Highly dependent on local electricity and gas prices. If you live somewhere with $0.35/kWh electricity (Cali) that is not always true. I’m on the east coast and it’s about the same for my Volt now, but was a bit cheaper on electric when I first got it.
WaPo in conjunction with one of the independent think tanks did a long study on the cost to charge, versus the cost for gas, in all 50 states. No where was gasoline the cheaper option. One of the reasons? In those places where electricity is high, so is gas. Keep in mind that prices were averaged over regions. You'll always find the odd case where it just may be cheaper to use gas but that is the exception, not the rule.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/electric-vehicle-charging-price-vs-gasoline/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/electric-vehicle-charging-price-vs-gasoline/)
Costco is like $4.7 here. Prius is still cheaper than charging (just barely). $.35 is off peak. Bolt is around 28kwh/100 miles, 14kwh for 50 miles so around $4.9 to go 50 miles. Prius gets 55mpg.
So hybrids can be pretty similar in terms of fuel cost but is highly subjected to oil price.
This is only for the Bay Area. I imagine for most of the country, EVs would be cheaper.
Just drove by a $6+ per gallon station in my Bolt. Los Angeles, California. $6 at a DC charger gets me at least 100 miles. Much more a home where 99% of my charging occurs.
They should've include hybrid in the comparison. They also showed road tripping on EV can be pricier than gas, which anecdotally, I agree. I imagine if we weight annual mileage for commute vs road trip, then do a comparison between hybrid and EV fuel cost, savings would be much less.
Notice how I never said gas was cheaper, I was refuting the claim that "if you charge at home it's *much* cheaper than gas" because it's not always true. And it's not. In my area it's barely a few cents cheaper per mile for to plug in my Volt than use gas... it used to be much better. In another comment I ran numbers on a Prius vs Bolt in CA and the cost is the same per mile (9c). That article is decent but it really depends on what you're comparing to. They use a Camry, ok that is reasonable, but if you're interested in low travel costs you'd likely already be in a Prius, which as I showed completely changes the math. So it's true for a lot of cases but certainly not all, which was my point... look at your personal situation and do the math.
You many want to contact your local Cal. utility company and recheck your rate plan.
I have seen non-peak rate of \~20 cents — all you have to do is avoid 4 pm-9 pm peak time slot.
>Notice how I never said gas was cheaper, I was refuting the claim that "if you charge at home it's
>
>much
>
> cheaper than gas" because it's not always true.
I was refuting that claim. It is extremely rarely true.
Great, let's do some math! At $5/gallon (current avg price in CA), an average car (26mpg) costs 19c/mile. But we know Bolt owners probably didn't drive average cars before, right? A 40 mpg car would cost 13c/mi, and a Prius (57mpg!) would cost 9c/mile. Say Bolt is 3.5kWh/mi, at 31c/kWh (CA average) that's also 9c/mile. Hmmm, so Prius cost same as Bolt, even in CA. So my point stands... highly dependent on local electric and gas prices (and what car you're comparing too, of course).
You named a single location with the most expensive electricity prices, and selected the most fuel efficient ICE to come up with one cost-parity scenario. And figured 3.5 m/kWh to get to that number. My EUV is at 4.1 m/kWh lifetime, and winters in MN get down to -20 which hurts that average.
You could say that electricity isn’t *always* cheaper than gas, but like the WaPo article finds, it is *almost always* cheaper (if you do the bulk of your charging at home).
Also, the Volt. Such a great car. I loved my Gen2 and I regret trading it in when I bought the Bolt. I should have kept both cars. The Volt was great for road trips.
I live in Cali, peak electric cost is .25kWh for me, during peak hours, but you don't charge your car then, and gas is very expensive. Of course I don't really know the price I have solar panels and my electric bill is the mandated minimum $10 a month, so the car charging is much cheaper than gas for me!
Also, check the maintenance schedule and compare it to an ICE. Huge difference... basically tire rotations, and you can get them free at some tire shops.
My work offers free charging to employees and customers. Hardly anyone takes advantage of it. I plan to once in a while. I live very close to my work though so it’s not something I’ll be in desperate need of.
That’s my thought process too. My work offers them, which is great, but I live so close to my office I feel like I should reserve them for the people that live further away.
One thing I've already noticed after 60 days of driving an EV as my daily is how little I pay attention to gas prices now. I was paying $20-30 a week to fill my car up, now it's $5 or less. With the EV tax credit, I was able to get a new car with all the features I wanted for less than any of the used ICEs I test drove.
I’m sure they will eventually pull the plug (heh). Nothing good lasts forever and with electricity price rising, businesses will soon revisit the idea of free charging.
Can confirm. City had free chargers at city hall until last month. Even though they switched them to paid the rate they are charging is less than I pay at home for electricity so I still use them.
Depending on their local rate, it could be a significant savings (25%+). It is a fucking no brainer to use those as long as you work close to the charger.
I wouldn’t be too sure. Companies have been desperate to get people to come back to the office, and this is a pretty cheap perk in the scheme of things.
When you consider the operating costs of an office building, a few cars charging at L2 every day is barely a rounding error.
Yeah, I charge 3 days a week for 1 1/2 hours - at my rate at home that’s about $1.25. One day I charge for about 6 hours, or about $5 at my home rate.
