A cheap overnight EV tariff can make £100 stretch surprisingly far. Public rapid charging changes the calculation. We compare 18 UK electric, petrol, diesel and hybrid car versions using official efficiency figures and October 2026 prices.
A Tesla Model 3 could theoretically cover 5,975 miles on £100 of electricity at 8p/kWh, using its official WLTP figure. Buy that same electricity at the UK’s average public rapid-charging rate of 79p/kWh, and £100 gets you just 605 miles.
Same car, same published efficiency figure. The electricity simply costs almost ten times as much.
A Renault Clio full hybrid, meanwhile, could manage 830 miles on £100 of petrol. A conventional 115PS Volkswagen Golf returns 677. Both beat the Tesla on the rapid-charging calculation; neither gets close when the Tesla charges at home for 8p.
Battery sizes and advertised ranges attract plenty of attention. Yet for anyone working out what a car costs to use, the price of each litre or kilowatt-hour can be every bit as important. Two Model 3 owners could drive identical journeys and pay dramatically different amounts.
Our previous 10,000-mile running-cost comparison used illustrative vehicles. For motorists choosing between real cars, it is more useful to put recognisable UK versions on the same £100 budget — from affordable hatchbacks to family SUVs — using their published combined WLTP efficiency.
The selection includes nameplates appearing in the SMMT’s September 2026 registration rankings, alongside other useful versions for comparison. It is not a list of Britain’s 18 best-selling individual specifications.
£100 of energy: the 18-car comparison
The pump prices are the UK weekly averages for 26 October 2026: 174.07p per litre for petrol and 199.22p for diesel, from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. The EVs are initially calculated at 8p/kWh, a rate advertised for eligible charging on Intelligent Octopus Go.
Every distance shown is the amount £100 could theoretically buy across repeated journeys and top-ups. It is not a prediction of how far any car will travel on one tank or battery charge.
Tech Torque Media calculations, checked 27 October 2026. UK imperial mpg and manufacturers’ combined WLTP energy-consumption figures; electric models charged at 8p/kWh, petrol at 174.07p/litre and diesel at 199.22p/litre. Where a derivative has an official consumption range, the less economical figure is used unless an exact variant is specified. Ford’s 52.3mpg is its stated ‘up to’ figure for the 125PS manual Puma; the MINI Cooper figure refers to the manufacturer’s basic-equipment configuration. The figures are calculated energy costs, not measured real-world driving or total ownership costs.
At 8p/kWh, every electric model here is substantially cheaper on driving energy than the petrol and diesel alternatives. The Model 3 leads; the Vauxhall Corsa Electric and Kia EV3 also exceed 5,000 theoretical miles per £100. Even the less economical Volvo EX30 P5 comes out at 4,545 miles.
But the sizeable gap says as much about cheap overnight electricity as it does about the cars. A cheaper tariff can make a fairly ordinary efficiency figure look spectacular. Whether you can regularly charge at that price is another matter.
Seven pence, eight pence — and the tariff behind the headline
For £100, 7p electricity buys roughly 1,429kWh. At 8p, it buys 1,250kWh. That single penny increases the electricity available for the money by around 14.3% — enough to make a noticeable difference over regular family mileage.
The comparison below covers 6p and 7p illustrative overnight rates, an advertised 8p rate for eligible smart charging, the Ofgem October–December 2026 benchmark of 26.32p/kWh for qualifying Great Britain default tariffs paid by Direct Debit, and Zapmap’s 79p/kWh September average for public rapid and ultra-rapid pay-as-you-go charging.
| Electric car | 6p home | 7p home | 8p home | 26.32p home | 79p rapid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tesla Model 3 RWD | 7,966 | 6,828 | 5,975 | 1,816 | 605 |
| Tesla Model Y Standard RWD | 7,397 | 6,341 | 5,548 | 1,686 | 562 |
| Kia EV3 Air | 6,950 | 5,958 | 5,213 | 1,584 | 528 |
| Vauxhall Corsa Electric Ultimate | 7,192 | 6,164 | 5,394 | 1,639 | 546 |
| Škoda Enyaq SE L 60 | 6,681 | 5,727 | 5,011 | 1,523 | 507 |
| Volvo EX30 P5 | 6,061 | 5,195 | 4,545 | 1,382 | 460 |
Miles for £100 using each vehicle’s official combined WLTP consumption. Ofgem’s 26.32p/kWh is a GB default-tariff average, not every household’s actual rate. Zapmap’s 79p/kWh is a weighted public rapid PAYG price, not a price charged by every network. The same WLTP energy figure is used for the public scenario as a comparison proxy, rather than as a claim of independently tested DC-charging efficiency.
At 7p/kWh, the Model 3’s theoretical £100 distance rises to 6,828 miles. At 8p, it falls to 5,975. Neither figure, of course, tells you what the whole household will pay for electricity.
A dedicated EV tariff can come with a higher daytime rate, a different standing charge, smart-charging eligibility requirements and limits on when the lowest price applies. Intelligent Octopus Go, for example, offers the cheap household window from 11.30pm to 5.30am and discounted eligible smart charging outside that window under its conditions, subject to a six-hour managed-charging fair-use cap.
Before switching, look at the whole bill and how much energy the car actually needs each week. Our guide to home EV charging costs covers the everyday sums, while the smart-charging bill audit explains how half-hourly electricity readings can reveal charges that a car or charger app misses.
The problem with relying on public rapid chargers
Rapid charging is useful when you are miles from home. Depending on it every day is a different proposition. The Zapmap Charging Price Index, updated on 7 October, places September’s weighted pay-as-you-go average at 79p/kWh for chargers of 50kW or more.
