Man using smartphone app while standing next to his electric car charging. Picture: Shutterstock/Sergii Kozii
Polling on whether the public had been misled by a Daily Mail story forced press regulator IPSO to rethink its decision to reject a complaint.
The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a UK non-profit group aiming to support informed debate on energy issues, objected to the way the Daily Mail compared the price of an average petrol car versus an one.
The online story, published in July 2025, covered criticism of Labour’s £650m pot of grant funding to support the purchase of electric vehicles.
The Daily Mail reported: “Many drivers have been put off by the price of electric cars, which average around £50,000, more than double the cost of a petrol car at around £22,000, according to Nimblefins.”
ECIU argued the article was misleading because this was a flawed comparison.
It said Nimblefins had referred to the average price of a “small car” as £22,022, the average price of a “popular medium-sized car” as £27,168, and the average price of a “popular SUV model” as £35,005.
In contrast, the £46,000 average electric car price encompassed the full range from £14,995 to £333,000.
IPSO’s complaints team initially rejected the complaint, saying it did not raise a potential breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice.
IPSO told ECIU: “We observed that the article did not say the average price of a petrol car was £22,000. Rather, it made clear that ‘the cost of a petrol car [was] at around £22,000’.
“We did not consider readers would be misled into believing £22,000 was the average petrol car price… Taking all these into account, we did not consider the article was misleading in the way you suggested.”
ECIU then commissioned Yougov to poll 2,187 people asking what they thought the Daily Mail’s wording meant.
Almost two-thirds (64%) said they thought it meant the average cost of a petrol car was around £22,000. A further fifth of respondents were unsure.
EICU submitted the poll results to IPSO’s complaints committee, which then identified a possible breach and reopened the complaint.
The Daily Mail told IPSO it had inadvertently conflated the source of the data by referring to Nimblefins, when the figures it used actually came from a blog by the Electric Car Scheme. This stated electric vehicles have “higher upfront costs (£48,000-£50,873 average) compared to petrol cars (£21,964 average)”.
ECIU noticed during the investigation the figures were no longer present in the Electric Car Scheme blog and the Daily Mail had updated its story to say the cost of a petrol car was “around £32,000”.
The Daily Mail explained it had been contacted and told the figure had changed and the article had been amended by a reporter unaware there was an IPSO investigation.
The complaint was resolved without a finding on whether there had been a breach of the Editors’ Code as both sides agreed on the wording of an updated amendment referencing the average prices of specific petrol car prices from the Electric Car Scheme and “similar figures” from Nimblefins and Autotrader.
The Daily Mail also added a standfirst under the headline which read: “Update: since publication, Electric Car Scheme has revised its figure of £22,000 to £32,000.”
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