The Innes family From Sydney transitioned to an EV a year ago. Their vehicle of choice was a Hyundai Ioniq 5. It's their go-to car for local errands, but they've also used it for several road trips, even carrying four bikes!  They have covered 9,180 kilometres so far.

They have a 15-kw solar system and also a retail plan that offers free access to the grid during the middle of the day on weekends.
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Mr. Innes is keeping close track of all their charging costs to see how much money they're saving with the EV.

Cost of power
However, while charging at home accounts for 80% of the power used it only accounts for 30% of the total costs spent.  This is primarily due to taking advantage of excess solar energy and free grid charging on weekends.

Supercharging, while only accounting for 12% of power consumed, accounts for 70% of the total costs incurred!  

Comparison to ICE vehicle
So how does this compare to the Innes family’s previous Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle?

The ICE vehicle would have cost over $2,000 in fuel compared to the $192 for the EV, a staggering 12.1x uplift.

​However, when the cost and kilometres associated with supercharging are excluded, this difference between the EV and the ICE vehicle increases to a 42.2x difference!

The above analysis does not take into account maintenance and servicing costs which would increase the cost gap between the EV and ICE vehicle even further.  EV’s have around 20 moving parts compared to over 2,000 for a petrol vehicle resulting in far lower service and maintenance costs.

Final word
The average passenger vehicle in Australia travels just 33.2 km per day meaning the vast majority of charging could conveniently happen at home.  So the experience of the Innes family is likely to be one that could replicated by many households around the country, even those without solar who can now take advantage of retail plans offering free access to the grid for charging during certain times of the day.