Arguments
What’s cheaper: Fueling your car with gas or electricity?
Posted on 13 April 2026 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk
he price of gasoline has spiked amid a U.S.-led war with Iran. It’s not uncommon for the fossil fuel economy to be disrupted by geopolitical conflicts, but now consumers have more options than ever to protect themselves from price hikes.
EVs are already putting a dent into oil consumption worldwide, and as gas prices climb higher, the simple efficiency of an EV could become all the more appealing. In all 50 states, the cost of home-charging an EV is considerably cheaper than fueling a car with gasoline.
The map above shows the cost of charging an EV at home. The price is expressed in “eGallons,” which is the cost of charging an EV by an amount equivalent to one gallon of gasoline.
I wrote about the math behind the eGallon and plotted a similar map of prices in early 2024, when gas was relatively cheap. And even then, EVs were much more economical to drive. But now, consumers have even more incentive to make the switch.
EVs are super efficient
One reason EVs are a bargain to fuel is that electric drivetrains are vastly more efficient than internal combustion engines. Consider a gasoline price of $4 per gallon. In an internal combustion vehicle, around three dollars’ worth of that gasoline is lost as waste heat and friction, and only one dollar’s worth of the fuel actually moves the car down the road. The rest of the energy is lost in the process.
EVs are much simpler machines: A battery produces an electrical current that spins a rotor, which, in turn, spins the drive axle. EVs also recapture the energy that would otherwise be lost during braking, feeding electricity back into the battery as the vehicle slows down. All told, around 90% of the original energy used to charge a car goes toward propelling the vehicle.
Even in the worst-case scenario where an EV is charged on a coal-heavy grid, an EV is still more efficient than a gasoline-burning car. For a full explanation and illustrations, see “Electric vehicles use half the energy of gas-powered vehicles,” which is likely the most cited and reused work I’ve ever written.
Electricity prices don’t spike like oil prices
The price of charging an EV at home is based on the residential price of electricity. Electricity rates don’t spike up and down like oil prices because electricity is regulated, and utilities must seek government approval to raise prices. Utilities are allowed to adjust their rates temporarily to account for variation in fuel prices, but even so, the effect is muted, resulting in a fairly stable price over time.
(Image credit: Karin Kirk)
People can’t make their own gasoline, but they can generate their own electricity
Drivers of gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles are dependent on a single energy type, which makes them vulnerable to supply disruptions. The situation can be even more painful because a commodity like oil commands a global price regardless of where it’s produced.
But electricity can come from multiple sources, and utilities can shift the proportions of different energy sources in their portfolio in order to keep the price down. Electricity is cheaper when demand is low, so some utilities offer discounted rates for off-peak EV charging. Some people charge their EVs with rooftop solar panels, which offers even more protection from rising prices. No matter how many wars are fought over fossil fuels, sunshine remains free.
New EVs cost more to purchase, but used EVs are a value
The price difference between EVs and gasoline-powered cars has been narrowing, but new EVs are still more expensive than their gasoline counterparts. The two types of vehicles are closer in price in the used car market. As of early 2026, buyers paid around $1,400 more for a used EV than for a similar gasoline vehicle. According to analysts at Recurrent, which tracks the EV market, used EVs are selling more quickly than used gasoline cars, and around 40% of used EVs are selling for less than $25,000. On average, used EVs have fewer miles and are newer than gasoline cars of the same price.
No, that data center next door won’t make EV charging cost as much as gasoline
Electricity prices are rising, but not by enough to change the basic economics of EV charging. To put things in perspective, residential electricity prices have risen by 27% over the past five years (thanks, in part, to data centers), which is certainly a problem in its own right. But for EV charging to cost as much as today’s gasoline, electricity prices would have to rise an additional 250%.
In Minnesota we charge our EV using reduced, time-of-day metering rates at night, so that the effective cost/gallon is half that shown for Minnesota, or about 65 cents.
It takes days to charge at home. Please offer comparisons to charge from a level 2 and level 3 charging stations too.
paulgrace @ 2:
"It takes days" is a highly subjective statement. Time to charge depends on how depleted your battery is, what charge level you charge it to, and the charge rate of your home charging system.
