EV Charging Cost & Route Planner

Home charging mode helps you find the cheapest or lowest-carbon time to charge overnight. Enter your charging window (e.g. 10pm to 6am) and the tool finds the best hour to start based on benchmark electricity prices.

Journey mode estimates whether you'll need a public rapid charging stop on your trip, which charger to use, how long the stop will take, and what it'll cost. It factors in your starting battery, EV model efficiency, route distance, and charger pricing.

Most UK EV drivers should check both modes: plan your home charge the night before, then run the journey planner for any trips over 100 miles.

Postcode: Your location determines which electricity pricing region you're in and which charging stations are on your route.

EV model: We support 9 popular UK models including Tesla Model 3, Model Y, Nissan Leaf, Hyundai Ioniq 5, VW ID.4, BMW i4, Polestar 2, Kia EV6, and MG4. Each has different battery size, charging speed, and energy efficiency that directly affect costs.

Battery levels: Set your current charge (what you have now) and target charge (what you want to arrive with). For long journeys, arriving at 20% gives you a safety buffer. For daily driving, 80% is usually enough and better for long-term battery health.

Use our True Cost of Owning a Car tool to see how charging costs fit into your overall vehicle expenses.

Lowest Cost: Finds the cheapest charging option. For home charging, this picks the lowest-price hour in your window. For journeys, this selects the cheapest rapid charger on your route. Best for drivers focused on saving money.

Low Carbon: Minimises CO₂ emissions by charging when the electricity grid is cleanest (more wind and nuclear, less gas). Early morning is usually lowest carbon. Best for environmentally conscious drivers.

Fastest: Minimises total charging time by choosing the highest-power charger available (up to your EV's maximum charge rate). This may cost more but gets you back on the road quickly. Best for time-pressed drivers.

The tool calculates all three strategies and shows them side by side so you can see the trade-offs.

After calculating, you'll see a summary dashboard with total cost, carbon impact, charging time, and (for journeys) distance. Below that, each charging stop shows the exact time window, energy added, cost, and carbon emissions.

The Compare Strategies section shows all three options (cost, carbon, speed) side by side so you can make an informed choice. Sometimes the cheapest option is only £1-2 less than the fastest — in that case, speed may be worth it.

Export your plan as a CSV to reference during your journey or share with family members. For daily commute planning, try our Commute Cost Calculator.

Rapid motorway charging is convenient but costs 65-79p per kWh — often 3-10 times more than home charging. On a standard UK tariff (28p/kWh), charging 30 kWh at home costs £8.40. The same charge at a motorway rapid station costs £19.50-23.70.

If you switch to an off-peak tariff like Octopus Go (7.5p/kWh overnight), that 30 kWh home charge drops to just £2.25 — saving over £20 compared to motorway charging.

The practical lesson: maximise your home charge before any journey. Even if you need a 15-minute top-up en route, starting with a full home charge can save £10-20 per trip compared to relying on public chargers.

See our Standing Charge Impact Calculator to understand how your fixed daily electricity cost affects the true price of home charging.

Charging speed is limited by whichever is lower: the charger's output or your EV's maximum acceptance rate. A 350 kW ultra-rapid charger won't charge a Nissan Leaf any faster than 100 kW because that's the Leaf's limit.

Conversely, a Tesla Model 3 (250 kW max) on a 50 kW charger will charge much slower than its potential. This is why the tool matches your EV model to available chargers — sometimes a slightly more expensive charger with higher power saves you 20-30 minutes of waiting.

Charging also slows above 80% battery level. That's why most EV drivers charge to 80% rather than 100% — the last 20% can take as long as the first 80%.

The UK electricity grid's carbon intensity varies from about 94 to 236 gCO₂ per kWh depending on the generation mix at any given time. Wind turbines produce near-zero carbon, while gas plants produce much more.

The lowest-carbon times are typically early morning (1am-6am) when demand is low and wind generation makes up a larger share. The highest-carbon times are late afternoon to early evening (4pm-7pm) when gas plants ramp up to meet peak demand.

By charging during low-carbon hours, you can reduce your EV's carbon footprint by 30-50%. The tool uses UK National Grid carbon intensity forecast data to identify the cleanest charging windows for your schedule.