Electric Car Vs Petrol: Which Is Really Cheaper To Run In South Africa?

Well, I decided to crunch some numbers and attempt find a definitive answer.

R3.26/kWh is my base line if you buy electricity in Johannesburg - though who really knows what the true figure is, because the formulae have become so complicated?

A litre of petrol costs around R22/ l and gives you about 8.9kWh equivalent when converted to electricity you can reference the original article here for how this all works - energy is energy is energy is the short answer.

What we need to remember is this: a 1kWh battery will give you 1kW for one hour. And when flattened completely, it will take a 1kW charger one hour to charge it back up. This assumes perfect charging, but there is a drop-off when the battery starts getting full as the charger has to work harder to ram more electrons into the battery, slowing things down.

Think of it like pressure - as the battery gets fuller, the pressure of the electrons in it gets higher and that pushes back against the charger which can't increase its pressure as it's running at maximum already, so the flow rate slows down a bit.