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E.ON EV Tariff Review: Is E.ON Next Drive Worth It?

Homeowner charging electric vehicle on driveway using E.ON EV tariff

If you’re comparing EV energy tariffs, you’ll quickly find that the cheapest-looking rate doesn’t always mean the lowest energy bill. E.ON Next Drive is one of the options you’ll come across, with cheaper overnight electricity aimed at drivers who charge at home. The question is how it stacks up against the other EV tariffs available, and whether it makes sense for the way you actually charge your car.

There are actually two E.ON EV tariffs to consider. Next Drive gives you six hours of cheaper electricity from midnight to 6am, whereas Next Drive Smart can take more of the work off your hands by choosing when your car charges. Depending on your setup, it can also open up cheaper charging periods outside those usual overnight hours.

The rates look really competitive, but that’s only part of the picture. What matters most is what you’ll pay across your whole electricity bill and whether the tariff fits the way you use your car. In this E.ON EV tariff review, we’ll take a closer look at how both options work, what charging could cost you and where E.ON stands against the other EV tariffs currently available.

E.ON EV Tariffs at a Glance

If E.ON is on your shortlist, you’ve got two EV tariffs to choose from: Next Drive and Next Drive Smart. On paper, they’re fairly similar. Both give you cheaper electricity from midnight to 6am and fix your prices for 12 months. The main difference is how involved you want to be in deciding when your electric car charges.

Feature	E.ON Next Drive	E.ON Next Drive Smart
Tariff type	12-month fixed	12-month fixed
Off-peak hours	12am–6am	12am–6am
Off-peak rate	9p/kWh*	8p/kWh*
Cheap rate applies to	Whole home	Whole home
Additional smart charging slots	No	Yes
Smart meter required	Yes	Yes
EV or plug-in hybrid required	Yes	Yes
Smart charging via E.ON Next Home app	No	Yes
Best suited to	Drivers who prefer a set overnight charging window	Drivers happy for E.ON to manage when their EV charges

*Tariff rates can change and may vary depending on your location, so always check the latest E.ON prices before switching.

At first glance, Next Drive Smart might seem like the obvious choice. It’s currently 1p/kWh cheaper overnight and comes with additional smart charging periods. That doesn’t automatically make it the right tariff for everyone, though. Next Drive keeps things simple with the same six-hour window every night, while the Smart tariff works a little differently. We’ll explain what that means in practice below.

What Is the E.ON Next Drive Tariff?

Next Drive is the simpler of E.ON’s EV tariffs. You get a set six-hour window from midnight to 6am when electricity is cheaper, so if most of your charging happens overnight, it’s fairly easy to build your routine around it.

The current off-peak rate is 9p/kWh, and there’s an important detail here: that price isn’t only for the electricity going into your car. It applies across your home during those six hours. If you have a home battery, for example, you could charge that overnight too. The same goes for household appliances that you’re happy to run during the cheaper period.

To get Next Drive, you’ll need an EV or plug-in hybrid that you charge at home, along with a compatible smart meter capable of sending half-hourly readings.

Where Next Drive differs from the Smart version is that E.ON isn’t deciding when your car charges. You’ve got your midnight-to-6am window and it’s up to you to make use of it. With a smart home charger, that’s hardly a chore. You can set your charging schedule once, plug in when you get home and let the charger wait until the cheaper rate kicks in.

If you like knowing exactly when your cheap electricity starts and finishes, Next Drive has a lot going for it. You don’t get quite as low an off-peak rate as Next Drive Smart, but you keep control of your charging schedule and don’t need E.ON to manage it for you.

Homeowner reading E.ON energy tariff bill

What Is E.ON Next Drive Smart?

Next Drive Smart is where things get a little more interesting. You still get the same midnight-to-6am window, but the current off-peak price drops to 8p/kWh. As with Next Drive, that cheaper overnight rate applies to your whole home.

What makes this E.ON EV tariff “Smart” is what E.ON can do beyond those set hours. Rather than telling your home charger to start at midnight every night, you tell E.ON when you need your car ready and how much charge you want. The E.ON Next Home app can then decide when to charge it, which means some of your charging may happen outside the normal overnight window.

How Does E.ON Smart Charging Work?

Say you plug in when you get home at 6pm but don’t need the car again until 7am. Instead of immediately drawing electricity at the peak rate, E.ON has the rest of the night to fit in the charge you need.

Most of that may happen during the usual midnight-to-6am period. However, E.ON can also give you additional smart charging slots outside those hours. When it schedules one of these slots, your EV charging is billed at the cheaper smart rate.

