A map of EV charging costs in the US. “Now that the price of gasoline is dipping below $3 per gallon, is it still cheaper to fill up a car on electrons rather than gasoline? The answer is yes — by a lot.”
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Discussion 6 comments
Nice of them to do the math, but this does still overlook the high cost of "fast" charging when on road trips. Still usually cheaper, but worth acknowledging that the prices are all over the place (and hard to predict for long trips).
Here in California, I've never gotten under $0.20 (and that's off-peak at home). I see fast chargers by us ranging from $0.55 to over a $1.
It drives me crazy that many fast chargers charge by the minute rather than the kWh. It means that people with older, slower-charging batteries (like my Chevy Bolt) end up paying way more.
For sure. I have a Mazda CX-3 at about 29mpg. At best, the price of gas near me is $4 in California. My Model Y does 4kWh, and my cost per kWh is $0.20 off-peak. Driving to my in-laws 40 miles away is about $5.50 for my Mazda and a little under $2 for the Tesla.
But the Tesla has had a lot of funk. Mine is under the NHTSA investigation (the steering column physically broke in 29 days), one camera has outright failed, and we found a speaker that wasn't screwed in (the bolt slipped between a panel of the door and stuck out). All covered under warranty–but Tesla needed some "pressure" from me to take it seriously. Eightball says: I'll have some more maintenance costs that offset that gas cost in my future.
That doesn’t factor in the $124 annual highway use fee we pay in Virginia. It’s designed to offset the loss of tax revenue at the pumps. I’m fine with that in principle, but it’s not something that is well publicized, so I think most people are surprised when that bill shows up.
https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/vehicles/registration/alternative-vehicles
The article doesn't mention the upfront cost though. We had to get a new car as our small sedan for my wife and I was getting too crowded for the two growing kiddos we had. We wanted to go electric knowing it's environmental benefits, however the cost of all the electric models we saw were a good $20k-30k more than gas counterparts. We luckily live in a city with an amazing public transit system, so we rarely drive as it is (I fill up my tank maybe twice a month). When I did the math I wouldn't see that savings on initial cost for a good 20 or so years.
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