South African electric car charging — Home vs public costs and charging speeds

The prices electric vehicle (EV) owners in South Africa pay to top up their cars’ batteries can vary wildly depending on their energy source.

Using your home connection is the most affordable way to charge an EV, our analysis found.

While residential electricity tariffs have increased drastically over the past few years, the amount of battery range provided per rand spent is still substantially cheaper than when filling up with petrol or diesel in a similar internal combustion engine model.

Calculating how much a household will spend recharging an electric car is complex for several reasons.

Firstly, electricity prices not only differ depending on the distributor providing electricity to a household, it can also vary from one tariff plan to the next.

In addition, the average per-kWh cost of electricity will be different for households with lower and higher monthly consumptions, even if they are on the same tariff plan under the same distributor.

This is because South Africa’s electricity is priced on an Incline Block Tariff structure, wherein electricity tariffs increase as monthly usage exceeds certain thresholds.

In addition, the amount of electricity you will need to run an EV over a month will vary from one model to the next.

Just like petrol or diesel cars, EVs have varying efficiency levels.

To illustrate the potential cost of recharging an EV at home in South Africa, we calculated average prices per kWh using Eskom’s average monthly household consumption of 900kWh.

We then factored in Numbeo’s average daily commute of 44km for South African motorists and used the energy efficiency figures of the three best-selling EVs for 2023 to calculate rough figures.

With these assumptions, we calculated the average household in South Africa’s major metros would pay between about R659 and R761 to top up the top-selling Volvo XC40 Recharge with enough energy to cover 1,320km per month.

The table below shows estimates of how much EV owners will spend on home charging their cars with enough range for a month in South Africa.

At home, your expenditure will not vary based on how fast you recharge.

Whether using a regular socket with a 2.3kW alternating current (AC) output or an 11kW AC home charger on a three-phase connection, the price-per-kWh will remain the same.

The only variations will be for those customers on a time-of-use tariff, where charging during peak electricity demand periods will be more expensive.

Public charging substantially more expensive

When it comes to public charging, customers generally pay more for faster charging speeds using direct current (DC) chargers than when using a slower AC public charger.

In general, the tariffs at all these charging stations will be more expensive than when topping up at home.

The reason for this is simple. Charge point operators (CPOs) like GridCars, Rubicon, and Chargify invest substantially in building out EV charging infrastructure.

To be viable businesses, they must profit from the energy they sell to EV drivers, which means they will charge a premium over the tariffs they must pay for the distributor’s electricity.

In certain instances, they might also have negotiated a deal with the property owner on which they built the charger, which entails a share of the electricity sold.

There are rare exceptions where a shopping centre — like Brooklyn Mall and Woodlands Boulevard in Pretoria — might offer free charging as a way to incentivise customers to use their premises.

In most cases, however, the electricity charges currently available at public charging stations are R5.88 on an AC charge point, and either R7.00 or R7.35 for DC charge points.

The table below compares the typical fees for topping up an EV battery using public from South Africa’s two biggest public CPOs.

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