The Driveway Divide

The driveway divide separates those who have the option of charging at home from those who don't. Can you park on your property and connect to your home's mains electricity? Nearly everyone who has a driveway charges their EV at home, nearly always with a dedicated home charging unit.

Contents

• Tariffs
• Convenience
• Solutions
• Does the driveway divide matter?

Tariffs

Home charging tariffs can be as low as 7p/kWh, while the Zapmap price index for slow/fast public charging sits at 51p/kWh and even the lowest public charging tariffs are higher than the domestic price cap of 26p/kWh.

With petrol at 135p/l, the per-mile equivalent EV charging tariff is around 54p/kWh (assuming, as a rule of thumb, efficiencies of 4 miles per kilowatt-hour and 10 miles per litre).

As such, the driveway divide means the haves get mileage much cheaper than petrol, while, depending on the efficiency of their car and the price of local charging, some have-nots are dependent on charging that costs more than fuel.

Why is home charging so much cheaper?

• VAT is 20% on public charging and only 5% on domestic electricity. This disparity is sometimes called a "pavement tax" and campaigns like Fair Charge aim to change this.
• The capital expenditure for public charging is considerable and is borne by the public chargepoint operator (perhaps with some subsidy). In comparison, home charging units are funded upfront by the user (for something like £1000).
• Price competition is far stronger between domestic electricity suppliers than public chargepoint operators. This is because you have the power to switch your home electricity supplier if they charge more than alternatives, whereas public chargepoint options are limited by distance and convenience.
• Adrian Fielden-Gray of chargepoint operator Be.EV has summarised the reasons public charging costs so much: "Public EV charging prices reflect the realities of building a reliable, future-proof network — not profiteering."

Convenience

It's not just cheaper tariffs that EV drivers with driveways benefit from. They are also assured of a spot to charge every night, and they don't face a walk to their car in the morning or a return journey to a charger. The Electric Vehicle Association's EV Charging Survey 2024 found that charging anxiety was higher among those without driveways.

Proposed solutions

There are two ways to address the driveway divide: bring people across the driveway divide to make the group of drivers with access to home charging bigger; or reduce the size of the chasm between home charging and public charging.

Crossing the driveway divide

Cross-pavement channels are designed for the very purpose of allowing those without driveways to access their home energy supply. However, they are not available everywhere and have issues of their own. For more information, please see our dedicated page, which also includes information on cable protectors and other means of passing cables between houses and the road.

Narrowing the driveway divide

Drivers in households like flats above the ground floor are unlikely ever to have access to charging on their home supply. Ideas for narrowing the driveway divide include:

• Equalising VAT on home charging and public charging, either by reducing VAT on public charging or raising VAT on home charging.
• Improving smart charging and time-of-use tariffs to make public charging overnight more competitive with home charging.
• Improve price competition in the chargepoint operator market, by breaking local monopolies, or through technological improvement that allows people to take their tariff with them wherever they go, similar to mobile network carriers. Evidently, this would upset chargepoint operators, but lower prices would suit users.

Does the driveway divide matter?

Ask someone keen to reduce their carbon footprint who feels dependent on petrol because they have no driveway. Now ask someone apathetic about climate change who feels dependent on petrol because they have no driveway.

Statistics about who chooses EVs suggest the driveway divide matters

Based on the above estimates, in 2024 there were roughly 16 households which relied on fuel cars for every household with an EV.

However, for those without driveways, this figure was higher, at around 19 fuel-car-only households for every EV household, in contrast to 15 fuel-car-only households for every EV households when it comes to those with driveways.

This suggests that the driveway divide is having some effect on drivers' choices between a fuel car or an EV.

When analysing the proportion of EV drivers who charge on street, it is important to remember that those without driveways are much more likely not to have a car at all.

The Electric Vehicle Association suggest the driveway divide matters

EVA England's 2025 report Key Steps to Driving Demand contains 3 key recommendations on the issues of the "charging divide" and discusses the risk that those without driveways pay more to transition to EVs.

Even The Observer suggest the driveway divide matters!

Observer columnist Ros Coward discussed her decision to transition back to a fuel car after her experiences driving an EV without a driveway. The Observer has been generally positive about EVs, so this was a notable article.

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The driveway divide has the potential to cause resentment about decarbonisation in general because it plays into the perception that green technology is only accessible to those with financial privilege. A 2024 survey by IPPR showed that higher earners are far more positive about EVs. This means the driveway divide matters as a barrier to mitigating the UK's greenhouse gas emissions. More information is available on our sustainable travel page.

The government's report of 2022

In 2022, the government published the report Public electric vehicle charging infrastructure: drivers without access to off-street parking, and at a similar time made the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme grant for home chargers more targeted, and launched the pilot of the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure public charging scheme. It looks like this was the point when government attention shifted from boosting EVs in general to the issue of the driveway divide.

The driveway divide matters more as other barriers come down

The driveway divide is not the only barrier to EV uptake. However, the other barriers tend to be moving in the right direction. For example,

• Upfront EV cost is coming down. This is helped by the Electric Car Grant.
• Number of public chargepoints is increasing.
• Range is increasing.
• There is higher confidence in battery endurance.
• EVs are becoming normalised.