Charged at home, the 15 electric cars on this site with an EPA rating cost between $54 and $89 a month in electricity at average US mileage and the average US residential rate. The same miles in a 27 mpg petrol car cost about $170. Charged only on public DC stations, the spread is $140 to $232 — and four of the fifteen cost more than the petrol car.
Every car, per month, at home and on the road
The month is 1,125 miles — the US average of 13,500 a year, divided by twelve. Home electricity is $0.184 per kWh, the EIA’s US residential average; public DC fast charging is $0.48 per kWh, a typical network rate. Each car’s energy use is its EPA combined figure in kWh per 100 miles, which is measured at the wall and already includes charging losses. The petrol car is 27 mpg at $4.07 a gallon. All four assumptions can be changed in the running-cost calculator.
| Car | EPA kWh / 100 mi | Home, per 100 mi | Home, per month | Public DC, per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyundai Ioniq 6 Long Range RWD | 26.0 | $4.78 | $54 | $140 |
| Tesla Model 3 Long Range AWD | 26.4 | $4.86 | $55 | $143 |
| Tesla Model Y Long Range AWD | 27.5 | $5.06 | $57 | $149 |
| Toyota bZ4X AWD | 28.0 | $5.15 | $58 | $151 |
| BMW i4 eDrive40 | 28.5 | $5.24 | $59 | $154 |
| Volvo EX30 Single Motor ER | 29.2 | $5.37 | $60 | $158 |
| Kia EV6 Long Range RWD | 29.6 | $5.45 | $61 | $160 |
| Volkswagen ID.4 Pro | 29.8 | $5.48 | $62 | $161 |
| Hyundai Ioniq 5 Long Range RWD | 30.0 | $5.52 | $62 | $162 |
| Ford Mustang Mach-E Extended Range RWD | 30.7 | $5.65 | $64 | $166 |
| Ford Mustang Mach-E Standard Range RWD | 31.4 | $5.78 | $65 | $170 |
| Nissan Ariya e-4ORCE 87 kWh | 36.6 | $6.73 | $76 | $198 |
| Porsche Taycan RWD | 37.1 | $6.83 | $77 | $200 |
| Kia EV9 AWD | 40.0 | $7.36 | $83 | $216 |
| Rivian R1T Dual Motor Large Pack | 42.9 | $7.89 | $89 | $232 |
| A 27 mpg petrol car at $4.07 a gallon | — | $15.07 | $170 | $170 |
Four cars in this database — the Tesla Model 3 RWD and Model Y RWD, the BYD Seal and the Volkswagen ID.7 — are sold outside the United States and have no EPA rating, so they are not in a dollar table. Their European charging figures are on their own pages.
At home, every one of them is cheap
The gap between the most and least efficient car is $35 a month — the Rivian R1T uses 65 per cent more energy per mile than the Ioniq 6, and the bill says so. But the gap between any of them and petrol is larger than the gap between them: even the R1T saves about $81 a month against the comparison car, and the Ioniq 6 saves $116. Over a year that is $970 to $1,390, which is the number that decides whether an electric car pays for its price premium; the full working, including depreciation and insurance, is in EV against petrol: total cost of ownership.
The ranking is the efficiency ranking in different clothes. Saloons at the top, big SUVs and the pickup at the bottom, with the aerodynamic crossovers in between; the most efficient electric cars list explains why a 100 kWh pack is a cost, not a saving, if the body it sits in needs 40 kWh to go 100 miles.
On public DC, the picture flips for four of them
At $0.48 a kWh — and many networks charge more at peak hours — the Ariya, Taycan, EV9 and R1T cost more per mile than the petrol car. The Mach-E Standard Range lands exactly on it. The other ten stay cheaper, but by a margin of $4 to $30 a month rather than $80 to $116. A driver with no home charging is therefore choosing between a small saving and a small loss, and the car’s efficiency decides which.
That is not an argument against public charging; it is an argument for using it the way it is meant to be used, on the road, with the routine charging done at home or at a workplace where the rate is closer to the residential one. A car charged 90 per cent at home and 10 per cent on DC comes out at roughly $63 a month for the Ioniq 6 and $103 for the R1T — still well under the petrol figure for every car in the table.
What your own bill will look like
Three things move it. Your electricity rate is the largest: at $0.12 a kWh, common on overnight EV tariffs, every figure in the home column falls by a third; at $0.30, common in California and the north-east, it rises by two thirds. Your mileage scales it directly. And your driving — winter, speed, roof boxes — moves the car’s real consumption above its EPA number, typically by 10 to 30 per cent in cold months; how much range EVs lose in the cold has the measured figures.
The rate itself is mostly decided by where you live rather than by what you negotiate: the same car costs $44 a month to charge in Nevada and $177 in Hawaii at the published state averages. Charging cost in every US state runs this table again at each state’s rate.
The per-car pages under charging time and cost work each of these cars through at home, on a 50 kW station and on a fast one, with the same assumptions printed rather than assumed.
There is one rate the table above cannot show, because it depends on your roof rather than your utility: the kilowatt-hour you generate yourself. If home charging is where most of your kWh will come from, it is worth reading what it actually takes to charge an EV from solar — the array size, the daytime-charging problem, and where a home battery does and does not help — on our sister site Solarsunlabs.
One car at a time
The table above is the whole fleet at one rate. If you are looking at a single car, its own page carries the same arithmetic in more detail — home against public, the full-charge figure, and the minutes each kind of charger takes.
- Hyundai Ioniq 6 charging cost and time
- Kia EV6 charging cost and time
- Hyundai Ioniq 5 charging cost and time
- Porsche Taycan charging cost and time
- Kia EV9 charging cost and time
- Tesla Model Y charging cost and time
- Volkswagen ID.7 charging cost and time
- BMW i4 charging cost and time
- Tesla Model 3 charging cost and time
- Toyota bZ4X charging cost and time
- Volkswagen ID.4 charging cost and time
- Volvo EX30 charging cost and time
- Ford Mustang Mach-E charging cost and time
- BYD Seal charging cost and time
- Nissan Ariya charging cost and time
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to charge an electric car per month?
Between about $54 and $89 a month at home, for the fifteen EPA-rated cars on this site, at 1,125 miles a month and the US average residential rate of $0.184 per kWh. Charging only on public DC stations at $0.48 per kWh, the range is $140 to $232.
Is charging an EV cheaper than petrol?
At home, always, for every car in this table: the saving against a 27 mpg petrol car is $81 to $116 a month. On public DC fast charging it depends on the car — four of the fifteen cost more than petrol per mile at $0.48 per kWh, and one costs the same.
Which electric car is cheapest to charge?
Of the cars measured here, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 Long Range RWD, at 26.0 kWh per 100 miles: $4.78 per 100 miles at home, about $54 a month. The Tesla Model 3 Long Range AWD is within a dollar of it.
How many kWh does an electric car use per month?
At 1,125 miles a month, between about 290 kWh (Ioniq 6) and 480 kWh (Rivian R1T), measured at the wall. For comparison, the average US household uses around 900 kWh a month, so an EV adds a third to a half to a typical bill.
Sources
Energy use per 100 miles is each car’s EPA combined rating from fueleconomy.gov, credited with its model year on the car’s page. Electricity is the EIA US residential average; the DC rate, petrol price and mileage are the standing assumptions on the methodology page. Monthly figures are per-100-mile cost multiplied by 11.25 and rounded to the dollar.