Electric cars are two times cheaper to operate than gas cars

Relative Costs of Driving Electric and Gasoline Vehicles in the Individual U.S. States (2018)

The following are the main findings:
(1)   The current average annual cost of driving a typical new gasoline vehicle in the United States is $1,117, with a maximum of $1,509 in Hawaii and a minimum of $993 in Alabama.

(2)   The current average annual cost of driving a typical new BEV in the United States is $485, with a maximum of $1,106 in Hawaii and a minimum of $367 in Louisiana.

(3)   The ratio of the current average costs of driving a typical gasoline vehicle and a typical BEV in the United States is 2.3, with a maximum of 3.6 in Washington and a minimum of 1.4 in Hawaii.

(4)   The required fuel economy that gasoline vehicles would need to exceed for driving them to be less expensive than driving BEVs is 57.6 mpg in the United States, with a maximum of 90.0 mpg in Washington and a minimum of 34.1 mpg in Hawaii.

The initial cost to buy an electric car is higher than the cost of buying a comparable gas-powered car. When you have driven about 50,000 miles, the EV owner has earned back the up-front cost and will see cheaper operational costs for the life of the vehicle.

Assumptions in the report are that the average number of miles traveled by a light-duty vehicle in 2015—or 11,443 miles. The mileage of a gas car was pegged at the national average, which is 25 miles per gallon. And EV fuel consumption is based on the average efficiency of today’s EVs, which is 33 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles or about the equivalent of 102 miles per gallon. The national average gas price is $2.44 a gallon, and the average cost for a kilowatt-hour of electricity is $0.1284. (Many EV drivers, especially those with solar, pay significantly less than $0.12 per kWh.)