Just how expensive — or cheap — is it to own and run a petrol-powered car compared with one of these newfangled electric vehicles that are slowly making their way onto South Africa’s roads?
Well, I decided to crunch some numbers and attempt find a definitive answer.
R3.26/kWh is my base line if you buy electricity in Johannesburg – though who really knows what the true figure is, because the formulae have become so complicated?
A litre of petrol costs around R22/l and gives you about 8.9kWh equivalent when converted to electricity (you can reference the original article here for how this all works – energy is energy is energy is the short answer).
What we need to remember is this: a 1kWh battery will give you 1kW for one hour. And when flattened completely, it will take a 1kW charger one hour to charge it back up. This assumes perfect charging, but there is a drop-off when the battery starts getting full as the charger has to work harder to ram more electrons into the battery, slowing things down.
Think of it like pressure – as the battery gets fuller, the pressure of the electrons in it gets higher and that pushes back against the charger (which can’t increase its pressure as it’s running at maximum already), so the flow rate slows down a bit.
But for illustration, let’s assume we live in a perfect world. For example, a 90kW charger will take round 40 seconds to charge your 1kWhr battery, which is nice and fast.
Dinosaur food
Right. Back to petrol. Go juice. Big-bang liquid. Dead dinosaur food. That stuff.
Let’s take a 50l tank for consideration. Fifty litres x 8.9kWh (rounded up to 9kWh) means you have a big chunk of energy of around 450kWh in your tank when converted to electricity equivalent.
Let’s assume further that you achieve a fuel consumption rate of 10l/100km. From your 50l tank, you will be able to drive 500km (expending all the 450kWh of electrons in the process). Which means you spend 0.9kWh/km that you travel, on average. Bank that for now.
TCS | We test drive South Africa’s cheapest electric car
Let’s now look at an EV. Let’s say it’s a Volvo EX30 with a 69kWh battery pack. That’s a lot less than the 450kWh I have in my petrol-powered car. Yet the Volvo has a claimed range of 440km. Let’s assume a more realistic 380km, based on what I have read (I haven’t driven one yet).
It means the Volvo does 0.18kWh/km travelled. The Volvo is five times more efficient than the petrol car. But why? Efficiency is where the big differences between internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and EVs lie.
It costs you 69xR3.26 to fill the Volvo, or R224.94. This is at home, in Joburg, and not on a public charger, which will be more expensive. Rand/km travelled is thus R224.94/380 = 60c.
It costs R22x50l to fill our ICE vehicle, or R1 100 – and you can’t do this at home. Rand/km travelled is thus R2.20 at a fuel consumption rate of 10l/100km. Let’s adjust that down to 7l/100km for something that is not a Porsche in terms of performance – this reduces your cost to R1.55/km.
Let’s say you do 10 000km/year. Savings? R9 700 on fuel, or R800/month.
Wonks with bigger brains than me will point out the lower running costs from services – EVs generally have little to no need to be serviced. From brake pads to oil, the costs are substantially lower with an EV. Sure, we have service plans on cars in South Africa to take care of these, but make no mistake: you are still paying for these through your nose.
But wait, I hear you say, what about insurance costs? It turns out there’s a whole other can of worms.
When someone crashes into you because they were paying more attention to WhatsApp than to your newly acquired EV baby, you’ll be glad they had insurance to cover their obligations in fixing your EV. Right?
If, like four out of 10 drivers on our roads, they haven’t bothered with insurance, let’s take a look at what the insurance on your EV is likely to look like.
Risk premiums
This is so far out of my comfort zone that I unashamedly turned to someone who actually knows a thing or two about the world of thrills and excitement that is modern insurance. Paul Hughes is a specialist in insurance and what he has to say about it might surprise you.
As it happens right now in South Africa, he believes EVs carry reasonably similar premiums when compared with ICE vehicles. This is going to change, however, and the reasons are based on a number of unknowns that become known over time.
Read: South Africa bets big on EVs
The value is important to understand. Predictably, the biggest difference between an EV and an ICE vehicle from an insurance point of view is the cost of the batteries. In your ICE it’s not a deal breaker; in your EV it just might be.
This is mainly because battery packs cannot be repaired in a similar fashion to damaged bits in an engine. Replacement values for even minor damage to battery packs are thus baked into the insurance cake and this means that claims could be higher for an accident in an EV than an equivalent accident in an ICE car (if the battery pack is involved). This means possibly more risk for the insurer.
It makes sense, but of course what is unknown is how often this is likely to happen. Insurance is a self-levelling playing field in that if the risk is higher than the premiums charged to cover the risk, the insurer goes out of business. If the risk is lower than the premiums charged, the insurer will run a surplus, which in theory gets passed back to the insured.
This can devolve into a separate debate entirely – I haven’t seen any thin insurers recently myself – but that’s not the point. The point is that in an ideal world, the levels of risk are known and accounted for accurately in the premiums charged. However, there simply aren’t enough EVs in the market to understand fully what this risk is. For example, considerable weight is placed on driver experience, and Hughes makes the point that because the performance of EVs can rival ICE-based sports cars, EV drivers may not appreciate how to handle the newfound power and acceleration.
Inherent in this is the risk of a crash.
Good news (for now)
Then again, early EV owners are typically the well-heeled and older segment of the market, who may have a lower risk profile. Also, the risk of theft is quite low compared to ICE vehicles.
The good news for now, though is that EVs, are still largely being treated by insurance companies – for now – like they would insure petrol-powered cars. As insurers gather more data, premiums may change (up or down).
Read: EV charging stations in South Africa: expansion paves way for electric car boom
In summary, then, if you exclude the higher cost you’ll pay upfront for an EV compared to an equivalent ICE model – thanks in large part to the higher taxes South Africans pay for EVs – the message is clear: electric wins hands down. They are simply cheaper to own and run. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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