A driver uses a fast charging station for phones in a batch of cell phones at John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) on April 2, 2021 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | beautiful pictures
That’s been true for years: One mile per mile, it’s cheaper to recharge an electric car — much cheaper overall, than to power a car powered by an internal combustion engine.
It’s a key selling point for Tesla and other electric vehicle makers, especially in a time of soaring gas prices. But there’s a catch this time: While gas prices have indeed skyrocketed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so have electricity prices – especially in some parts of the US that are big markets for electricity. Tesla’s electric car.
That raises a question: Is it still true that it’s much cheaper to “refuel” an EV? The charts below help us find the answer.
The first chart, using nationwide figures, provides a baseline. Others use data specific to Boston and San Francisco, two markets where electric vehicles are popular — and where electricity tends to be more expensive than the national average.
The answer in all three cases is that – even with electricity prices soaring in the area – it’s still a bit more expensive to fill up your gas tank than it is to charge an electric vehicle.
Electricity prices have roughly caught up with gas price increases in Boston and San Francisco. However, on average across the United States, it has become more expensive to add 100 kilometers of range in your internal combustion vehicle, than charging an equivalent amount of electric vehicles, over the past few months.
Is that likely to change? While oil prices will almost certainly fall in the coming months as producers ramp up output, it’s unlikely that electricity prices will rise enough to make electric vehicles over their lifecycle less affordable than conventional solutions. alternative to internal combustion.
Using February data, Jeffries analyst David Kelley recently calculated that the total lifetime cost of owning an EV is about $4,700 less than an internal combustion vehicle. He says the cost disparity is likely to widen as more electric vehicles come to market – and as battery prices continue to fall – over the next few years.
How we handle numbers
We thought of three questions when we put these charts together:
- How much does it cost to add 100 miles of range for the average ICE vehicle and the average EV?
- How have those costs changed over the past three years? (Going back three years to February 2019 provides us with a pre-pandemic baseline.)
- How do those costs differ between different regions of the United States?
As for gasoline, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that the average new car sold in the US in 2020 has a combined fuel economy of 25.7 miles per gallon. Driving 100 miles on that average car will use 3.9 gallons of gas. (Figures for 2021 have yet to be released.)
On the electric vehicle side, the EPA’s efficiency rating for EVs – known as “MPGe”, which is equivalent to miles per gallon – gives consumers an idea of how far an EV can travel with 33.7 kilowatt hours (kWh). Why 33.7 kWh? That’s the amount of electricity chemically equivalent to the energy in a gallon of regular gasoline.
The average MPGe rating for 2022 electric vehicles sold in the US is around 97, so driving 100 miles on that assumed average vehicle would use 34.7 kWh of electricity.
The charts above compare how the price of 3.9 gallons of gas has changed against the price of 34.7 kWh over time, using monthly data from the US Energy Information Administration (for gas prices) ) and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (for electricity prices) from February 2019 to February 2022.
– Crystal Mercedes of CNBC contributed to this article.
