Petrol drivers have spent more on fuel by today than EV drivers will spend on charging for the whole year
Analysis by The Electric Car Scheme finds that by today the average UK petrol driver will have spent more on fuel than the average EV driver will spend on charging for the whole year. This is 24 days earlier than 2025’s date of 3 July.
Rising petrol prices have pushed the annual cost of fuelling the average petrol car to £1,353 in 2026, compared with £592 for an EV driver charging at home
Drivers using EV charging salary sacrifice on an overnight electricity tariff are charging at under 2p per mile, meaning their petrol-equivalent crossover fell on 30 January.
By 23 February, the average petrol car had emitted more CO2 than an EV will across an entire year. This is ten days earlier than 2025 following continued decarbonisation of the UK grid.
London, 9 June 2026. The Electric Car Scheme has identified 9 June as Electric Car Day 2026, the point in the year at which the average petrol driver has spent the equivalent on fuel as an EV driver does on running their vehicle for the whole year.
This year’s date has arrived 24 days earlier than 2025’s 3 July, driven by higher petrol prices.
Across 7,400 annual miles, the average UK petrol driver will spend £1,353 on fuel in 2026, working out at £3.71 a day. The equivalent EV driver charging at home on a standard tariff will spend £592 across the entire year.
The gap widens significantly for drivers using The Charge Scheme, the salary sacrifice benefit that lets employees pay for charging from gross income. Combined with an overnight electricity tariff of around 8p per kWh, effective running costs fall to under 2p per mile, meaning the petrol-equivalent annual spend was reached as early as 30 January this year.
The carbon picture has also shifted. The crossover points at which an average petrol car has emitted more CO₂ than an EV will produce across an entire year of charging now lands on 23 February, ten days earlier than 2025’s 5 March. This reflects the continued cleaning of the UK grid, with carbon intensity falling from 149 grams of CO₂ per kilowatt hour in 2023 to 126 grams in 2025, according to the National Energy System Operator.
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.”
ENDS
Notes to editors
Electric Car Day 2026 was calculated using the following methodology and inputs, consistent with prior years to allow direct comparison.
Average annual mileage was taken as 7,400 miles, drawn from the Department for Transport’s 2019 figure, the last clean pre-pandemic year, which has been used as the methodology baseline since the campaign launched in 2023.
The Department for Transport’s most recent figure for 2024 stands at 7,100 miles and applying that more current figure would move Electric Car Day to early June, similarly earlier than 2025.
Average petrol fuel economy was held at 38.8 miles per gallon, drawn from Nimble Fins data on UK car fleet averages. Average petrol price for 2026 year to date was taken as £1.56 per litre, equivalent to £7.09 per gallon, drawn from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero weekly road fuel prices series.
The average EV cost per mile of £0.08 assumes home charging on a standard tariff under the Ofgem Q2 2026 price cap of 24.67p per kWh, with EV consumption of 0.32 kWh per mile from the EV Database.
Annual petrol cost therefore works out at £1,353, against an annual EV cost of £592. The petrol driver spends £3.71 a day on fuel in 2026, reaching the £592 EV-equivalent figure by 9 June.
For the overnight tariff scenario, an effective rate of 8p per kWh was assumed, reflecting Octopus Intelligent Go off-peak pricing from April 2026. Combined with The Charge Scheme salary sacrifice benefit at a higher-rate taxpayer marginal saving of 42 per cent, this produces an effective cost of under 2p per mile, with the petrol-equivalent annual figure reached on 30 January 2026.
For carbon emissions, grid intensity of 126 grams of CO₂ per kWh was taken from National Energy System Operator data for 2025, down from 149 grams used in the 2025 calculation, which had drawn on 2023 grid figures. At 0.32 kWh per mile, the average EV emits 40 grams of CO₂ per mile, or 298kg across 7,400 annual miles. The average petrol car emits 274.4 grams of CO₂ per mile, or 2,030kg across the same mileage, an 85 per cent emissions reduction for the EV. The petrol car reaches the EV’s annual emissions figure on 23 February 2026.
For media enquiries, please contact
Christine Webb / Joshua Van Raalte
brazil™ (PR agency for The Charge Scheme)
E: TheElectricCarScheme@agencybrazil.com
T: 020 7785 7383
About The Electric Car Scheme
The Electric Car Scheme is a salary sacrifice employee benefit that allows employees to access electric and hybrid vehicles at 20-50% lower cost. The company was set up in June 2020 after co-founders Thom Groot and Tom Eilon identified a significant gap in the market for accessible EV adoption programmes. For more information visit: electriccarscheme.com
