Gas is EXPENSIVE these days! There’s no getting around it. As gas prices have risen, a common thread has been EVs are the way, because they’re cheaper. Why is that? Well to start, while gas prices are rising, the cost of electricity has barely moved. In most cases, electricity costs tend to be quite stable and as such when you plug an EV in, you can be confident the same charge will cost you same amount the following day, week, and even year. The truth is, the cost of charging an EV at home at level 2, comes out to about $1.20 a gallon equivalent. If gas is over $4 a gallon, it’s clear why an EV costs less to fuel.
When going to charge in public, those prices might be higher, but I tend to look at EV charging like we might look at regular, plus, and premium gas equivalents. Keep in mind, electricity is the same, no matter what level you charge at. ‘Regular’ (Level 1) is the same as charging at home, which will be your cheapest and most controllable form of charging. ‘Plus’, will be more like a public level 2 station, where the costs tend to be a few cents higher than what it would be to charge at home. ‘Premium’, that’s the level 3 fast charging. In some cases, it would be equal to charging your EV at about $2 a gallon. In others, around $3 a gallon. But keep in mind, that those expensive charging sessions would happen on very rare occasions. Those long road trips where you stop to fill up your EV, and if you’re in a pinch and need to charge before getting home. Don’t get me started on the savings equivalent when EV pickup trucks start hitting the market.
The other factor is that EV costs are coming down as technology catches up. Gas car prices aren’t really fluctuating year to year. The initial MSRP of an EV tends to be a few thousand dollars higher than their gasoline equivalents. Yet that’s what the up to $7,500 for the federal tax incentives, and the up to $2,500 state rebates are for. And again, more and more EVs are being developed to cost less, as car manufactures are trying to build EVs that are the same cost right from the get-go as a gas car. Then there are the local incentives that a town or utility may provide, check with your local utility to find out if there are any programs in place that can help you save some money by charging your EV!
The final piece to this puzzle is the cost of maintaining an EV. It’s no secret that EVs have fewer moving parts than an ICE vehicle. With less moving parts, comes less things that can break. Less trips to the local mechanic, and less emergency repairs.
There you have it, the three main reasons why EVs are cheaper. The “fuel” is cheaper. There are plenty of federal, state and local incentives to lower the initial cost. Finally, the maintenance costs of an EV are drastically lower than their gas-powered counterparts.
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