How to Easily Estimate Charging Costs for an Electric Vehicle

While gas prices are displayed on the same large, easy-to-read signs in every state and at every station, costs to charge an EV are not as obvious. Plus, unlike gas vehicles, you can “refuel” your EV at home, where electricity prices will be slightly different than at public chargers. 

It’s easy to get bogged down by these details and lose track of what owning an EV would mean for your wallet. But you can get a ballpark estimate by looking at some basic components of EV charging costs: the energy costs (gas, electricity) in your area, vehicle type, and miles driven.

Assuming you’ve already purchased an electric vehicle–and taken advantage of any state and federal rebates–here’s how to quickly calculate how much it’ll cost to use it on a daily basis.

1. Look Up Gas and Electricity Costs in Your State

(Credit: Getty Images/jabejon)

The first thing you need to do is gather data about gas and electricity costs in your state.

The average price per gallon of gasoline in the US is currently $3.87. The average price of electricity was $0.15 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in July 2022. Don’t worry about them being in different units of measurement for now.

Gas and electricity prices vary significantly by state, which can change the output of your analysis. For example, electricity cost $0.10/kWh in Washington state ($0.05 below national average) in July and $0.24/kWh in Massachusetts ($0.09 above national average).

Gas prices in those states, for example, are $5.22 in Washington ($1.35 above the national average) and $3.60 in Massachusetts (just below average). And of course, average gas prices have risen dramatically over the past few years with inflation.

How to Find Current Gas and Electricity Prices Near You

If you want to look at the costs in your city or town, a Google search for “energy prices in [insert state]” should return better results, like these from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics(Opens in a new window). To be extra precise, look at your electricity bill and divide the total kWh used over the total cost. That will give you the price per kWh. 

To get the most conservative estimate possible, you may want to choose the month when your electricity bill is highest. This is often the summer months, when AC is blasting and the kids are home from school. But depending on where you live and how your home’s HVAC system works, the cold winter months might be more expensive. 

Similarly, with how volatile gas prices have been, you may want to slightly increase the estimate or do your own average of recent prices in your area.

Example: For me in Chicago, Illinois (Cook County), gas is around $4.32/gallon(Opens in a new window), and electricity costs were $0.18/kWh(Opens in a new window) in August.

2: Determine How Much You Drive on a Regular Basis

(Credit: Getty Images/Ditto)

With your gas and electricity costs in hand, the next step is to estimate the amount you drive.

Here is the average annual miles driven per age group and gender, according to the Department of Transportation(Opens in a new window). To keep things simple, pull your relevant number from there.

Alternatively, you can get a more accurate count (and break it down by miles per week or month) on your own. Add up your total commute miles, amount spent running errands or seeing friends and family, and any extras like day or weekend trips. 

If you’re a road trip lover who crosses state lines, that will make things harder given the energy cost variability. You can leave that out to start and add it in once you have a baseline for non-road trip living.

Example: For my demographic, the average annual miles driven is about 12,000(Opens in a new window).

3: Plug Energy Costs and Miles Driven Into an Online Calculator

You didn’t think we were actually going to make you do math, did you? There are many online calculators that can guide you through the rest of your savings calculations.

This one from ChooseEV.com(Opens in a new window) has a repository of gas-powered vehicles and EVs, broken down by brand and model. That skips a step for you: calculating the rate of energy consumption for a specific vehicle (miles per gallon on a gas-powered car, and the miles per kWh for an EV).

(Credit: ChooseEVs.com)

Above, I entered the inputs I found earlier for Chicago: $4.65/gallon of gas and $0.18/kWh of electricity. I also selected two comparable vehicles: the 2023 Honda HR-V (gas-powered, $23,650 starting cost) and 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV (battery-powered, $27,200). 

The results show that for $4.65 (estimated cost/gallon of gas), I could go 27 miles in the Honda HR-V car or go 88 miles in the Chevy Bolt EUV.

If I drive the estimated 12,000 miles per year, that would result in $1,431 in savings or $7,156 over five years. But if gas prices go back down to around $3.00 (hopefully), I’d only save about $700 in a year.

(Credit: ChooseEVs.com)

Other calculators will get more specific. This one(Opens in a new window) breaks down the miles per traveled on a weekly basis, differentiating between weekdays and weekends. You also have to enter the miles/gallon and miles/kWh yourself. You can either get this from the other online calculator, or on the car manufacturer’s website.

I put in 40 miles per day during the week for commuting, and 20 on the weekends since I typically just do errands around town. If you work from home, however, and drive to see friends or family a few hours away on the weekend, your numbers would look very different. This calculator found $1,691 in total savings.

(Credit: Chargevc.org)

4: Refine the Estimate With Lifestyle-Based Specifics

(Credit: Getty Images/Carmen Martínez Torrón)

Since your weeks are not as boilerplate as these calculators suggest, you can make some general adjustments to refine the estimate.

For example, if you do primarily city driving, you may want to take the gas-powered vehicle’s miles/gallon estimate for the city. Same for highway driving.

