EV Charging vs Gas: The Real Cost Comparison

Comparing an EV to a gas car on cost comes down to two different receipts: kilowatt-hours at your electric rate, or gallons at the pump. They’re not directly comparable units, so the fair way to line them up is cost per mile — how much each vehicle spends to cover the same ground. Below, we work the math both ways with the assumptions printed, then hand you a calculator so you can drop in your own electric rate, gas price and mileage instead of trusting a generic number.

The EV side: kWh × rate, divided by efficiency

An EV’s cost per mile is your electric rate divided by your car’s efficiency in miles per kWh. Using our standard reference efficiency of roughly 3.5 miles per kWh and an illustrative electric rate of $0.15/kWh, that’s $0.15 ÷ 3.5 ≈ 4.3 cents per mile. Our cost-to-charge guide works this side of the math in more depth, including a table across several electric rates — the short version is that it scales directly with your local rate, so a driver paying $0.10/kWh lands closer to 2.9 cents a mile, and one paying $0.25/kWh lands closer to 7.1 cents.

The gas side: gallons × price, divided by MPG

A gas car’s cost per mile is price per gallon divided by MPG. As an illustrative example, at $3.30/gallon and 30 MPG — a reasonable round number for a mainstream compact or midsize sedan, not any specific model — that’s $3.30 ÷ 30 = 11 cents per mile. A more efficient hybrid at 45 MPG and the same gas price comes down to about 7.3 cents per mile; a less efficient SUV at 20 MPG runs closer to 16.5 cents. Both your local gas price and your specific car’s real-world MPG move this number meaningfully, which is exactly why we treat $3.30/gallon as an illustrative placeholder rather than a claimed national average — use the calculator below with your actual numbers.

Side by side, at the illustrative numbers

At these illustrative numbers, home charging comes out to roughly a third to a quarter of the per-mile fuel costof driving the gas car. That gap is the reason home EV charging is usually the cheaper way to cover miles — but “usually” is doing real work in that sentence, because both sides of the equation are local. Use the calculator below with your own electric rate, gas price and mileage to see your real gap instead of this illustrative one.

Cold weather narrows the gap a little

The 3.5 mi/kWh reference used throughout this page is a middle-of-the-road, mild-weather figure. Cold weather is well established to reduce an EV’s real-world efficiency — more of the battery’s energy goes toward cabin heating and keeping the battery itself in its preferred temperature range, so actual miles per kWh drops somewhat in winter driving compared with the reference number. That nudges the EV’s cost per mile up during cold months. Gas cars see a smaller version of the same effect, with EPA-rated MPG also dropping in cold weather due to engine warm-up and increased accessory load. Neither side of the comparison is immune to the seasons, but the EV side tends to move more, which is worth factoring in if you live somewhere with real winters and are budgeting a cost-per-mile figure you plan to hold to year-round.

What about a plug-in hybrid?

A plug-in hybrid (PHEV) effectively runs both sides of this comparison depending on the trip. Short trips within the electric-only range use the EV-side math above; longer trips that exhaust the battery and switch to the gas engine use the gas-side math instead, typically at a lower MPG than a comparable non-hybrid once the battery is depleted, since the car is now hauling extra battery weight. A PHEV owner who charges reliably and drives mostly short trips can land close to the EV numbers most months; one who rarely plugs in ends up much closer to the gas numbers, battery weight and all. There’s no single blended rate we can quote without knowing your specific charging habits and trip lengths.

Where the comparison flips

Gas can close the gap, or even come out ahead, in a few specific situations. A very efficient hybrid paired with cheap local gas narrows the difference significantly, since MPG has as much leverage on the gas-side number as efficiency does on the EV side. Charging exclusively during an expensive peak time-of-use rate, instead of scheduling for an off-peak window — something a smart charger’s app, like the one on the ChargePoint Home Flex, can automate — pushes the EV-side number up and can erase much of its advantage. And a driver who can’t charge at home at all, and instead relies only on paid public charging at a premium price, is comparing a very different number than the home-charging rate used throughout this page. None of these are the typical case — but they’re real enough that “EVs are always cheaper per mile” isn’t something we’ll claim without the asterisk.

On a road trip, the math changes too

Everything above assumes home charging, which is genuinely the cheapest way to run an EV. Away from home, the comparison narrows. Public DC fast charging is typically priced well above a home electric rate — the operator is covering expensive equipment and often a convenience premium, similar to how a gas station off a highway exit tends to charge more than one in town. We don’t have live public-charging pricing to fold into the numbers on this page, since it varies by network and membership plan, but it’s realistic to expect a road-trip cost per mile on DC fast charging to land noticeably closer to gas than the home numbers above suggest. That’s not a reason to skip road trips in an EV — it’s a reason to budget the trip differently than your daily commute.

What this comparison leaves out

Fuel is only one line item in owning a car, and it’s worth being upfront about what isn’t in the numbers above. Purchase price, financing and depreciation aren’t included, and they can move in either direction depending on the specific EV and gas car you’re weighing. Maintenance tends to favor the EV over time — no oil changes, far fewer moving parts in the drivetrain — but we haven’t put a dollar figure on that here, since it varies by model and how many years you keep the car. Insurance can go either way by vehicle and insurer. And if you’re installing a home charger for the first time, that’s a one-time hardware and installation cost that this fuel-only comparison doesn’t recoup for you — our cost-to-charge guide is about what you pay per charge, not what the charger itself costs to buy and install.

A quick gut-check example

Say you drive a 40-mile round-trip commute, five days a week — about 10,400 miles a year just for that commute. At the illustrative EV numbers above (4.3¢/mile), that’s roughly $446 a year in electricity for the commute alone. The same miles in the illustrative 30-MPG gas car (11¢/mile) run about $1,144. The gap, about $698 a year for this one example, is the kind of number that makes a real difference over the years you own the car — but it’s only as accurate as the rate and price you plug in, which is the entire reason the calculator on this page takes your numbers instead of ours.

The honest bottom line

For a typical driver charging at home on a standard residential rate, the fuel-cost math favors the EV, usually by a comfortable margin. The size of that margin is entirely a function of your electric rate and local gas price, both of which you know better than we do — which is why the calculator above, not a single quoted number, is the actual answer to “how much would I save.” Once you’ve run your numbers, our Level 2 charger roundupis the next step if home charging is the direction you’re headed.