & Barrett, Leeds Bradford Airport and Time Out Group access electric cars at 20-50% lower cost, with Complete Employer Protection from Day 1 and no exclusion periods for resignation, redundancy, illness or parental leave. As petrol prices hold near record levels and the grid keeps cleaning up, the case for switching is no longer about the future. It is about what drivers are already paying today.

Ready to see the numbers for your own commute? Get an instant electric car salary sacrifice quote, or read how salary sacrifice works for companies if you want to bring the benefit to your workplace.

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