Are electric cars still cheaper to run than petrol cars, even with rising energy prices?

The short answer? Yes.

With rising petrol prices dominating the news over the past year, and energy prices now firmly in the headlines too, it can be tricky to decipher whether you’ll be better off switching to an electric car right now or not.

But fear not, we’re here to answer a question a lot of customers have been asking: is it cheaper to run an electric car than a petrol one, even with the latest rise in energy prices?

We’ve taken an example of an electric car that has a comparable petrol equivalent to explain exactly how costs of running an EV compare with its petrol counterpart, and how much you could save by getting this particular car through salary sacrifice compared with a personal lease.

How much cheaper is the Vauxhall Corsa-e compared with the petrol version?

Here we’ve compared the total cost of driving and fuelling the electric Vauxhall Corsa-e SE Premium, via salary sacrifice, with the petrol version (the Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 SE Edition) on a personal lease. The salary sacrifice package is based on someone within the 20% UK tax bracket.

We should point out that this assumes you're charging the Corsa-e at home, using the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff which lets you charge much more cheaply overnight, when energy is cheapest and greenest.

Here’s how much you could save getting an electric car with salary sacrifice overall, despite energy prices going up.

The cost to charge your electric car in this example is based on the off-peak energy rates you’d pay with Intelligent Octopus Go, the smartest EV tariff on the market. As you can see, you’d make the biggest savings if you charge your car at home overnight when energy is at its cheapest and greenest.

So increased energy prices haven’t changed the fact that when you take into account the total cost of driving, maintaining and fuelling your car, it’s a no brainer to make the switch to electric with salary sacrifice.

And we haven't even mentioned how easy it is to make the switch with EV salary sacrifice. You get the whole EV package from Octopus. Car, charging, energy. Find out more about EV salary sacrifice here.