"Is an electric car actually cheaper to run?" The honest answer is: it depends on the fuel price on the day, on the country, and above all on where you charge. So we did the maths with live data. Petromap tracks pump prices across Europe in real time; for the electricity side we use the latest official figures from Eurostat. Here is what 100 km costs by EV, petrol and diesel, as of 27 July 2026.
The assumptions (change them to fit your car)
- Petrol car: 6.5 litres per 100 km
- Diesel car: 5.5 litres per 100 km
- Electric car: 18 kWh per 100 km
These are middle-of-the-road, real-world figures for a typical family car. A small city car will use less; an SUV or a fast motorway cruise will use more. The method below works whatever numbers you plug in: multiply your consumption by the price per litre or per kWh.
Live fuel prices right now
Fuel is the easy part, because these prices are live. As of 27 July 2026, here is what petrol and diesel cost at Petromap's tracked stations:
| Country | Gasoline (€/L) | Diesel (€/L) |
|---|---|---|
| 🇩🇪 Germany | 2.17 | 2.19 |
| 🇫🇷 France | 2.04 | 2.20 |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | 2.04 | 2.23 |
| 🇪🇸 Spain | 1.66 | 1.75 |
Cheapest per fuel in bold, live averages in €/L.
For the EU as a whole, petrol averages 1.90 €/L and diesel 2.00 €/L. To turn a per-litre price into a per-100 km cost, multiply by your consumption: 6.5 for petrol, 5.5 for diesel. So at the EU-average petrol price of 1.90 €/L, 100 km of petrol driving costs about six and a half times that figure.
The electricity side (researched, not live)
Here is the important caveat. Petromap does not track electricity prices, so unlike the fuel figures above, the numbers in this section are not live. They are the most recent official household electricity prices from Eurostat, for the second half of 2025, including all taxes and levies. Treat them as a recent snapshot, not today's exact rate.
| Country | Home electricity (approx., €/kWh) | EV cost per 100 km at home (18 kWh) |
|---|---|---|
| EU average | 0.29 | ≈ 5.22 € |
| Germany | 0.39 | ≈ 7.02 € |
| France | 0.24 | ≈ 4.32 € |
| Italy | 0.32 | ≈ 5.76 € |
| Spain | 0.21 | ≈ 3.78 € |
Household electricity prices: Eurostat, second half of 2025, all taxes included, medium-consumption band. Figures rounded; per-100 km column is 18 kWh × the price.
Charging at home is only half the story. Public rapid (DC) charging is far more expensive. In 2026, fast-charging networks across Europe typically bill between €0.60 and €0.80 per kWh, and premium high-power networks charge more (IONITY, for example, listed about €0.79 per kWh for non-subscribers in spring 2026). At a representative €0.70 per kWh, the same 18 kWh per 100 km costs about €12.60, more than double the home figure in most countries.
Putting it together: who actually wins
Now the comparison. Because the fuel prices above are live and the electricity prices are a recent snapshot, we won't bake a single "winner" number into this article. Instead, here is how to read it, with the arithmetic laid out so you can check it against today's live table.
Home charging beats liquid fuel almost everywhere. At the EU-average home electricity price, an EV costs about €5.22 per 100 km. For petrol to match that, petrol would have to fall to about €0.80 per litre (€5.22 ÷ 6.5 L); for diesel, about €0.95 per litre (€5.22 ÷ 5.5 L). No tracked country comes anywhere near those pump prices, so at the live prices in the table above, a home-charged EV is clearly the cheapest way to cover 100 km, often by half.
Public rapid charging changes the picture completely. At €0.70 per kWh, an EV costs about €12.60 per 100 km. For petrol to be more expensive than that, petrol would need to top roughly €1.94 per litre (€12.60 ÷ 6.5 L); diesel would need to top about €2.29 per litre. Petrol and diesel in most tracked countries sit well below those levels, which means a driver who relies only on public fast chargers can end up paying as much as, or more than, a petrol or diesel driver. This is the single biggest thing people get wrong about EV running costs.
Diesel versus petrol is the familiar contest. Diesel burns fewer litres per 100 km (5.5 versus 6.5), and per litre it is usually cheaper than petrol too, so diesel is normally the cheaper of the two liquid fuels per 100 km. Check the live table above for the exact gap in each country today.
What this comparison leaves out
Running cost is not total cost. This article deliberately compares only the energy cost of driving 100 km. It does not include the purchase price (EVs still cost more up front in most segments), depreciation, insurance, servicing (usually lower for EVs), road and registration taxes, or the value of home charging you may not have access to if you park on the street. Those factors can move the overall verdict in either direction. What the energy numbers show clearly is narrower but useful: if you can charge at home, an EV is dramatically cheaper to fuel; if you depend on public rapid charging, that advantage largely disappears.
Check the live prices where you drive
The fuel figures in this article are computed from the live prices Petromap tracks across Europe and refresh automatically, so they are always today's. Open the live map to see petrol and diesel prices around you, browse the country pages for Germany, France, Italy and Spain, or pull the same data into your own tools with our free API. For the electricity side, your own tariff is the number that matters: check your latest bill and multiply by 0.18 to get your EV's cost per 100 km.
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