Rapid charging could reach £1 per kWh in 2027, report warns: what the figure means

Rapid charging at £1 per kWh could become common in 2027, according to a report published on 11 November 2026 by the EV newsletter The Fast Charge and the charging network Zest. The report, Reverse the Charge, blames fixed grid charges, which it says have risen 616% for a typical rapid charger since 2021 and will rise again next year.

For a UK driver, the first thing to know is that nobody has announced a £1 price. The headline figure, £1.03 per kWh, is the report’s modelled cost of electricity and grid charges at a quiet rapid charger, before VAT. Zapmap’s average rapid price today is 82p. If £1 did arrive, we work out that it would add about 5p a mile to rapid charging for a typical electric car. Home charging is not affected.

What does the Reverse the Charge report say?

The report models one standard rapid charger with two 100kW connectors on a 232 kVA grid connection. According to its press release, the average fixed grid charge to keep that charger live was £61.47 a week in 2021 and is £440.13 a week in 2026, the 616% rise. On published 2027 tariffs it will be £77.39 a day, or £541.73 a week. The charge is paid whether or not a car is plugged in.

The authors say they averaged published tariffs from eight of Great Britain’s 14 distribution areas and added national transmission charges from the National Energy System Operator. Scaling the single charger up, they estimate:

Report figure	2021	2026	2027
Fixed grid charge, one rapid charger, per week	£61.47	£440.13	£541.73
Fixed grid charge, six-charger hub, per year	Not given	£137,698	£169,477
Grid charges paid by all rapid charger operators	Not given	About £336m	About £413m

The national totals use Zapmap’s count of 29,246 rapid and ultra-rapid chargers in July 2026 and assume no new chargers are built. The report says its figures are conservative, because newer ultra-rapid chargers need larger connections.

Is £1.03 per kWh a forecast of what drivers will pay?

No, and this is the part most headlines skip. The Fast Charge says that at a standard rapid charger selling about 100 kWh a day, “which is about two or three visits”, electricity and grid charges alone will cost £1.03 per kWh on 2027 tariffs. That is before tax, rent, maintenance, payment fees, staffing or any margin.

So £1.03 is a cost, not a price, and it is the cost at a lightly used charger. The press release describes the 50 kWh per connector per day as an “early-stage benchmark”. The report is also a campaign document: The Fast Charge is a newsletter and Zest is a charging company that would gain from lower grid charges. That does not make the figures wrong, but every number here is theirs, and we could not check the tariff data behind them.

A fixed charge matters less the more electricity a charger sells. Dividing the report’s 2027 charge of £77.39 a day by different daily sales gives the fixed grid cost carried by each kWh. This is our arithmetic from the report’s figure:

Energy sold per day	Fixed grid charge per kWh sold
100 kWh (the report’s assumption)	about 77p
200 kWh	about 39p
400 kWh	about 19p
800 kWh	about 10p

Two 100kW connectors running flat out for 24 hours would deliver 4,800 kWh, so 100 kWh a day is about 2% of the theoretical maximum. At the report’s own assumption, the fixed charge alone is about 77p of the £1.03, which leaves about 26p for the electricity itself. That split is ours, not the report’s.

Zest also gave two real examples from busier sites. At an urban hub in Birmingham, electricity and grid costs take 48p of the 58p per kWh drivers pay before VAT. At an on-street ultra-rapid charger in London they take 58p of 64p. Neither is close to £1, but both leave little for everything else.

What does rapid charging cost now?

Zapmap’s Price Index, updated on 5 November, puts the weighted average pay-as-you-go price for rapid and ultra-rapid chargers at 82p per kWh in October 2026. Slower public chargers averaged 54p. The report used 79p, the average when it was prepared, and The Fast Charge notes the figure has since moved to 82p. When we reported the index in October, the August figure was 77p, so the average has risen 5p in two months.

Prices vary widely by network. Zapmap’s October page on the top 10 rapid networks names Tesla’s public sites as the cheapest, from 51p per kWh, and InstaVolt as the dearest at 92p. HM Treasury said at the Budget that prices at higher-powered chargers have risen 94% in real terms since 2021.

How much would £1 per kWh cost per mile?

We use 3.5 miles per kWh, the efficiency figure on our methodology page, and 7,500 miles a year, the same assumption as our Budget analysis. The charge column is 42 kWh, a 10 to 80% charge on a 60kWh battery. Prices were checked on 13 November 2026: Zapmap for public charging, Ofgem for the price cap and Octopus Energy for Intelligent Octopus Go.

