Electric Cars - Cost of Electricity Per Mile

HM Revenue & Customs allows drivers of electric company cars to be reimbursed for the cost of electricity used for business travel.

This applies to regular company car users and to employees who take an electric car under salary sacrifice arrangements.

The current mileage rate for electricity is set at 7p per mile for electric company car drivers.

But this still means that, depending on the recharge cost, the reimbursement rate could be costing electric company car drivers up to 14p per mile for every business mile travelled.

What Does Electricity Cost?

At the moment the maximum price of electricity that can be charged to domestic users is capped at £0.27p per kilowatt hour.

But electric company car drivers using public charging stations are typically paying more than this.

So how far adrift is HMRC's reimbursement rate?

Electricity Costs Per Mile

Using data on how much electricity is required to recharge an electric car battery and the car's battery range, we've calculated the cost of electricity per mile for almost 500 electric cars.

We've then compared this cost per mile to the new 10ppm reimbursement rate allowed tax free by HMRC and then put the results into a table.

Sadly the table does not make happy reading for most electric company car drivers.

Depending on the cost of electricity, very few cars cost less per mile to recharge than the tax-free reimbursement rate (and technically the top performer, the Citroen Ami, is actually a quadricycle).

All the rest in the table will cost more in electricity for each business mile travelled than HMRC allows.

And remember that the cost of electricity (currently at 27p per kilowatt-hour or 'KWH' but forecast to rise to up to 51p) doesn't include any contribution towards the standing daily charges most electricity suppliers charge customer's just for being allowed to draw electricity from the Grid.

You can go to our calculator for individual company cars by clicking this link.