The federal subsidy for electric cars has ended, which means E.V. sales will probably fall because of simple math: Electric cars are generally more expensive than comparable gas cars. (Some automakers are offering discounts to get around that.)
But there’s one place where E.V.s are usually cheaper: the cost of filling up.
Driving 100 miles in a typical gas car that gets 25 miles per gallon costs about $13 on average.
In an E.V. you’d pay just $5, if you recharged at the average home electricity rate. (Stopping at a fast-charging station — if you couldn’t charge at home, or had to travel far — would cost quite a bit more.)
There’s also a big difference between a standard gas car and a hybrid. A typical hybrid (not the plug-in kind) is essentially a highly efficient gas car — a Toyota Prius can get more than 50 miles per gallon — and so its fill-up costs can be roughly on par with an E.V. charged at home.
But it matters where you’re charging, because electricity and gas rates vary a lot state to state. In places where the gas pump is cheap and the electricity you pay for at home is expensive, an efficient gas car can beat out an E.V.
See how average charging and filling costs change depending where you live:
The cheapest places to charge an E.V. are rural Western states, where residential electricity costs little. The most expensive are Hawaii and California. (If you have solar panels and charge at home, then anywhere can be quite cheap.)
California and Hawaii may be expensive places to recharge an E.V., but they’re also states with typically high gas costs.
The states where E.V. drivers have the biggest advantage are those where electricity is cheap and gas is expensive. Washington tops that list.
Connecticut, on the other hand, is the opposite — cheaper gas and more expensive electricity — and so it has the smallest gap between home E.V. charging and filling at the pump.
Fast-charging rates also differ across states, and typically run two to four times as high as residential electricity rates, according to data from the E.V. charging data firm Paren.
That means if you can’t charge at home and rely primarily on public fast charging, you’ll usually pay a little more than you would for gas. The exception is in Western states, where gas is expensive and fast-charging prices are close to average: In Oregon and California, you could break even; in Washington, you could save money. (Public slow charging is an option, and cheaper than fast charging, but prices vary widely.)
Those dollar differences could mean a handy return on your investment in an E.V. — or many years spent trying to recoup the extra money you spent on a car. (We did the math on that, too.)
Francesca Paris is a Times reporter working with data and graphics for The Upshot.
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