We bought an EV about 15 months ago. It has become our primary vehicle. It now has about 12,000km on it, and has been used almost entirely for daily commuting, trips around the city, and trips to nearby cities to visit relatives. We have always charged at home. It has an 80kWh battery, with a nominal range of about 400 km. (This varies seasonally - less in winter.)
...but when we bought the vehicle, we also had a 240V/40A charging station installed at home. The cost of that charging station (including installation) was about 3% of the cost of the car. We typically only charge it to 80%, unless we plan a longer trip (when we'll charge it to 100%). It has never been below 34% when we started a charge cycle.
We normally charge at a rate of 10A - about 2.4 kW. Daily usage is easily handled overnight. The longest charge cycle was about 17 hours. We can easily switch to the full charging rate of the charging station (40A), which gives a charging rate of over 9kW. At this rate, we can charge from 20% to 80% in about 5 hours.
As a rough estimate, our electricity cost over 15 months has been about $1000 less than what it would have cost to feed an ICE vehicle with gasoline. We've already saved enough to pay for more than half the home charging station. We still have an older ICE vehicle which has become our second vehicle. I used to spend $1500 or more a year on gas when I commuted regularly and it was our primary vehicle. When I filled it earlier this month, I had not put gas in it since December.
If you constantly drive the maximum distance of a vehicle with considerable range, and charge it using a 120V/10A charger that plugs into a regular household wall outlet, then yes it will take days to charge it. Our vehicle would take a couple of days to go from 20% to 80% at that rate, but our typical daily charge requirements would be something like 8-10 hours (and rarely exceed 16 hours). At 240V/10A, our typical charge requirements take 4-5 hours.
As long as you are not limited to a 120V/10A charger (e.g. apartment dweller or condo owner with no decent access to electrical systems), there are many, many higher-power home charging options.
I guess it depends on your daily use. Kia EV5 is our only vehicle and we paid out for wall plug which gives us decent power if wanted from the grid, but normally it manages charging so that it only charges the car when solar panels would otherwise export power to the grid. (we get paid 17c /kWh for exported power but pay 42c / kWh to use grid power so aim to minimize that). Like Bob, we only charge to 100% prior to a long trip. If needed to charge at night, we would switch power plan to get a cheap night rate (and power box can fully charge overnight) but since I work from home, this is unnecessary. Most of our trips are for a shopping at local town or getting us to walking or biking tracks for recreation. NZ has worst ratio of EV fast chargers to EVs in OECD but we can still trip around fine with a little bit of planning.
Our pricing plan is tiered, with on-peak, mid-peak, and off-peak rates. Times of day vary between summer and winter, but overnight (7pm-7am) is always off-peak. Current off-peak rates are $0.098/kWh, but there is also a delivery charge and a regulatory charge added to the bill each month that roughly doubles that.
We have yet to make a long trip with the EV that would require charging away from home. Here in Canada, a lot of commercial charging stations expect you to have their app on your phone, which complicates things. There is also the issue of which stations have which plugs. Ours in not a Tesla - we have the J1772 port plus SAE/CCS fast-charging combo.
Many oeople do not understand that charging an electric car is different from filling up an ICE car. It is a PITA to fill up an ICE car. For this reason you drive the car until it is almost empty and then go to a gas station. By contrast, if you own or rent a home, it is easy to top off the car every time you are home. The car is always full.
I drive about 100 miles a day. My car has a 250 mile range. I normally fill up most days and rarely have less than half charge (I have a level 2 charger similar to Bob Loblaw). Occasionally I stay at my partners home for several days. If I plug into a normal 110 plug I get about 60 miles a day but I drive less. My cost for electricity was about 1/4 gas before the war, now it is more like 1/6.
For long drives I go until I have about 50 miles left. Tesla has regular chargers and there has always been one available. Most Tesla chargers are near highways.
My brother drives a Kia and he had to plan out long trips. Recently Kia bought into Teslas system. He doesn't have to plan much now.