There’s another useful perk that isn’t immediately obvious when you first look at this E.ON EV tariff. During a qualifying smart charging slot, the lower rate can also apply to electricity being used elsewhere in your home. If you know an extra cheap period has been scheduled, you may be able to make more of it than simply topping up the car.

You don’t need to spend your evenings watching electricity prices or deciding when to start charging. Leave the car plugged in, tell the app what you need and E.ON works out the schedule.

What Happens If You Need to Charge Straight Away?

If you’ve arrived home low on charge and suddenly realise you need the car again that evening, you can use the Boost function rather than waiting for the scheduled charge. Just bear in mind that if you Boost during peak hours, you’ll pay the normal peak electricity rate for that charging session.

Using Boost occasionally when you’re in need of a single charge for extra range isn’t a problem; that’s what the feature is there for. If you find yourself reaching for it several times a week, though, it’s worth asking whether a tariff built around E.ON controlling your charging schedule really suits the way you use your car.

That’s ultimately the trade-off with Next Drive Smart. You’re giving up a little control over when your EV charges in exchange for a lower off-peak rate and the chance of extra cheap charging periods. If your car is usually parked at home for several hours overnight, that’s unlikely to feel like much of a compromise.

How Much Does It Cost to Charge an EV With E.ON Next Drive?

A price per kWh is useful for comparing tariffs, but most of us would rather know roughly what it’s going to cost to put a decent amount of charge back into the car.

Let’s take 60kWh as an example. At the current Next Drive Smart rate of 8p/kWh, adding 60kWh would cost around £4.80. On Next Drive at 9p/kWh, you’re looking at £5.40.

Here’s how that changes depending on how much energy you’re adding:

Energy added	Next Drive Smart at 8p/kWh	Next Drive at 9p/kWh
40kWh	£3.20	£3.60
60kWh	£4.80	£5.40
80kWh	£6.40	£7.20
100kWh	£8.00	£9.00

Of course, you’re unlikely to arrive home with a completely empty battery every evening and charge it all the way back to 100%. Most home charging is about replacing the miles you’ve actually used that day, so your individual charging sessions could cost considerably less than the examples above.

There’s also a little bit of energy lost during the charging process. If your car’s battery needs 60kWh, your charger will draw slightly more than 60kWh from the grid to get it there. It’s worth allowing for that when you’re estimating your own costs rather than expecting the numbers in the table to match your electricity bill down to the penny.

How Much Could You Save Per Year?

This is harder to put a single figure on because two EV owners can have very different driving habits. Someone doing the school run and a short commute isn’t going to use anywhere near as much electricity as someone covering 15,000 motorway miles a year working on the road.

E.ON’s own example uses an EV travelling 8,000 miles per year and averaging 3.33 miles per kWh. On that basis, it estimates that Next Drive Smart could save around £435 a year compared with charging on the standard variable tariff used in its comparison.

You can get a rough idea of your own charging costs using your annual mileage and your car’s average efficiency. If you cover 10,000 miles a year in an EV averaging 3.5 miles per kWh, you’ll need roughly 2,857kWh for those journeys before allowing for charging losses. If all of that electricity were bought at the 8p/kWh Next Drive Smart rate, it would come to around £229 for the year.

That’s a useful figure, but we wouldn’t choose an EV tariff on that number alone. The car is only one part of your electricity bill. You’ll still be paying the daytime rate when you’re making dinner, watching TV or simply getting on with life at home, and you’ll have the standing charge to consider as well.

When you’re comparing E.ON EV tariffs with other deals, it’s the likely cost of your whole electricity bill that’s worth paying attention to, not just whichever supplier has managed to advertise the lowest overnight rate.

Can You Use the E.ON EV Tariff Rate for Your Whole Home?

This is one of the details we’d pay close attention to when comparing E.ON with other EV tariffs. The cheaper midnight-to-6am rate isn’t ring-fenced for your car. It applies to the electricity you’re using throughout your home during those hours.

That gives you a bit more room to make the E.ON EV tariff work in your favour. If you’ve got a home battery, you could charge it overnight at the lower rate and use that stored electricity during the day. You could even run your household appliances during the cheaper window rather than at peak times.

Next Drive Smart adds another interesting possibility. When E.ON gives your car an additional smart charging slot outside the usual overnight hours, electricity used elsewhere in your home during that qualifying period can also be charged at the lower rate. Depending on when those slots appear and how much electricity your household uses, that could add to the savings you get from the tariff.

What Do You Need to Get an E.ON EV Tariff?

Before you get too far into comparing prices, it’s worth checking that you can actually use the E.ON EV tariff you’re interested in.

Do You Need a Smart Meter for E.ON Next Drive?

