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.
Theonline 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.”
Source: Press Gazette
