Electric Car Charging Cost Calculator

This calculator turns your trip distance, your vehicle's efficiency, and your electricity rate into a cost you can compare. To find an EV's cost per mile, you need two numbers. First, the cost of electricity in dollars per kWh. Second, the vehicle's efficiency, meaning how much electricity it uses to travel a given distance. ²

The page also reports a gasoline cost per mile, not just miles per gallon. This 'MPG illusion' shows why it can be more meaningful to express fuel efficiency as consumption rather than as economy. That is why the results below show cost per mile for both electricity and gasoline, side by side. ⁴

Enter your own numbers, not a generic estimate. Actual residential electricity costs depend on the type of equipment installed. They also depend on the time of day and how long you use the charging station. Each input field only accepts a value inside a set range. Enter a value outside that range, and the page will refuse to compute a result. ²

The results below are estimates built from the numbers you enter. They do not guarantee what you will pay. This is an estimated rate of consumption. A given vehicle may or may not actually travel the distance its label rating implies on a fully charged battery. Treat each result as a planning figure. Update your inputs if your rate or efficiency changes. ³

The battery share charged input is a change in state of charge. State of charge means how full a battery currently is. Kilowatt-hours is an energy unit for electricity. This value tells you how many kilowatt-hours the vehicle uses to travel 100 miles. That number relates directly to how much electricity you use, and so to cost. ³

Charging losses explain why the wall meter shows more energy leaving the outlet than the battery gains. When you charge the battery, you lose energy converting AC power from the grid into DC power for the battery. You also lose energy overcoming the battery's resistance to charging. This resistance grows as the battery nears full capacity. This calculator does not add that loss on top of the electricity rate you enter. ⁵

A time-of-use rate charges a different price for electricity depending on the hour of day. Some utilities offer residential time-of-use rates. Others offer rate incentives for owners of charging equipment. ²

Electricity and gasoline are priced in different units. That is why this page converts both to a cost per mile. EV powertrains are energy efficient. This efficiency creates cost savings over conventional vehicles during operation. These savings happen even when electricity rates are relatively high, such as during peak rates or at public fast-charging stations. Comparing cost per mile, not just price per gallon or per kWh, makes the two vehicle types comparable. ⁶

A gasoline vehicle's cost per mile does not scale evenly with its miles-per-gallon rating. Compare a vehicle that gets 10 mi/US gal to one that gets 15 mi/US gal. Over 1,000 miles, the fuel savings is about 33 gallons. Now compare a jump from 30 to 35 mi/US gal, the same 5 mi/US gal increase. Over that same distance, it saves only about 5 gallons. That is why this page reports gasoline cost per mile directly. It does not ask you to compare two mpg numbers. ⁴

How long a charge takes is a separate question from how much it costs. Charging times vary with several factors. These include how depleted the battery is, or its state of charge, and how much energy it holds. They also include the type of battery, the vehicle's internal charger capacity, and the type of charging equipment. Charging time can range from less than 20 minutes using DC fast chargers to 20 hours or more using Level 1 chargers. This calculator reports cost, not time, for whichever share of the battery you charge. ⁷

Home charging equipment comes in two common levels. Level 1 charging typically uses a 120 V outlet. 8 hours of charging at 120 V can add about 40 miles of range to a mid-size EV. Most homes have 240 V service available. Most residential Level 2 equipment operates at up to 30 Amps and delivers 7.2 kW of power. It can charge a typical EV battery overnight. ⁷

Public charging can be faster still. DC fast charging equipment enables rapid charging at installed stations along heavy traffic corridors. It reaches power outputs up to 500 kW. People also call it Level 3 charging. All commercially available EVs in the United States can charge using Level 1 and Level 2 equipment. This is true regardless of which one you use at home. ⁷

Electric vehicle labels often show efficiency in miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent, or MPGe. Think of this as similar to MPG. But it does not show miles per gallon of the vehicle's own fuel. Instead, it shows how many miles the vehicle can go using an amount of fuel. That amount has the same energy as one gallon of gasoline. ³

A gasoline vehicle's miles-per-gallon rating can be a poor guide to savings. Fuel economy labels must show a miles per gallon estimate. But this number can mislead consumers who compare fuel economy improvements. It is especially misleading when people use it instead of fuel costs. Enter the actual rating for your gasoline vehicle. The calculator will convert it into a cost per mile. ⁴

Driving style changes your real efficiency. But this calculator uses just one efficiency number. Electric cars use regenerative braking to recover energy that braking usually wastes. Stop-and-go traffic involves more braking. So electric cars are most efficient in city driving. If most of your trip is city driving, your real efficiency may beat a highway-heavy trip with the same label rating. ⁵

Weather and equipment both change how much energy a trip or charge really takes. Charging losses can vary with the specific vehicle. They also vary with the type of charging system, the battery's state, and conditions like weather. This does not include losses from heating or cooling the cabin. Those losses can be large in extreme temperatures. This calculator's efficiency input does not separate out those losses. ⁵

Your electricity rate is not an arbitrary number. Electricity prices generally cover the cost to build, finance, maintain, and run power plants and the electricity grid. Some for-profit utilities also add a financial return for owners and shareholders. Generating electricity is the largest cost in the price of electricity. ⁸

Rates can also shift with the season. Extreme temperatures raise demand for heating and cooling. This higher demand can raise fuel and electricity prices. Prices are usually highest in summer, when total demand is high. Utilities add more expensive generation sources to meet that demand. Check whether your rate changes with the season. Do not assume one electricity price applies all year. ⁸

This page turns your own numbers into charging costs, gasoline costs, and cost per mile for both fuels. ²

The sources behind this page do describe some of those related figures, even though this page doesn't package them separately. One is a cost-per-mile calculation built from your electricity price and your vehicle's efficiency, plus an estimate of what it costs to refill a fully depleted battery. ²

Fuel economy labels also carry two figures worth knowing about if you go looking elsewhere: an annual fuel cost estimate built from 15,000 miles a year over five years and a projected price, and a miles-per-gallon-equivalent (MPGe) rating for lining up an EV against a gasoline car on the same scale. ³

Gasoline labels carry their own version of that annual cost estimate, built from the same 15,000-mile-a-year assumption and a projected gasoline price, plus a caution that MPG alone can be a misleading way to compare fuel savings. ⁴