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Imagine never stopping at a gas station again, and instead, have an unlimited supply of fuel available at home or wherever you normally park. For many electric car drivers, this is a reality. Battery-electric cars never need gas, and for short trips, plug-in hybrids might use no gas.
Electric car charging is simple, cost-effective and convenient, particularly when you are plugged in at home—filling up your car even while you’re asleep. How long it takes to charge depends on the charging equipment and the size of the car’s battery and its available charging capacity.
Although electric car drivers primarily charge at home, workplace and public chargers are increasingly available in communities nationwide. Use the EV Charging Station Map to find nearby charging.
electric car?
Just like with how long it takes to charge an EV, the cost of charging depends on multiple variables including where you charge it, or the type of vehicle you drive.
Before we get into it in greater detail, here are the approximate costs of charging four different size vehicles (with battery packs from small to large), at three different types of charging stations, so that you can get a ballpark idea of charging costs for your new EV.
Important: Prices for each charging segment are approximations based on our experience and do not represent a real-life situation. These calculations are based on a median guesstimate charging tariff and represent the cost to charge from zero to 100 percent.
The first thing you need to know when calculating how much it costs to charge your EV is the size of your battery. As shown above, the larger the battery, the more kWhs it can store; the more kWhs it can store, the more power it takes to fill the battery; the more power it takes, the more you have to pay to fill your battery. Simple, right?
Vehicles with a larger battery cost more to charge, but can often drive further on a single charge too.
For instance, a Tesla Model 3 Long Range with an 82 kWh battery costs about $12.30 to fully charge at home but has a range of roughly 614 km (381 miles). However, a Fiat 500e with a much smaller 42 kWh battery, while costing a fraction of the price to charge, only has a 321 km (200 miles) range.
Once you know how big your new EV’s battery is (measured in kWh), you can approximate how much it costs to charge at different charging stations. The three main options are at home, at public locations, or at fast-charging stations.
Charging from home is the cheapest way to charge your new car. Because there’s no middle man standing in between you and the cost of energy, you’ll always get the cheapest rate available to consumers at home.
How much it costs to charge at home is an easy equation. Simply take your latest energy bill and find the price per kWh you pay at home and multiply it by the size of your battery.
On average, residential prices for electricity vary from around €/$0.10 on the low end in Europe and North America to €/$0.32 on the higher end.
At the time of writing this guide, we’ve taken some averages around the world from Energybot (US), the European Union (EU), and Nimblefins (UK):
That means if you’ve just bought a Tesla Model 3 with an 82 kWh battery and pay $0.15 for electricity, you’ll be set back around $12.30 to fully charge your EV.
While this calculation gives an estimation of home charging costs, it doesn’t take into account the battery’s current state of charge, the state of your battery in general, weather conditions, or the type of charger, which can all impact your actual costs.
Public charging stations can range from offices to curbside stations and commercial parking garages to shopping malls, restaurants, and hotels. The truth is that today, there’s no shortage of businesses big and small investing in EV charging. At the same time, cities and governments are investing in EV charging infrastructure to accelerate the shift towards sustainable mobility. When you put both together, you’ve got charging stations springing up in a range of locations.
Public charging stations can be either Level 2 or Level 3 (AC or DC charging stations) stations but, for simplicity, we’ve split them into two categories and will discuss them separately as they usually come with very different costs.
In both cases, public charging has a middleman providing the service (called charge point operators), so public charging stations usually have a marked-up price in comparison to home charging. How much it costs to charge depends on the base price of electricity in your location and how much the provider charges you for the service.
In some cases, like workplaces and offices, the provider is also an employer and will provide EV charging as an employee benefit and may charge less, or even allow employees to charge for free. Others, like parking facilities and shopping malls, will take the price of electricity and mark it up to make a profit on it, like any other service they offer. Some, like restaurants and hotels, may use EV charging as a way to attract new customers and offer free or discounted charging to patrons.
Just like the diversity in how much it costs, how these providers will calculate costs also differs greatly. Below is a list of the four most common ways to calculate charging tariffs.
For example, a charging provider might charge $0.35 per kWh with a $1 service fee, meaning it would cost you $29.70 to fully charge a Tesla Model 3 with an 82 kWh battery.
How much it costs in practice for you depends on the provider, your country and region. While public charging tends to be more expensive, it is often faster than charging at home, and still cheaper than gas.
Level 3 or DC charging is the fastest way to charge an EV. Depending on the power output and your vehicle’s fast charging capabilities, it will likely take somewhere between 15 minutes and an hour to charge your EV up to 80 percent full. These speeds make DC charging stations perfect for quick top-ups at on-the-go locations like highway rest stops, gas stations, or supermarkets.
However, DC charging stations are also the most expensive to build and run. To enable these charging times, DC charging stations have to deliver serious amounts of power to a vehicle’s battery—think between 50 and 350 kW rather than 22 kW, the maximum output for AC charging stations.
As a result of these high installation and operating costs, charging service providers will often ask for a much higher price to pass on some of their expenses to the customer. In some cases, DC fast charging stations can cost double, or even triple, the kWh price of electricity—making the costs here similar to the cost of filling up your tank with fossil fuels.
Typical costs can range from $0.60 per kWh with a $2 service fee to a flat rate of $0.99 per minute. This means that to fully charge the same Tesla Model 3 as above, it would be closer to $50 for a full battery. But where filling up your tank at the gas station is the only option for ICE vehicles, DC fast charging is more of a sporadic convenience on long trips than an everyday tool for your daily commute.
One of the questions we hear potential EV drivers ask us all the time is, are EVs cheaper to charge than filling up a conventional fossil-fuel vehicle? As you may have guessed by now, the answer to that question is almost always yes.
Regardless of charging costs for individual sessions, when you take into account that most EV drivers charge at home, occasionally topping up when shopping or at the workplace, and using fast charging for long-distance journeys, EV charging is usually a lot cheaper than filling a car with gasoline or diesel.
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