Electric Car maintenance costs are 23% LOWER than an ICE car

Maintaining an electric car costs an average of 23 per cent less than maintaining a car with a petrol engine, according to CAP HPI.

Electric cars may still cost more to buy than the equivalent diesel or petrol car, but, for now at least, they do cost a chunk less to run.

The headline for low EV running costs is how much cheaper they are to refuel than a petrol or diesel car, with the (almost) untaxed electricity making EVs very appealing.

Of course, as soon as electric cars hit a significant percentage of new car sales that will all change, and the only way that can happen is to drop fuel duty for petrol and diesel cars and replace it with road pricing, where we pay a fixed amount per mile to use the roads based on the type of road and the time of day – even in an EV. It really is the only solution.

But even when that happens, electric cars will still have a cost advantage over an ICE car, with CAP HPI reporting that, on average, EVs cost 23 per cent less to maintain than an equivalent ICE car.

For something small like the Renault Zoe you’d save 35.7 per cent over three years compared to a similarly sized Vauxhall Corsa, and for the Nissan LEAF – the UK’s most popular electric car – the saving compared to a VW Golf 1.0 TSI over the same period is a still useful 19 per cent.

Although the number of electric cars on UK roads has gone up by 128 per cent in the last three years, there are still only 37,483 electric cars on the road in the UK – just one in 800 cars – so road pricing is still a way away.

But lower prices, cheap refuelling, an improving charging network and lower maintenance costs are now making an EV a sensible choice for many.