We’ve been here before, many times. A conflict erupts in or around an oil-producing country, markets panic, and British drivers spend a few weeks wincing at vastly inflated petrol prices before things eventually settle down again. It’s been going on for 50-odd years, most recently when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and petrol almost hit £2 per litre.
Each time, drivers simply had to absorb the hit and carry on, largely because there was no realistic alternative. This time, that might finally be about to change.
Unleaded petrol is currently pushing towards 150p per litre, with diesel approaching 170p. Oil is getting close to $120 a barrel, and things very much look like they’re going to get worse before they start to get better. For a typical UK driver covering 8,000 miles a year, that already means around £200-£300 a year extra compared to January’s prices – and with prices still rising, those figures are likely to increase further before the crisis is resolved.
But the more significant question isn’t how high prices will go or how long the spike will last. It’s whether this crisis – unlike all those before it – arrives at a moment when enough buyers have a genuine, affordable alternative to simply putting up with it.
Four years has made a big difference
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, there were around 600,000 electric cars on UK roads. Charging was patchy, ranges were limited on affordable models, and the upfront cost premium remained a serious obstacle for most buyers. Switching was possible for some, but not straightforward for most households.
Just four years later, the picture is now substantially different. By the end of this year, there will be around two million electric cars on UK roads, with plenty of choice at every price point of the new car market. Monthly finance payments on some electric models are now comparable to or lower than their petrol counterparts. This has also really benefited used car buyers, with thousands more 1-5 year-old EVs coming onto the used car market every month.
Charging infrastructure has also expanded substantially, with about 120,000 public charging points across the UK, and a much greater proportion of the country now has access to public charging. There are more fast charging points, meaning less time stopped to recharge on long journeys.
For drivers with home charging – those with a driveway or garage who can plug in overnight – the economics are already stark. Home charging typically costs around 3-4p per mile, or roughly £250-300 for 8,000 miles a year. The same distance in a petrol car at current prices costs well over £1,800 – a difference of more than £1,500 annually, and it’s getting wider every time the oil price ticks upward.
For car buyers still nervous about switching, range anxiety is a real issue. But reality is usually quite different to perception. The average battery range on all new EVs on sale is about 280 miles in government lab tests, with plenty of new cars offering more than 300 miles and some now up to 500 miles. When you consider that the average household weekly mileage is about 120 miles, and 98% of all journeys in the UK are less than 50 miles, battery range and access to daily charging become less of a concern.
This won’t change everything overnight
The shift away from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles is inevitable, even if it’s not moving as quickly as previously expected. We are past the point of no return, and fossil fuels will be phased out over the next decade or so, even if there is a marginal stay of execution.
But the barriers to switching that remain are real, and it would be misleading to pretend otherwise. EV drivers without off-street parking can pay up to ten times more per unit of electricity than those charging at home, which eliminates most of the cost advantage. The public charging network, while much improved, still has significant gaps in reliability and availability in many parts of the country.
Electricity prices are not entirely immune to geopolitical events either – rising wholesale gas prices are already a factor in the current crisis. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that sustained disruption could add a full percentage point to UK inflation this year, squeezing household budgets in ways that make any major purchase harder to justify, including a new car.
The Iran crisis won’t trigger a sudden mass shift to electric and plug-in hybrid cars. Most people don’t change their car because of a news event, and the majority of drivers aren’t in a position to change their car right now anyway.
But car buying decisions are shaped by a gradual process of experience and persuasion rather than a single moment of calculation, and every oil price spike reinforces the same message: petrol costs are inherently unpredictable in a way that electricity costs are not. Every new affordable electric model, every improvement to public charging, every driver who makes the switch and finds the reality less complicated than they feared, chips away at the reasons not to switch.
Most buyers today change their car when their current finance agreement ends. For those customers whose agreements are ending in the next few months, an increasing number will be thinking about whether now is the time to make the jump from fossil fuels to electricity. For some buyers sitting on the fence, this particular crisis will be the moment that tips their decision. Not a majority, maybe, but enough to matter. And every piece of research conducted in recent years shows that once drivers switch to an EV, very few switch back.
The tipping point that’s been 50 years in the making
Anyone buying a petrol car today is accepting that this will probably happen again – another conflict, another price spike, another few months of pain at the pump before things settle. It has happened repeatedly throughout most of our lifetimes, and there is no reason to believe it will stop this time.
For most of the last 50 years, this has simply been the reality of driving a car. But for most buyers of new or near-new cars, that doesn’t have to be the case anymore. An electric car, or maybe a plug-in hybrid, can cover the vast majority of household driving needs with real advantages, and the few remaining disadvantages are being reduced almost daily.
In many ways, the current war in Iran is simply the latest ugly conflict in the world’s most volatile oil-producing region. But it’s the first one that could genuinely shift the needle on how millions of people approach the question of what car to buy next.