Our EV came with a charging cable that plugs into a standard, 50-amp, 220V outlet, and charges up to 40 amps. For most people it costs $100 and a couple of hours to install such an outlet themselves in a garage. An electrician can do it in an hour or so. The charging cable provided with Tesla's plugged into such an outlet can charge at a rate of of about 9 kW. Considering the range of our Tesla is about 3 miles/kWh, that's a charging rate of about 27 miles/hr. Charging overnight and you can easily add 200+ miles in an overnight charge without buying any special charging equipment and just the cost of installing a standard 50-amp outlet.
We have a portable charging unit that came with the car that has a 120V plug on it, but it is capable of having other connector cords attached to it (replacing the one with the 120V standard plug) so that it can be plugged into several styles of 240V outlets - up to a NEMA 14-50P that will handle 40A/9.6kW.
Our wall charger is hard-wired. Main cost in installing it was the work required to add a breaker to the main panel and run appropriate cable from the panel to the garage. It also required a permit and inspection. We would have encountered the same installation issues if we had installed a wall plug suitable for a plug-in level II charger.
NEMA 14-50 is the style of plug used around here for kitchen stoves, but there are special outlets designed for EV charger use. I think the design difference has something to do with repeated plugging/unplugging. Stoves don't get unplugged very often, and plugging/unplugging causes wear.
Bob@8 you raise a good point. Not only are charging plugs plugged and unplugged, but charging outlets are routinely run at their maximum amperage. As I'm sure you know Bob, a nominal 50A outlet should only have a maximum 40A continuous load connected to it. The rule of thumb is that you only run a continous load that is 80% of the breaker value.
I installed a 30A 220V outlet next to our front door for convenient charging for us and guests with EVs, and when I bought the outlet I special ordered one that was all copper construction, for exactly the reason you mentioned. There are higher grade outlets meant for repeated plugging/unplugging and that can handle operating at their maximum rated loads.
Evan:
Yes, your US electrical code is like our Canadian code. We have a 50A breaker, and a cable rated for 50A, but the EV charger maxes out at 40A.
The same 80% rule applies to any charger plugged into a 15A circuit: nominally 12A is allowed, but such EV chargers are typically limited to 10A or less. The fact that the EV charger can run continuously for many hours makes it quite different from typical household loads such as stoves, dryers, toaster ovens, etc.
Although I did all our basement wiring when we finished the basement a few years ago (yes, permitted and inspected) this was a job where I hired a professional. He made two trips: one for planning, and one for installation. I played "assistant", by cutting open the ceiling and drilling holes to run the cable prior to installation, and helping pull cable etc. during the installation. As I have done all the basement finishing work, I knew what was hidden behind drywall, etc. Although at the end I could say "I could do all that", it was best to have a professional working on it to make sure it was done properly.
The electrician told me that in our area all EV charger installations were being inspected, regardless of whether it was done by a recognized electrician or not. (Often on small jobs by a known professional electrician, the inspectors sign off without an inspection.)
We usually only charge at 240V/10A for two reasons:
Bob, we also charge at a slow rate normally, but I wired to allow for fast charging. We have a wall charger capable of the vehicle max of 48A. The charger can carge up to 80A, so I wired the wall charger to a 100A circuit breaker with appropriately sized wire. Therefore, we can comfortably charge at 48A if we need to, without any risk of overloading the system.
My point is that you don't have to spend $1000 to set up fast charging at home, because wiring a NEMA 14-50 outlet is not that difficult to install. In Minnesota it costs about $35 to have it inspected, so that gives you the peace of mind of doing it yourself but then having a professional inspect your work.
One point where you said that EV loads are different from other loads. Yes and no. The 80% rule for circuit breakers is to allow a circuit to handle a higher intermittent load, but be sized for steady loads about 80% of maximum. Therefore, any circuit in a house should be able to handle continuous vehicle charging up to the 80% limit. Our Tesla charger plugged into a standard 110V 15A circuit will charge at 12A, and the idea is that you should be able to plug that into any 15A 110V outlet.
