How much a taxi driver really saves going electric: from €700 to €300 a month

In short: Aurélien de Meaux, CEO of Electra (a European fast-charging network), claims a taxi driver goes from spending around €700 a month on petrol to around €300 on electricity after switching cars. A breakdown by El Español grounds that figure with real August 2026 numbers: the actual saving depends on where you charge, and ranges from €2,060 to €3,100 a year.

The math with real numbers

The starting point is a taxi doing 50,000 km a year. On diesel, with a consumption of 6 litres per 100 km and fuel at €1.818 a litre (August 2026 average price), that's 3,000 litres a year: about €5,460 annually, more than €450 a month.

On electric, the bill changes a lot depending on where you plug in. Charging exclusively at public points, at a weighted average of €0.40/kWh, the same mileage costs around €3,400 a year: a saving of €2,060 (37%) versus diesel. Combine public charging with home charging (€0.10-0.15/kWh during off-peak hours) and the cost drops to between €2,300 and €2,500 a year, a saving of €2,900 to €3,100 a year versus diesel.

Why the gap grows the more you drive

The logic is simple: the saving per kilometre is fixed, so the more annual mileage a taxi racks up, the bigger the accumulated difference between diesel and electricity. Driving style matters too: a driver who accelerates hard burns more kWh per 100 km than one who drives smoothly, just like fuel consumption in a combustion car.

In other words, the "€300 a month" figure isn't a guaranteed floor, it's what you get if you charge mostly at public points. Anyone who can charge more at home or at low off-peak-rate points pushes that number down even further.

Not the first time Barcelona has bet on electric

The debate over electrifying taxis feels new, but it isn't really. We already told the story of how Barcelona had electric taxis back in 1943 that swapped batteries in minutes instead of waiting for a charge. Back then the problem wasn't the technology, it was infrastructure and cost. Eighty years on, the equation has changed: fast-charging infrastructure has grown, and the price gap between fuel and electricity has become hard to ignore.

How Taxio handles it

Fuel is one of the 16 deductible taxi expenses and also one of the ones that swings the most month to month. Whether you're still on diesel or already charging electric, in Taxio every fill-up or charge gets logged the moment it happens, with its amount and date, so at month's end you know exactly what driving is actually costing you, no adding up receipts and no relying on memory.

Frequently asked questions about electric taxi savings