E.ON needs to know when you’re using electricity so that it can bill your midnight-to-6am usage at the cheaper rate. That means you’ll need a compatible smart meter that’s able to send half-hourly readings.

Already having a smart meter doesn’t always mean you’re good to go. E.ON will need to check that yours is communicating properly and can provide the readings needed for the tariff. It’s worth getting that confirmed before you start working out your potential savings.

Do You Need an Electric Car?

You need to own or lease an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid that you charge at home to qualify for Next Drive.

In practical terms, the E.ON EV tariff makes most sense if home charging is going to be a regular part of your routine. If your car spends the night on your driveway or in your garage, you’ve got plenty of opportunity to make use of those six cheaper hours. If you rarely charge at home, there’s obviously much less benefit in choosing an energy tariff around your EV.

Do You Need a Specific EV Charger?

You don’t need an E.ON-branded charger or a particular model simply to take advantage of the cheaper midnight-to-6am electricity. What you do want is an easy way to schedule your charging. A modern smart charger with a timer can handle that for you, so you can plug in when you get home rather than remembering to head outside at midnight to start the charge yourself.

Next Drive Smart is a little different. Because E.ON is actively managing when your car charges through the E.ON Next Home app, your setup needs to be compatible with its smart charging service. We’d always recommend checking E.ON’s current compatibility information before switching, as supported vehicles and chargers can change.

And if you discover that your setup doesn’t work with Next Drive Smart, don’t write E.ON off completely. You could still choose the standard Next Drive tariff and let your own smart EV charger handle the overnight schedule instead.

Can You Use an Ohme Charger With E.ON Next Drive?

Both the Ohme Home Pro and the Ohme ePod allow you to schedule your charging around the cheaper hours available with E.ON EV tariffs. Plug the car in when you get home, set up your preferences in the Ohme app and the charger can wait until the off-peak period before it starts drawing power.

That works particularly well with the standard Next Drive EV tariff because you know exactly what you’re working with: cheaper electricity from midnight to 6am. There’s no need to change your evening routine or remember to start the charger later. Your Ohme Home Pro or Ohme ePod can take care of the timing and make sure you’ve got the charge you need by morning.

There is an important distinction to make with Next Drive Smart, though. An Ohme charger being able to schedule around E.ON’s off-peak hours isn’t the same as it being directly integrated with all of the Smart tariff’s features. E.ON needs a compatible setup that it can communicate with and control to provide those additional smart charging periods.

If you’re specifically interested in Next Drive Smart, check E.ON’s latest compatibility information for your vehicle and charger before switching. If your setup isn’t supported, you can still consider the standard Next Drive tariff and use your Ohme charger to manage charging within the fixed overnight window.

How Does E.ON Compare With Other EV Tariffs?

Put the main providers side by side and the E.ON EV tariff doesn’t have the cheapest headline charging rate. You’ll find other tariffs advertising electricity at around 7p/kWh, which naturally makes E.ON’s 8p or 9p look less competitive.

We wouldn’t rule it out on that basis alone, though. That headline figure only tells you what one part of your electricity costs. You also need to know how long the cheaper period lasts, whether it covers the rest of your home and what you’ll be paying when the off-peak window ends.

Here’s how some of the main UK EV tariffs compare:

Tariff	Cheap EV rate*	How it works	Best suited to
E.ON Next Drive Smart	8p/kWh	Six cheap overnight hours plus additional smart charging periods	Drivers who want whole-home off-peak electricity and smart charging
E.ON Next Drive	9p/kWh	Fixed six-hour overnight window	Drivers who prefer a simple charging schedule
Intelligent Octopus Go	Around 7p/kWh	Smart charging with a guaranteed overnight off-peak window	Compatible EV and charger owners who want a low smart charging rate
OVO Charge Anytime	Around 7p/kWh	EV charging add-on with smart charging	Drivers whose vehicle or charger is compatible with OVO’s system
British Gas EV tariff	Around 7p/kWh	Fixed overnight off-peak charging window	Drivers who can do most of their charging overnight

*Rates and EV tariff terms change regularly and can vary by region. Check each supplier’s current prices, peak rates, standing charges and eligibility requirements before switching.

So, where does E.ON make up ground? One of its strengths is that those six cheaper hours apply to your whole home. If you can charge your EV and shift some of your other electricity use into the same window, the difference between 7p and 8p per kWh starts to become less useful as a comparison on its own.

OVO Charge Anytime is a good example of why it’s worth digging into the detail. Its cheaper rate works as an EV charging add-on rather than simply giving your entire home a fixed block of off-peak electricity. Depending on how you use energy at home, those two approaches could produce quite different bills even if the EV charging rates look similar.

