What region are you from? I’m asking because i’m not going to contest yet that your current rates are close to Octopus rates in your region – but they’re slightly more than half of what we paid before we changed over to Go, hence me being curious.
In the new calculation, you’re £150 worse off. That’s offset, what, five fold by the petrol saved, ish, and could even be improved, even though i do agree that things are not always possible, they are every now and then.
Of course, if you don’t have a tumble dryer, that makes less sense, so lets stick with the £150.
It’s not just lower mileage drivers who’d save. You’d save noticeably too. The only issue is your gas tariff. This is what it looks like for me:
It doesn’t touch your gas tariff at all. And increases in your gas tariff, i mean we all have to deal with that regardless of which car we drive, so it doesn’t matter. My point in regards to gas is that you’re using it as an argument as to why an EV tariff would make your bill that much larger, when in reality, it doesn’t.
If you’re not on a fixed rate for gas, as a sidenote, but a flexible tariff, you’ll pay roughly the same with Octopus than you pay now. Your current tariff, after a quick search, is a price cap tariff (slightly below). For London (that’s why i wanted to know your location – not exactly of course, just the region) gas sits at 27.22p standing charge, 7.5p unit rate. How does that compare to yours?
All that said, in the end, we’re talking EVs. Your gas tariff really doesn’t play a role and doesn’t allow for a generalised statement, at best you’re an edge case (for now – once the current market prices have caught up with you, it’ll all look different again). If i were you, i certainly would double check your information in regards to switching electricity only, because i’m rather certain that you don’t need to change your gas tariff to switch. Despite being called “AVRO”, it’s still an Octopus tariff.
Which then makes your calculation look like “+£150 in electricity bill, -£750 in petrol, +whatever your mileage would be with the EV”. £600 for charging on Octopus Go would get you, approximately, 8000kwh of charge. A car with 250 miles range (and a 64kwh battery, took the Kona as example), goes over 31.000 miles per year for that. So even for high mileage drivers, it’d come out even, although certainly a case for a diesel could be made there.
Sorry if this is a bit hard to read, i’m a bit all over the place at the moment. Just trying to (potentially) help.
Prior: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19, VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY23
Current: Hyundai Ioniq 6 Ultimate
Next: we'll see what's available in 2028.