Data from our January fuel and electricity costs has revealed a fascinating insight into the way drivers charge at home, as well as revealing that fuel costs are starting to creep up.

Our analysis from Homecharge shows that drivers took on an average of £5.85 worth of electricity every time they charged at home in January (closely tallying with the amount they used in the previous four months).

With the average cost of home electricity 24p per kWh, that means each home charge equates to around 24-25kWh of power.

So what does this mean for the way drivers use their chargers at home, and what does it mean for your business?

Take a typical family EV, such as the Kia EV3, which has a 58kWh battery. If a driver were down to around 35% of battery charge (20kWh) when they got home, but wanted to charge to the manufacturer’s recommended 80% level (46kWh), they’d need just over the average amount that drivers typically draw from a home charge.

How long would they have to charge at home to get this amount of replenishment? Well, all our data comes from smart, connected wallboxes which typically deliver 6-7kW of power in normal charging states. So drivers really only look to be plugged in for about 3.5 hours at home each time, adding about 80 miles of range if their EV can do about 3 miles per kWh.

This provides some interesting insights into behaviour and tariffs.

Drivers are clearly being selective and planning when they plug in at home, taking on the power they need, and only that. In total time, we can see through Allstar Homecharge data that these vehicles are plugged in for around 10 hours on average, but drivers are choosing to only allow the vehicle to charge for less than half that.

They’re not charging for many hours from 0-100% every time – it’s more a case of ‘little and often’.

However, the fact that the average cost of domestic charging remains at 24p suggests there’s a big missed opportunity here. Needing short charging times means they should often be able to access really cheap off-peak tariffs, as low as 4p, which tend to be offered in short bursts during the night.

Getting drivers onto these tariffs and charging behaviours could reduce a business’s charging costs by a sixth. Allstar Homecharge can help you achieve this by tracking costs and showing where you could make savings.

Over on the forecourt, January saw fuel prices rising across the board: petrol was up by 2.6p per litre, nearly doubling the amount it rose from October-December, while diesel was more then 5p per litre higher than it was in October.

With the situation in Ukraine fluid, and Trump’s tariffs an ongoing factor in global trade, predicting costs for the next few months is fraught with uncertainty – but we’ll be tracking them and reporting on this.

We also aim to answer questions such as:

• How much do drivers really charge at home?
• What’s the benefit of paying more for higher speed public charging?
• Where are the cheapest places to get petrol and diesel in the UK?
• How much more does premium fuel really cost?

To find out more about Allstar and for more news and insights, visit here.