If you plan to charge at public chargers, or workplace chargers, on a regular basis, then account for that. Ask your workplace how much it costs to charge for a day. For public stations, like DC fast chargers at a highway rest stop, expect to pay a little bit more to fill up.

Electrify America EV fast charging station in Vancouver, WA.
(Credit: Electrify America)

If you plan to take a road trip or frequent long drives, maybe add in some extra miles for that and consider energy costs in the state(s) where you’re going. For example, if I want to go on a road trip from Chicago, Illinois, to Traverse City, Michigan, it’s 319 miles—almost all of them in Michigan.

The average gas price in Michigan is $3.80, and the Electrify America cost(Opens in a new window) to fast charge is the same as in Illinois ($0.43/kWh). I plugged these two numbers into the ChooseEV calculator. 

It showed roughly the same cost to drive to Michigan in the gas-powered Honda CR-V ($44) or in the battery-powered Chevy Bolt EUV ($40), when using all fast-chargers along the way. This is where you can see how a significant increase in price per kWh of electricity can negate your EV savings. That’s the same result we found in our real-world test of driving a Tesla 10,000 miles across the country. So although I’d save on a day-to-day basis, I wouldn’t save on road trips.

(Credit: ChooseEVs.com)

Since time is money, you also need to factor in time to charge. While home and workplace charging are essentially passive activities that require no waiting on behalf of the owner, road trips are different. Most cars take about 45 minutes (plus or minus 15) to fill up on a fast charger, commonly found at rest stops, or more like an hour in cold weather. With the Chevy Bolt EUV’s 247-mile range, I’d have to charge once on each leg of the 319-mile drive to Michigan and back.

5: Consider the Cost of Buying Chargers and Adapters

Tesla ‘Wall Connector’ home charger
(Credit: Tesla)

Many EVs come with level one home chargers (although Tesla stopped bundling them with new car purchases earlier this year.) That means you’ll never be stranded, but they’re (really) slow.

It can take 10 or more hours to get the same charge on a level one charger as it takes in just a few hours on a level two, and less than an hour on a level three (although those are not available for home installation, and are typically found by highways).

If you want to upgrade to a level two, it’ll cost $1,000-$2,000 (including the charger itself plus labor for installation), according to an EV charger electrician we spoke to who works at Tiger Electric(Opens in a new window). The most common chargers he installs are the level 2 chargers from Wallbox(Opens in a new window), Loop(Opens in a new window), and Chargepoint(Opens in a new window). Tesla also recently released a non-Tesla home charger for $550

Pro tip: Chevrolet offers free installation on a level two charger with the purchase of a new Bolt EV or EUV; the company recently confirmed(Opens in a new window) that two-thirds of customers take advantage of that.

Some vehicles, primarily Teslas, benefit from buying charging port adapters. Teslas have proprietary charging ports that work with its own network of stations. To expand the number of fast charging options for owners, the company makes a $250 CCS adapter(Opens in a new window). This changes the shape of the end of the plug so it can fit in non-Tesla chargers. CCS is the new standard for almost all other EVs, so most public chargers are built to accommodate that plug type.

For a breakdown of charging levels, times, and plug types, see our charging guide.

6: Assume Lower Maintenance Costs for an EV

With all this driving and charging, you might be wondering what it takes to keep an EV in shipshape. Surprisingly, electric vehicles are decidedly simpler machines than their combustion engine counterparts. They do not have gas engines or transmissions, which contain hundreds of expensive, intricate parts such as a radiator, pistons, and spark plugs.

That means no oil changes and fewer parts to replace. One study (Opens in a new window)found EVs require 31% less maintenance, and when they do the bill is 22% less. This is because lack of combustion limits the amount of heat and vibrations produced to run the car, which flows through it and degrades its components over time. 

But what about battery replacements? In our exploration of all-things EV batteries, we found that most batteries last for a decade or so. Different manufacturers offer warranties as well. For example, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Nissan Leaf, and Audi e-Tron all come with the standard 8-year/100,000-mile battery warranty. Hyundai and Kia go beyond that, ensuring their EV batteries for 10 years or 100,000 miles. 

After that, a battery replacement can cost up to $20,000—almost as much as a brand new EV! For most, that’ll be the end of the vehicle. Hopefully it will end up in one of the new EV battery recycling plants popping up, like Redwood Materials(Opens in a new window), started by former Tesla co-founder J.B. Straubel with funding from investors such as Ford.

Got Your Final Answer?

For me, driving a modest amount around Chicago in an EV with only a few longer trips per year would result in some savings, particularly if I got an affordable EV and it qualified for a couple thousand dollars in tax incentives.

But in reality, I have a different issue barring EV ownership: My apartment complex does not have chargers. So for me it’s public transit, bikes, and rideshares for now (much less cool than a sleek, fast-acceleration EV). A hybrid would be a better option for me since it doesn’t require charging, which still saves on driving costs and reduces carbon emissions.

Once you factor in the upfront cost to purchase the vehicle, the cost to charge it based on your location and driving habits, and ongoing repairs, what would have to be true for you to buy an electric vehicle? Share your thoughts and your own analysis in the comments.