But I agree with buying the higher quality outlets for EV charging to ensure good contact and to mimize outlet heating due to poor contact. The myth I'm trying to counter is that you have to spend a lot of money to charge an EV at home, because the basic option is a fairly easily mounted NEMA 15-50 outlet.
Evan:
The major complication in our wall charger installation was working in a finished basement. I had to cut some ceiling drywall out to access joist space, and part of the cable run passed over a stretch of HVAC ducting. Easy to pull through the existing joist space over the HVAC ducts, but for protection we used armoured cable for the entire run. That way we did not need to worry about any damage pulling it through joist space with nails coming through the overlying floor, or the many other things poking around in that space (other cables, plumbing, etc.) It would have been much easier if the EV charger had been installed before I finished the basement, but c'est la vie.
As you mention, you need "appropriately sized wire". And space in the panel for a new breaker. And a large enough panel rated to add the extra 40A, or 80A, or whatever. Part of the installation checks was making sure we had adequate capacity in our main household feed (which is 200A). Our cable run was also reasonably short - something like 40 feet or so. The best placement of the charger in the garage was also the corner of the garage closest to the panel.
Yes, any meets-code cable will handle the full power level, but the more you push it the less room for error there is. I suspect that our local desire to inspect all EV charging installations is to make sure no short cuts have been taken. Heat dissipation requires that you do not bunch many cables together. You wouldn't want to bundle your EV charger, dryer, and stove cables into one tight opening. A pro or knowledgeable DIYer like yourself will know this, but I'm sure our local electrical safety authority has seen some bad amateur installations.
But even our relatively "complicated" charger installation cost less than 3% of the cost of our vehicle, as I mentioned earlier. There are things that need to be considered, but it is not an insurmountable issue and not a horrendous expense.
Bob,
Ugh! What a pain in the neck for the installation you describe. Yes, I can see why you hired an electrician.
Because I wired our house when we built it, I was able to plan all of the charging circuits from day 1. In total, there are currently 6 vehicle charging points, with conduit leading to two more potential sites. Three of those are on the outside of the house, three on the inside. So easy to do while building the house.
And as you mentioned, we had to size the wire for proper heat dissipation, according to whether it was bundled wires or separate wires in a conduit. I got a good education from our inspector!
Although standard service is 200A for new construction, we went with 320A service split between two 200A panels: one in the garage and one in the mechanical room. That gives the amperage and space to add circuits now and in the future. In Minnesota it is easy to petition for 320A service. You just have to itemize your electrical needs and demonstrate why the additional 120 amps are needed. We have ground-sourced heat pumps, so installing 320A service was a no-brainer and not questioned by our utility.
You guys know more about electrical installations than I do. I hired an electrician to do the job (it was simple in my garage), The gas savings the first year paid for the charging set up. I figure that in 5 years charging ports will be expected in a house sale.
Does anyone know if new houses are being built with charging stations built in (or at least the cabling installed)? As you point out, it is much cheaper to install the electrical during the build than to add it afterwards.
Michael@14
Yes, I think that NEMA 15-40 outlets in the garage are becoming more common, and most EVs can plug a portable charger into this outlet. There is no need for installing level 2 chargers with new-house construction, because once the circuit breaker and outlet are in, it is a really simple matter to connect it to a dedicated charger rather than to the outlet.
Michael:
Where I live (Ontario), it looks like the electrical code was modified a few years ago to require new builds (residential) to have minimum 200A service on the main panel, and a conduit from the panel to the garage/carport to allow future feeding of a cable for EV charging.
A builder can choose to run the cable and install an outlet in the garage, but this exceeds the minimum requirement. My guess would be that if the path from the panel to the garage is long and tortuous, installing conduit that would make for easy future cable pulls would be problematic. At that point, it makes sense to just run the cable.
I don't know if there are any plans to upgrade the minimum code to require the cable and outlet, but at least they want to make future installation easier.
It also looks like they want all EV charger installations done by a professional electrician. Not sure if a home-owner installation is allowed. It is for most other electrical work: choices are home owner or pro. If the home owner can't do it, they need to hire a pro, not a friend. Permits are always required.