Public charging costs reduce for first time in 12 months, says Mina

Electric vehicle (EV) public charging costs came down for the first time in over a year to 75p per kWh, according to Mina.

The EV payment specialist company’s EV Snapshot for June showed that the overall average cost to charge both cars and vans in public has dropped from 76p per kWh in April to 75p now, but for cars specifically, the average now sits at 73p per kWh.

The drop is only small, but Mina thinks it is significant.

Since Mina started publicly reporting on figures in June 2022, it is the first time there’s been any reduction in the average cost of charging.

Ashley Tate, Mina chief  executive, said: “These first indications hopefully point to the start of what will be a more dramatic change of direction in costs this summer, after watching them inexorably rise for the past year. 

“But it’s worth putting in a caveat here: it may be just drivers getting smarter at charging and using slightly cheaper networks.

“So we’ll have to wait for another month or two to really get a clear idea of what’s going on.”

For the same month, Mina figures suggest domestic prices have remained at the same level they have for the past four months: 32p per kWh.

However, this is mostly down to the effect of the Energy Price Cap and Energy Price Guarantee setting the price of domestic electricity and so it may be some time before energy prices are low enough to bring this average figure down.

In a seperate public charger pricing report, the AA's most recent data shows the cost of off-peak slow public charging has dropped more than 10% in the past month to 33p/kWh.

Peak and off-peak rates for faster chargers continue to soar, however.