If you drive an EV for work, the admin is getting a bit more specific.
From 1 March 2026, HMRC's guidance for company car mileage costs includes two different advisory electricity rates, depending on whether the car is charged at home or at a public charger.
That is a small change on paper, but it matters in practice. If your reimbursements (or your employer's policy) are based on HMRC advisory rates, you now need to know where the charging happened, not just how far you drove.
First, a quick clarification (company car vs personal car)
There are two common UK setups for business driving, and the rules are different:
- You drive your own car and claim business mileage, often at HMRC's approved mileage allowance payments (for example, 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles in a tax year, then 25p).
- You drive a company car and your employer reimburses fuel or electricity for business miles. This is where HMRC's advisory fuel rates and advisory electricity rate are used.
This post is about the company car side, because that is where the EV charging location now matters.
HMRC advisory electricity rates for EVs (from 1 March 2026)
HMRC lists these advisory electricity rates for fully electric cars:
- Home charger: 7 pence per mile
- Public charger: 15 pence per mile
Source: GOV.UK "Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026", company cars advisory fuel rates section (updated 1 March 2026).
Why the split matters (and where people get caught out)
Public charging is often meaningfully more expensive than home charging, so a single "EV ppm" rate can underpay drivers who rely on rapid chargers for work travel. The split is HMRC's attempt to reflect that difference more accurately.
But it also introduces a new question you may not have been tracking:
- Were those business miles powered by home charging or public charging?
If your reimbursements are based on one blended rate, you might not care. If your policy follows HMRC's split (or you want your records to support it), you do.
A simple way to think about it
Imagine you drove 200 business miles in a company EV:
- If you charge at home, the advisory electricity cost would be £14.00 (200 × 7p).
- If you charge publicly, the advisory electricity cost would be £30.00 (200 × 15p).
That difference adds up quickly across regular work driving.
What to record so you can back it up later
If you want clean, defensible records (and less end-of-month guesswork), aim to capture three things consistently:
- Business miles (per trip, or at least per day)
- Charging type used for that period (home, public, or mixed)
- Notes for anything unusual (hotel charging, reimbursed charging card, rapid charging on a long trip, and so on)
You do not need to turn your life into a spreadsheet. The goal is simply to avoid having to reconstruct the story later from memory.
How Mileage Tracker helps (especially for mixed charging)
Most EV drivers end up with a mix of charging locations. That is where logging your journeys properly helps:
- You can separate business and personal miles cleanly.
- You can group trips for a month (or a specific work project) and export totals when you need them.
- You can add quick notes so "public rapid charging week" is obvious later, even if you do not keep every receipt.
If your employer's policy follows HMRC's split rates, those notes and totals make reimbursement much easier to agree and audit.
One last thing: rates change, your records should not have to
HMRC rates can change during the year. The best approach is to keep reliable mileage records first, then apply the correct rate for the relevant period afterwards. If you already have accurate trip history, updating the rate is simple. If you do not, it becomes a messy reconstruction exercise.
Practical takeaway: start tagging (or at least noting) home vs public charging alongside your business mileage, and future-you will thank you.
Track every mile with less faff
Ready to keep your EV mileage, trips, and running costs tidy?
Mileage Tracker helps you log journeys, stay on top of costs, and keep cleaner records for work or personal driving.