At 79p/kWh, the Model 3 costs £16.53 per 100 miles on its official consumption figure. Compare that with £12.04 for the Clio hybrid, £14.76 for the petrol Golf and £14.11 for the diesel Octavia. Buying rapid electricity at the average price can make an efficient petrol, hybrid or diesel car cheaper to fuel.
Public charging is not one uniform price, however. Zapmap’s average for chargers rated from 3kW to 49kW was 54p/kWh. At that rate, the Model 3 calculation improves to roughly 885 miles for £100. Network membership, off-peak offers and individual sites can make a further difference.
This matters particularly if parking at home means leaving a car on the street. Without a driveway, a suitable workplace facility or an affordable nearby charger, the tempting 7p or 8p figures may be irrelevant to your routine. Our report on the driveway charging divide looks at the practical and financial gap between those households.
There is a measurement wrinkle, too. Official WLTP electric consumption is calculated from electricity recharged from the mains during a standardised test; that includes test-procedure charging losses. A public DC charger delivers energy differently because it bypasses the car’s onboard AC charger. So the public figures here make a like-for-like comparison using the published consumption rating, not a promise about what a rapid charger will bill on any particular trip.
What the petrol, diesel and hybrid figures reveal
The most striking combustion result belongs to the Renault Clio E-Tech full hybrid. At its official 65.7mpg, £100 of petrol works out at 830 miles. The Nissan Qashqai e-POWER gets close with 811 miles at a rated 64.2mpg in Acenta Premium form.
The Qashqai uses its petrol engine to generate electricity, while an electric motor drives the wheels. It still needs petrol from a filling station, not electricity from a plug, so it belongs in the full-hybrid group.
The Škoda Octavia 2.0 TDI also returns 64.2mpg in the chosen SE Technology specification, yet its £100 distance is 709 miles. It matches the Qashqai for official mpg but loses ground because diesel is dearer per litre in this October snapshot.
Kia’s Sportage makes an instructive comparison within one model family. The 147PS petrol Pure manual returns 503 miles per £100; the 235PS self-charging hybrid Pure stretches that to 637 — another 134 miles on the same petrol budget. They have different power outputs and gearboxes, so this is a comparison between two versions, not a controlled test of hybrid hardware alone.
Mild hybrids tell a subtler story. Ford quotes up to 52.3mpg for the 125PS manual Puma, worth 661 miles per £100 at these prices. Volkswagen’s Golf Match 1.5 eTSI 150 DSG reaches 686 miles; our separate Golf Life 1.5 TSI 115 petrol manages 677.
Those two Golfs do not share identical engines and transmissions. The narrow gap illustrates why buyers should compare the specific variant rather than assume a mild-hybrid badge guarantees a major saving. Regenerative braking and electrical assistance can help, but the benefit depends on how the car is driven.
How much faith should you put in WLTP?
A common laboratory test is useful because it puts different cars on a consistent footing. The catch is that a January motorway commute, a summer school run and a loaded holiday journey are not the same test.
Cold batteries, cabin heating, wet roads and sustained motorway speeds can raise an EV’s electricity use. Petrol and diesel economy also changes with speed, traffic, weather and load. A full hybrid may be especially economical in stop-start driving, where there is more braking energy to recover.
Take the Model 3 again. If it used an illustrative 20% more electricity per mile than its WLTP rating, the 8p result would fall from 5,975 to around 4,979 miles. At 79p, it would drop to approximately 504 miles. This is a sensitivity calculation, not a Tech Torque Media winter road test.
Owners should put greater weight on several months of their own receipts and efficiency readings than on one unusually good trip. Our Peugeot E-3008 long-term ownership review adds useful context about seasonal efficiency and the difference between brochure figures and everyday use.
How the £100 figures were calculated
For petrol, diesel and non-plug-in hybrids, the formula is: (100 ÷ UK imperial mpg) × 4.54609 litres per imperial gallon × pump price per litre. This gives the cost of 100 miles.
For EVs, a published kWh/100km figure is multiplied by 1.609344 to obtain kWh/100 miles, then multiplied by the electricity price. The cost-per-100-mile figure is calculated before display rounding. Divide £100 by cost per mile to find the theoretical distance. Figures already expressed in kWh/100 miles or mi/kWh are converted accordingly.
We have not added an extra blanket charging-loss allowance to the mains-based WLTP figures: doing so would double-count energy that the official test already incorporates. Real charging sessions and dashboard readings will still vary.
And this is a driving-energy comparison only. Purchase or finance payments, depreciation, insurance, tax, tyres, servicing, repairs, charging equipment and household standing charges can change which car is cheapest to own. These numbers are a starting point for a buying decision, not the whole answer.
Tech Torque Verdict
For a household with reliable overnight charging at 7p or 8p/kWh, an efficient EV has an enormous advantage on energy costs. The Model 3 leads this particular group on its official consumption, but the Corsa Electric, Kia EV3 and Enyaq also make a strong showing.
Rely heavily on rapid chargers at the September 79p average and the calculation turns against several EVs. A Clio or Qashqai full hybrid can offer predictable fuel economy without a driveway, while a carefully chosen diesel can remain appealing for lengthy motorway work.
Fuel and electricity are only part of what a car costs. The choice still comes down to the particular vehicles you can afford, the journeys you make and whether those low advertised charging rates are genuinely available to you.
£100 goes furthest when efficiency and energy price work together. The expensive mistake is comparing a cheap home-charging headline with a car that will rarely get to use it.