Where you charge	Price per kWh	Cost per mile	10 to 80% on 60kWh	7,500 miles
Home, Intelligent Octopus Go smart rate	6.5p	1.9p	£2.73	about £139
Home, Ofgem price cap rate	26.32p	7.5p	£11.05	about £564
Public slower chargers, Zapmap October average	54p	15.4p	£22.68	about £1,157
Public rapid, Zapmap October average	82p	23.4p	£34.44	about £1,757
Public rapid at £1	100p	28.6p	£42.00	about £2,143
Public rapid at the report’s £1.03	103p	29.4p	£43.26	about £2,207

Moving from 82p to £1 adds about 5.1p a mile, £7.56 to a 10 to 80% charge and about £386 a year for a driver who does every mile on rapid chargers. Few drivers do. Someone who uses rapid chargers for a fifth of 7,500 miles, about 1,500 miles a year, would pay about £77 more.

Auto Express ran a similar example using the report’s 79p: the same 42 kWh costs £33.18 at 79p and £43.26 at £1.03, about £10 more.

One caution on our own table. Zapmap’s averages are prices drivers pay, which include 20% VAT. The report’s £1.03 is a cost before VAT. If an operator passed that cost on in full and added VAT, the price would be about £1.24 per kWh. We do not think that is a realistic forecast for the network as a whole, for the reasons above, but it shows the two numbers are not like for like. Our guide to the cost per mile of an electric car explains the sums.

Why have grid charges risen so much?

The report points to Ofgem’s Targeted Charging Review. It says a 2019 decision, applied since 2022, lets networks bill businesses on the capacity they could draw, not the electricity they use. For most businesses the report says the effect was negligible. A rapid charging site is unusual: it needs a large connection to deliver high power, but may sell little energy while it waits for traffic to build.

The government’s own review of public charging costs, led by Philip New and published with the Budget on 28 October, looked at the same issue. According to the report and The Fast Charge, it found the change had a “severe impact” on operators’ costs. The Fast Charge says the review wants this “urgently” addressed by Ofgem, while Auto Express reports the same wording as a call on the government to deal with the tension between its EV ambitions and the current rules. The press release says the review put the rise in standing charges at 83% to 283%, counting local distribution charges only, while the report’s 616% also includes transmission charges and fixed policy and supplier costs. The two figures measure different things.

What do Ofgem and the government say?

The Fast Charge says Ofgem pointed it to an industry working group and acknowledged its original modelling covered a limited list of user types. Ofgem said it was open to evidence where the decision “is having unintended consequences”, according to the newsletter. Auto Express says it approached Ofgem and the government for comment; its report carried no response from either.

The report also cites Ofgem briefings obtained under Freedom of Information. It says an October 2025 briefing for the Treasury described high fixed grid charges as keeping rapid chargers in an “unproductive cycle”, and that a May 2026 version repeated the analysis.

The Budget did act on charging costs, but not here. As we covered in our Budget report, the Treasury’s £100m over two years is for lower-powered chargers near homes, and VAT on public charging stays at 20%.

What fixes does the report want?

Two proposed changes to industry rules, known as DCP 420 and DCP 454. The Fast Charge says DCP 420 would let eligible sites drop to a lower charging band, and DCP 454 would go further and return them to a charge based on consumption. The report says both have been in working groups for three years and have not yet reached Ofgem for a decision. It wants Ofgem to approve one or both and the Chancellor to back that.

“The switch to capacity-based network charges was never intended to put the brakes on EV adoption,” said Robin Heap, founder and chief executive of Zest. Tom Riley, the report’s author and editor of The Fast Charge, called grid standing charges “effectively a feudal tax”. Jarrod Birch, head of policy at the trade body ChargeUK, told Auto Express that operators in a “largely pre-profit sector” increasingly “do not have the option to swallow further cost”.

Which drivers are most exposed?

Drivers who cannot charge at home. The press release cites RAC Foundation figures suggesting about a third of UK households have no off-street parking. Many of those drivers rely on slower on-street chargers, which the report did not model, but anyone who depends on rapid chargers for regular top-ups would feel a rise most. Our guide to living with an electric car without a driveway covers the options.

Drivers with a home charger are the least exposed. The grid charges in the report apply to large business connections, not domestic supplies. Best Chargers’ EV tariff comparison lists current overnight rates.

What can you do about rapid charging costs now?

1. Compare networks before you plug in. Zapmap’s October range, from 51p to more than 90p, is wider than the gap between today’s average and £1.
2. Use app and off-peak prices. Several networks charge less through their own app or at night. Our guide to cheap public charging options lists them.
3. Keep rapid charging for journeys. Slower public chargers averaged 54p in October, about a third less than rapid.
4. Do not budget on a guess. If you are costing an EV without a driveway, use today’s prices from our guide to public charging costs and add a margin. Our longer look at whether charging prices are going up or down gives the background.

Our view

The report makes a credible case that fixed grid charges are pushing up the cost of running rapid chargers, and the government’s own review appears to agree on the direction. The £1 headline needs care, though. It comes from a model of a quiet charger, produced by a campaign with an interest in the outcome, and busy sites spread the same charge far more thinly. What drivers can see for themselves is that Zapmap’s average has risen from 77p to 82p since August. Expect rapid prices to stay under pressure in 2027 unless Ofgem acts, shop around between networks, and if you can charge at home, none of this changes the case for doing so.