Filling Gasoline Cars Could Become Cheaper Than Charging EVs In The UK

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Due to skyrocketing energy prices, Britons could soon face higher costs for charging their electric vehicles (EVs) at home than filling up gasoline-fueled cars, The Washington Times reports.

The high energy and electricity prices that could undermine the growth in EVs uptake in the UK and globally could be a cautionary tale for what could be the future in the U.S. if the energy transition is pushed to accelerate without accounting for whether EVs and renewable energy sources could replace fossil fuels, analysts tell The Washington Times.

“For the U.S., this actually gets to an underlying fallacy of a lot of people that are pushing electric vehicles: they assert electric vehicles are cheaper because they assume electricity prices are going to stay cheap,” Kenny Stein, policy director of the Institute for Energy Research, told The Washington Times.

Last week, the UK energy regulator Ofgem said the new price cap for household energy bills would be $4,113 (£3,549) per year, an 80-percent hike in the energy price cap aimed at shielding consumers from price swings, promising to plunge millions more into energy poverty.

The chief executive of Ofgem, Jonathan Brearley, has also warned that another hike in the price cap would be coming in January next year, raising household energy bills much further, to above $6,952 (£6,000), according to recent forecasts. That would be almost double on the latest hike.

The price cap currently stands at $2,285 (£1,971) per year, based on typical use for the average household, which is already a 54% increase on the $1,480 (£1,277) per year that was in place between October 2021 and March 2022. 

Many British households are already struggling with paying their bills, and they are accumulating more debt, too. The government is helping, but more help would be needed for the higher bills.