Gas and electric car go head-to-head in road test with surprising results

It's not the destination that matters this time, it's all about the journey.

An electric vs petrol car challenge compared the cost efficiency of two BMWs on a typical holiday road from Melbourne to Sydney.

Fully charged and fully fuelled, the petrol BMW 7 series and the electric i7 were put up against each other on the 900-kilometre journey.

Both cars had the same two stops along the route, one at Tarcutta and the other at Sutton Forest.

The team from CarExpert that drove the BMW siblings from A to B 'couldn't believe' the results.

Two BMWs were put head-to-head to compare cost efficiency / 7 News Sydney

Turns out, the petrol BMW 7 series was the cheaper ride.

According to a team member from CarExpert: 'It was pretty surprising in the sense that you hear from the media that electric vehicles are cheaper to run.

'We weren't expecting it to cost more and we weren't expecting to have to stop as much as we did.'

The CarExpert company explained the reason why they chose those vehicles in particular: 'In addition to them being the same vehicle, the electrical version of that [BMW] has a really long driving range.'

In total, the electric vehicle cost the team $131.92 whereas the petrol car only cost $118.

The driving experiment also revealed that the electric car was the slower option for transport, taking up a total of 2 hours and 8 minutes to recharge.

To add to the issue, the team found some of the electric charging stations were out of order.

'When we were driving as well we had the issue of running into the Optus network outage.'

The electric BMW was the slower car on the 900 km journey / Toby Parsons / Pixabay

The Optus outage was an unplanned outage of all Optus internet, cellular and fixed-line services in Australia that 'took out a lot of EV chargers as well.'

On the decision to choose a vehicle type for your transport needs, CarExpert concluded: 'If you are just driving in and around the city, then an electric vehicle is going to be the more cost-effective option.'

'But if you do frequently hit the road then that is something you need to keep in mind.'

Considering charging times, fully charging an electric vehicle from a regular home connection takes about 30 hours, whilst fast home charging cuts down the charging time by almost half, around 18 hours total.

Meanwhile, public fast charging takes only 40 minutes.

However, electric car owners will already be aware that faster charging comes with a price. The average home charging price is $15.50, whilst public fast charging stations charge a heavy $42.