Government Orders a Review Into Public EV Charging Costs After a 38 Percent Price Rise

Anyone who runs an electric car without a driveway already knows the sting. Charging at a public rapid point can cost three times as much per mile as plugging in at home overnight, and the gap has been widening for years. Now the government has stepped in. On 9 June the Department for Transport published the terms of reference for an independent review into the cost of public electric vehicle charging, with a full report due in autumn 2026. The aim is to work out why public charging is so expensive and what can be done to bring the price down.

For the millions of drivers who cannot charge at home, this is the first sign that ministers are treating the price of public charging as a problem to be fixed rather than a quirk of a young market. Here is what the review will cover, why the costs are so high, and how to keep your charging bills down while it runs.

What the government has actually announced

The commitment was first made at the 2025 Budget, when the government said it would review the cost of public charging and report back in autumn 2026. The published terms of reference now set out who is running it and what it will examine. The review will be led by an independent chair, Philip New, with support from the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, the joint unit that sits across the Department for Transport and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. It will report to ministers in both of those departments and to the Treasury, and it will be developed alongside the energy regulator Ofgem.

The backdrop is a network that has grown quickly but become pricier to use. There are now more than 120,000 public chargers installed across the UK, yet industry analysis quoted in the terms of reference estimates that average public charging prices have risen by 38 per cent since 2021. The review will look at the cost of charging across the whole network, from slower on street posts and destination chargers in retail car parks to the high powered rapid units at motorway service areas, and compare those costs with the price of filling an equivalent petrol or diesel vehicle.

Why public charging costs so much more

The size of the gap is the heart of the issue. Charging at home on a standard domestic rate works out at around 24p per kWh, and drivers on a dedicated overnight electric vehicle tariff can pay as little as 7p to 9p per kWh. Public charging is a different story. The weighted average pay as you go price in May 2026 was about 54p per kWh on standard public chargers and around 79p per kWh on rapid and ultra rapid units.

Translated into an annual bill, the difference is stark. A driver who relies on the public network pays roughly £1,760 a year to charge, compared with about £680 for someone charging mainly at home. That is more than £1,000 a year extra for the same mileage, simply because of where the electricity is bought. The drivers most exposed are the estimated millions of households without off street parking, who have no way to plug in at home and are pushed onto the most expensive tariffs. We have covered how those drivers without a driveway end up paying far more, and why public charging keeps climbing toward 79p per kWh.

The review will dig into where that money goes. Its scope includes the impact of wholesale energy prices, the wider costs that charge point operators carry, how much of any saving would actually reach drivers given the level of competition between networks, and whether tools such as dynamic time of use pricing could help. It will also consider what regulation, government funding and other policy levers could do to lower the bills.

The VAT question the review will not touch

There is one obvious lever the review has been told to leave alone. Electricity used at a public charger carries 20 per cent VAT, while electricity used to charge at home is taxed at just 5 per cent. For a driver without a driveway, that tax difference alone adds a hefty premium to every charge, and campaigners have long argued it penalises the people least able to avoid it.

The terms of reference confirm that tax costs will be reflected in the report, but the review will not make recommendations on changing tax policy. The reasoning given is that decisions on tax are made by the Treasury at fiscal events such as the Budget, and the review is not meant to pre empt those. In plain terms, the study can describe how much VAT adds to a public charge, but it cannot recommend cutting it. Any change to that 20 per cent rate would still have to come from the Chancellor.

How to cut your charging costs while the review runs

The report is not due until autumn 2026, so any changes are months away at best. In the meantime there are practical ways to keep your charging bills under control:

• If you can charge at home at all, even occasionally, move as much of your charging as possible onto a dedicated overnight electric vehicle tariff, where rates can fall below 9p per kWh.
• Plan longer journeys around destination chargers in supermarket and retail car parks, which are often cheaper, or free, compared with motorway rapid units.
• Sign up to the networks you use most. Many operators offer a lower per kWh rate to subscribers or app users than the headline pay as you go price.
• Use a live charging price comparison app before you stop, as the cost per kWh can vary widely between networks on the same route.
• Where a journey allows, charge to around 80 per cent rather than 100 per cent, since the final stretch on a rapid charger is the slowest and least cost effective.

It is also worth keeping an eye on your home electricity costs, which feed directly into the cheaper end of charging. The July price cap change affects what home charging costs, and even with public prices high, the running cost advantage of an electric car over petrol remains large, as shown by the finding that petrol drivers spend a full year of EV charging costs on fuel well before the summer is out.

What happens next

The review will publish a single report in autumn 2026, set out in three parts. The first will describe the current cost of public charging and how it has changed in recent years. The second will assess how those costs could move to 2030 if nothing is done. The third, and the one drivers will care about most, will set out what the government and industry could do to bring the price down, covering regulation, funding, the actions of regulators and options such as market based trading schemes and dynamic pricing.

With the sale of new petrol and diesel cars due to end in 2035, the affordability of public charging is becoming a question for far more households than the early adopters who bought the first electric cars. For now, the review is a recognition of the problem rather than a solution to it. Drivers without a driveway will be watching closely to see whether autumn brings real proposals to close the gap, or simply a detailed explanation of why it exists.

The stakes are growing because the group affected is no longer a niche. Around a third of UK households have no off street parking, which leaves an estimated eight million drivers unable to plug in at home and dependent on the public network if they go electric. As more of those households move away from petrol and diesel, the price they pay at a public charger will increasingly decide whether an electric car saves them money or quietly costs them more than the car they replaced. That is the gap the review has been asked to explain, and the reason its autumn findings will be read closely by anyone weighing up the switch.

Sources:

• https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cost-of-public-ev-charging-review-terms-of-reference/cost-of-public-ev-charging-review-terms-of-reference
• https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/ozev-publishes-terms-of-reference-for-cost-of-public-charging-review
• https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/369768/electric-car-charging-costs-review-launched-government
• https://www.zapmap.com/ev-stats/charging-price-index