One of the biggest perks of electric vehicles is the fact that they are so much cheaper to fuel than the traditional petrol or diesel car. But what is the true cost to hire a Ford Mustang Mach-E, for example?
Following a report recently released by ZapMap, I have decided to have a look into the world of public and private EV charging to see how the cost compares to fuelling a Ford Mustang Mach 1. Both are similar sized cars, so hopefully it will be a fair comparison.
The Costs of Dinosaur Juice – Laying Down the Rule
Before we get into the various costs of charging the Ford Mustang Mach-e, let’s have look at the petrol version, the dinosaur juice guzzling Ford Mustang Mach 1. I don’t know about people reading this blog, but it has been a long time since I used a petrol pump. This should be interesting.
Here I will be using the average UK-wide petrol price as published by the RAC on their website at the time of writing this blog post. That’s pretty fair, right? I will also look at the price of both unleaded and super unleaded in order to get a fuller picture (like comparing the cost of rapid and ultra-rapid charging, you could say).
The Monetary Cost of Fossil Fuelling a Ford Mustang Mach 1
There are clearly much more serious and damaging costs to using fossil fuel. However, that whole can of worms is worthy of its own blog post. Here I will be specifically looking at the costs in terms of your bank balance to keep the vehicle on the road.
The average UK-wide price of unleaded at the time of writing is 143.76p. If you look at super unleaded, that is an average price of 158.66p. A Ford Mustang Mach 1 has a reputed range of 288 miles on a full tank. Other sources quote anywhere between 225 and 304 miles, so I am happy with the figure of 288. All this from a 61 litre fuel tank.
Now comes the maths bit. To fill up the tank at 143.76p per litre will set you back £87.69 to fill the car up. This works out at 30.45p per mile. If using super unleaded at 156.66p per litre, you will be set back £96.78 in filling up the tank. This equates to 33.60p per mile in fuel.
Is The Cost to Hire a Ford Mustang Mach-E Better?
For a fair comparison, I will look at the price of the two most popular energy companies for home energy provision for EV drivers, and the two most popular public charging companies.
Although the Ford Mustang Mach-e has a WLTP range of 372 miles, I am going to keep things fair by using the real world range of around 260 miles. After all, if you hire a Ford Mustang Mach-e, this is what you should expect.
I will also be using the usable battery capacity of the Ford Mustang Mach-e of 88kW rather than the full battery size of 98.7kW. Again, this is to make the comparison as fair as possible.
Private Home Charging
As with many energy companies, you get an off-peak rate and a peak rate. I will be making a calculation of using either of these rates exclusively to give you an accurate range in the pricing. The costs will be for charging a vehicle from 0-100%.
Octopus Energy is the first up and it is the one most associated with electric vehicles. You can be sure to see them represented once again at the Everything Electric shows this year (formerly the Fully Charged Show Live). On one of their most popular tariffs, electricity costs 9p per kWh on the off-peak rate and 31.21p per kWh on the daytime rate.
To fully charge the vehicle at 9p it will cost you £7.92 to fill up. This works out at 3p per mile. At the daytime rate of 31.21p per kWh it will cost £27.46 to fully fill the battery up. The mileage cost at the peak daytime rate is 11p per mile. Still a fantastic rate.
EDF Energy is the second company that we are going to look at. Their GoElectric 35 rate is just 4.5p per kWh for off-peak charging and 34.34p per kWh for the daytime rate. To fully charge the battery on the off-peak rate will cost £3.96 which works out at 1.5p per mile. Daytime charging will cost you £30.22 for a full battery from empty, working out at 11.6p per mile.
Public Charging When You Hire a Ford Mustang Mach-E
I have looked at the two most highly rated public charging networks in the UK to get the figures for this section. These two being Fastned and MFG. These aren’t the widest spread charging networks, but they have been independently voted the best by the general public according to ZapMap.
Starting with Fastned. This company offers charge points with speeds that vary between 43kW and 350kW. The price per kWh on this network is 73p per kWh. This means that to fill a Ford Mustang Mach-e from empty to 100% would cost £64.24. In turn, this works out as 24.7p per mile.
The MFG network offers charging speeds between 150kW and 350kW and they charge 79p per kWh. This means that a full battery charge will cost £69.52. The cost per mile is 26.7p.
How it All Adds Up
There are many ways to look at different figures of fuel and energy providers. In this blog post I have tried to make the comparison as fair as possible to provide a real overview of what you can expect to pay when you hire a Ford Mustang Mach-e.
The best figure to compare these two vehicles is to look at the price per mile of each representative fuel. Pricing at public charge points is well known to be high. However, even at a cost of 26.7p per mile for the more expensive of the two examples, the cheapest price per mile of the petrol vehicle is a whopping 33.6p. 100 miles on the more expensive charging is about £7 cheaper than the average price of petrol.
Now consider that most people charge their vehicles at home overnight. On the EDF off-peak rate, this equates to a saving of over £32 for every 100 miles. This is a real eye-opening statistic.
*All information correct as at 22/02/2024
