EV Charging Cost Calculator

A national average can't really answer this one. What charging costs comes down to your electricity rate, and that varies by more than three to one across the US — it can even shift through the day if you're on a time-of-use tariff.

So we've filled the boxes below with placeholders and we'd love you to replace them. The rate on your own bill is the only one that really matters.

What's in the number, and what isn't

This is running cost only — the energy it takes to move the car. We've deliberately left out three things that often get quietly folded in to make one side of the comparison look better:

• Charger installation. That's a one-off bill, not a running cost, and smearing it across a year just hides it.
• Battery degradation. Real enough, but far too model-specific for us to average honestly.
• Incentives, maintenance, insurance and depreciation. These shift the total-ownership picture, often by more than fuel does — which is exactly why they deserve their own calculation rather than being buried in this one.

If you do some of your charging on public networks, expect your real cost to land higher than this — rapid charging usually costs several times the home rate. Worth running it twice with different rates to see the spread.

Curious how the sums work? We've written the whole method down in how we calculate charging costs.