In our State of fleet charging: H1 2026 report, drawing on tens of thousands of home and public charging sessions across the Rightcharge platform, one trend stood out above the rest. Home charging keeps getting cheaper. Public charging keeps getting more expensive. In this blog, we're breaking down what's driving that gap and what it means for your fleet's total cost of ownership (TCO).
Home charging is cheaper than ever
Home charging held its place as the lowest-cost way to charge an EV and it's getting cheaper as more drivers move onto the right tariff.
Get drivers onto a dedicated EV tariff: home charging averaged 23.8p/kWh in H1 2026, down from 24.5p/kWh the year before. Leading smart tariffs now offer rates as low as 6p/kWh, a fraction of public rates.
Small changes add up fleet-wide: a driver moving from a standard tariff to a dedicated EV tariff cuts their per-kWh cost significantly, and across a fleet that difference compounds fast.
Public charging is where the bill grows
Public charging isn't one price, and for fleets relying on it, where and how a driver charges matters as much as how often.
Operator choice changes the bill: across the busiest charge point operators, cost ranges from 55p/kWh up to 91.5p/kWh. Steering drivers towards the lower-cost operators is one of the simplest ways to control spend.
Speed carries a premium: advertised rates put rapid charging at 50kW and above at 68.9p/kWh, against 49.3p/kWh for slow charging at 22kW and below. In practice, drivers' actual sessions ran higher than that: 82.6p/kWh for rapid (DC) charging and 68.5p/kWh for slow (AC) charging. For a driver who can't charge at home, the savings come from habits more than hardware.
The imbalance is growing: public charging now makes up close to 70% of total spend while accounting for only 41% of the energy consumed.
Protecting your total cost of ownership
The EV cost advantage over petrol and diesel is still there in H1 2026, but it's narrower than it was, and it's not guaranteed.
Know your blended rate: at a blended rate of 46.9p/kWh and 3.5 miles per kWh, the average fleet spends around 13p per mile on energy, against 15p for diesel and 17p for petrol. Track this number, not any single session.
Watch the margin, not just the average: the fleet-wide average hides a wide spread. A driver charging at home runs at roughly 7p a mile; a driver relying entirely on the public network runs at closer to 23p a mile, more expensive than petrol. A fleet leaning hard on public charging can lose the cost advantage altogether, even while the fleet-wide average still looks healthy.
Conclusion
In H1 2026, the fleets protecting their EV cost advantage are the ones managing where and when drivers charge, not just which vehicles they buy.
Want the full breakdown, including energy mix, carbon data and driver behaviour benchmarks?
Download the full State of fleet charging: H1 2026 report here.