Is your local fast-charger ripping you off?
Most EV drivers don’t think twice after paying for a quick DC charge on a long trip, but new research out of the UK suggests miscalculating the cost of a top-up is rife.
According to a new study carried out by EVCI Global, an incredible 31.5 per cent of all the chargers it reviewed either overestimated or underestimated the energy flowing from a charging post into a battery.
Of those, 15 per cent of the errors exceeded an alarming five per cent of the true cost a driver should have paid after plugging in, with a small number being overcharged by “materially larger deviations”.
The statistics mean EV drivers could now be at greater risk of being ripped off than their fellow petrol or diesel car owners at the pump, with servos under far greater scrutiny than the EV charging industry to get the price right.
In the UK market, petrol and diesel providers must ensure their pumps operate within a measurement tolerance of between -0.5 and +1 per cent.
Operators of EV chargers in the same region, meanwhile, are allowed a far greater margin of error of up to +2 per cent, but even then EVCI said more than a third of chargers exceeded the more generous margin, raising questions about similar operators in markets such as Australia.
The worst-performing charging post found was said to be delivering an astonishing 37 per cent less electricity than the figure displayed on the screen.
Other faulty equipment saw chargers actually undervaluing how much energy was being dispensed, with unsuspecting owners benefiting from cheaper charging prices. But even in those cases, EVCI is calling on the British government’s Transport Select Committee for better practices and an end to rip-off charging.
“People with EVs need to know that they’re getting what they’re paying for, the same way that they do at petrol pumps,” said EVCI Global CEO Craig Marsden.
According to UK charging industry body ChargeUK, the inaccuracies found were “isolated cases”, adding that measuring electricity transfer is far more complicated than calculating the amount of fuel fed into the average petrol-powered car.
It’s not clear if the findings were linked to some of Britain’s ageing charging infrastructure, or if the miscalculations affect the latest fast chargers capable of delivering top-ups well beyond 350kW.
In Australiam stricter requirements for fast charger accuracy kick off from April 1, 2026.