When we’re comparing EV tariffs, we always look at the likely cost of the whole year rather than automatically choosing the lowest off-peak figure. Think about how many miles you actually drive and when most of your household electricity gets used. Then factor in the daytime unit rate and standing charge. That’s a much better indication of whether an E.ON EV tariff, or any of its competitors, is genuinely going to save you money.

E.ON EV Tariff Review: Our Verdict

So, would we recommend E.ON Next Drive? If you do most of your EV charging at home, we’d certainly put it on the shortlist. Six hours is a useful overnight window, and we like that the cheaper rate isn’t reserved for the car. If you’re able to move some of your household electricity use into those hours too, there’s more potential to get your money’s worth from the E.ON EV tariff.

Between the two, Next Drive Smart is the one we’d look at first if your setup is compatible. You’re paying 8p/kWh rather than 9p/kWh during the standard off-peak window, with the added possibility of E.ON finding extra smart charging periods for you.

We wouldn’t switch based on that 8p figure alone, though. There are cheaper EV rates out there, and this is where your own driving habits really matter. If you’re covering 15,000 miles a year and plugging in most nights, shaving a little off every kWh can soon add up. If the car only does a few thousand miles a year, what you pay for your normal household electricity will have far more influence on your final bill.

Get Your Home Ready for Cheaper EV Charging

Once you’ve found an EV tariff that works for you, the next job is making sure your home charging setup can actually make the most of it. You shouldn’t have to think about starting a charge at midnight or keep checking the clock to avoid the more expensive daytime rate. With a smart charger, you can plug in when you get home and let your charging schedule take care of the rest.

At Pro EV, we install the Ohme Home Pro and Ohme ePod in homes across the UK. Both give you control through the Ohme app, making it easy to plan your charging around cheaper periods on tariffs such as E.ON Next Drive.

If you’re not sure which charger will work best with your car or the tariff you’re considering, that’s something we can help with too. We’ll talk you through the options, look at how you normally charge and recommend a setup that makes sense for your home.

Get a quick, free installation quote using our online form now, and take the first step toward smarter home charging.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the E.ON EV charging tariff?

E.ON has two tariffs aimed at people who charge an electric car at home: Next Drive and Next Drive Smart. Both give you cheaper whole-home electricity between midnight and 6am. Next Drive Smart goes a little further by allowing E.ON to schedule your EV charging when your setup is compatible.

What time is E.ON EV charging cheapest?

Your standard cheap period runs from midnight to 6am on both E.ON EV tariffs. If you’re on Next Drive Smart, E.ON may also give you additional smart charging slots outside those hours. That gives you a little more flexibility than relying on the overnight window alone.

How much does E.ON charge per kWh for EV charging?

At the time of writing, the off-peak rate is 9p/kWh on Next Drive and 8p/kWh on Next Drive Smart. Don’t assume those figures will stay put indefinitely, though. Energy prices change, and your rates can also depend on where you live, so check E.ON’s latest prices when you’re ready to compare tariffs.

Does E.ON Next Drive require a smart meter?

Yes. E.ON needs half-hourly readings from a compatible smart meter to know how much electricity you’ve used during the cheaper period. If you’ve already got a smart meter, E.ON will still need to make sure that it’s communicating correctly and suitable for the tariff.

Does E.ON Next Drive work with any EV charger?

You don’t need a particular charger to access the fixed overnight rate on standard Next Drive. Ideally, you’ll want a smart charger that lets you schedule charging between midnight and 6am, otherwise making use of those cheaper hours becomes much less convenient. Next Drive Smart has its own compatibility requirements because E.ON needs to be able to manage when your car charges.

Can I use an Ohme charger with an E.ON EV tariff?

Yes! Both the Ohme Home Pro and Ohme ePod can be scheduled around Next Drive’s cheaper overnight hours. You can plug your car in when you get home and let your Ohme handle the charging schedule rather than waiting until midnight to start it yourself.

Is E.ON Next Drive cheaper than Intelligent Octopus Go?

It can be, but don’t compare the tariffs on their EV charging rates alone. Intelligent Octopus Go may have a lower headline off-peak price, whereas E.ON gives you six hours of cheaper whole-home electricity and Next Drive Smart can add extra smart charging periods. The better deal will depend on how much you drive, when you charge and what the rest of your household electricity use looks like.

Is E.ON Next Drive worth it?

We think E.ON EV tariffs are well worth considering if you do most of your charging at home and can regularly use the midnight-to-6am window. Next Drive Smart is particularly interesting if your setup is compatible, as you get the lower 8p/kWh rate and the possibility of additional smart charging periods.