We saved over R1,100 in a month by switching from petrol to electric

We saved roughly R1,141 in monthly vehicle running costs by replacing our petrol car with an electric model.

I recently traded in our petrol-powered Kia Sonet 1.5 LX CVT for a demo 2023 GWM Ora 03 GT electric vehicle (EV) with roughly 12,000km on the clock for less than R500,000.

In the month since taking delivery of the Ora, we have covered roughly 1,155km, which was roughly in line with what we would usually put on the Sonet’s clock.

The Kia Sonet 1.5 LX was fairly fuel efficient considering South Africa’s average of 7.4 litres per 100 kilometres.

When driving in the city, we typically consumed roughly 6.25 litres per 100 kilometres, which is about 16 kilometres per litre.

Covering 1,155km in the Sonet would have required roughly 72 litres of petrol.

Based on the inland unleaded 95 petrol price in April 2025, that would have cost roughly R1,557.

The Ora 03 GT’s official consumption figure is 18.2kWh per 100 kilometres or 5.49 kilometres per kWh.

However, during the period of analysis, I was achieving closer to 16.5kWh per 100 kilometres.

The Ora’s battery consumed about 191kWh of energy during the month. 91.43kWh of this energy came from slow AC home charging.

In our case, most of this was consumed on the City of Tshwane Block 2 tariff of R3.64 per kWh. Some of the consumption was also at the lower R3.11 Block 1 tariff, but for simplicity’s sake, we assumed the “worst case” for energy charges.

Therefore, we calculated this charging would have cost about R332.65 on the Block 2 tariff.

Just 11.48kWh of energy consumed came from more expensive paid fast AC and DC public charging stations. The typical cost of fast charging is R7.35, which works out to roughly R83.38 with our consumption.

The remaining 99.57kWh came from free AC public charging stations in the parking lots of two malls in Pretoria.

One of these is between our home and my office, while the other is at the closest mall to our home. During most of the time spent at these malls while charging, we went on our regular grocery shopping expeditions.

50% minimum savings without free charging

The total cost of recharging the Ora over a month was roughly R416.03 — R1,140.61 less than it would have cost to refill the Sonet to cover the same distances.

This difference is roughly the same as how much more we are paying in vehicle instalments on the Ora.

If we did not have any free charging sessions and replaced all the energy consumed from free chargers with electricity at home, the total cost of the recharging would have been R778.46.

That works out to just about half the price of petrol needed for the Sonet.

It should be emphasised that the Ora boasts much better performance and features than the Sonet.

MyBroadband has previously found that the per-kilometre running cost of EVs was about a third to half the price of a similar petrol-powered model.

The table below compares the cost of recharging our Ora EV to cover 1,155km with how much it would have cost using petrol in our sold Kia Sonet.