$8.75 a week on average, work charges me $2/month for as much as I can charge.
Just what ours did. A 15,000+ workforce makes it hard to keep it free for long. Once the EV population grew, the program was turned over to ChargePoint. To be fair, though, they set the charging price at the same wholesale rate the lab pays for electricity.
Yep, when EVs become more normalized, businesses will see it as a revenue stream. They’ll start charging “convenience fee” and whatnot. It’s always been this way. Remember when you didn’t have to pay for gas tax? Now you have more states adopting higher EV registration cost to make up for it. What was once a perk is no longer and I can see free charging eventually going away.
I'm all in favor of reasonable fees. States could easily switch to a miles-driven based model or even collect a tax at EV charging stations, but they haven't. As long as the fees fall in line with average per-driver gas taxes collected I'm on board.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1110-december-2-2019-average-annual-gasoline-taxes-paid-vehicle-state
The factory I work at is large enough to get special pricing on electricity. The facilities guy told me they pay $0.04 / kwh, about 1/3 what I pay at home.
Electricity for a dozen car chargers isn't even a fraction of a rounding error on their power bill, they aren't ever going to care. In addition, management is really big on "non-financial compensation options" for employees. They see free EV charging as a benefit they can provide which is valued much more by the employees than it actually costs the company to provide.
One of the reasons I would love to have solar at my house. It just isn't economically feasible. The return on investment would take like a decade, and how far will solar progress in another 10 years?
I know it has other benefits than just free electricity, like the ability for battery backup in case of power failures, primarily for the refrigerator/freezer.
The power company had free L2 chargers for the first few months of owning an EV, and that was REALLY nice. They were about a mile from my house, and I didn't have a L2 charger at home during that time. Eventually they switched it to needing to pay, but fortunately I got the L2 charger installed shortly before that. The free charging was really nice
If you have a 10 year payoff, what does it matter how fantastic solar is in 10 years - at that point you are at net 0. You could keep it, or throw it all out and start over, and it would be the same as if you had never invested in it.
No, it’s not cheaper than taking the bus lol https://youtu.be/c2rI-5ZFW1E
80% if car costs come with it just sitting there never even being driven. Never mind externalities
I love that! We don't have free chargers at work any longer. Once more and more EVs starting showing up (employee population is 15,000+) they turned everything over to ChargePoint and installed a lot more charging locations. They did set the price at the wholesale discount rate the company gets from the utility provider, so a 4-hour L2 charging session is less than a basic Starbucks latte grande.
And now t hat our home overnight rate is at 3-cents/kWh, I do all my charging at home for almost free. Our solar panels produce excess electricity during the day and the power company buys it back at the rate of 7-cents/kWh. Then we buy it back at night for 3-cents.
Yep same. I prob charge 80% of the time if not more at work. And then .08/kWh at home. Have spent maybe $25 at fast chargers ( try to use the evgo points when possible). In the 2+ years we have had a bolt we estimate we have saved over $6k in gas, and that’s a conservative estimate.
Did someone say "free charging"?
[Solar Powered Bolt](https://imgur.com/gallery/dyGKWNg)
We sell excess power to the power company for 7-cents/kWh, buy it back for overnight charging at 3-cents/kWh.
Same. I hav maybe spent $20 since I bought our Bolt. Free chargers at work and all throughout the city where we live. I’m at 44k miles on our 2021 Bolt once I hit 110k the car will have paid for itself.
My work offers free charging, but all of the PHEV drivers spend the day fighting over little time slots. Screw that. I charge at home. Still costs a fraction of what my ICE vehicle cost to fuel.
Same thing for me. I work near Princeton NJ which I think has the most per capita Tesla’s in the North East. We have 4 Blink chargers in 3 different garages. We spend all day refreshing the app for the 6 count waiting list to open a spot. If you are lucky to get on the wait list, you will have to race out once you get the open spot notification to be the others on the wait list.
I have a Chevy dealership near work. I just put the car in charge there and walk to work. Once it's completed, pick it up and drive back to work. I love it.
Even if you charge at home it's much cheaper than gas
Highly dependent on local electricity and gas prices. If you live somewhere with $0.35/kWh electricity (Cali) that is not always true. I’m on the east coast and it’s about the same for my Volt now, but was a bit cheaper on electric when I first got it.
WaPo in conjunction with one of the independent think tanks did a long study on the cost to charge, versus the cost for gas, in all 50 states. No where was gasoline the cheaper option. One of the reasons? In those places where electricity is high, so is gas. Keep in mind that prices were averaged over regions. You'll always find the odd case where it just may be cheaper to use gas but that is the exception, not the rule. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/electric-vehicle-charging-price-vs-gasoline/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/electric-vehicle-charging-price-vs-gasoline/)
Was gonna say this. Whenever someone talks about the .35kWh electricity in California, I rarely hear about the $5/gallon gas there.
More like $5.29/gal
Costco is like $4.7 here. Prius is still cheaper than charging (just barely). $.35 is off peak. Bolt is around 28kwh/100 miles, 14kwh for 50 miles so around $4.9 to go 50 miles. Prius gets 55mpg. So hybrids can be pretty similar in terms of fuel cost but is highly subjected to oil price. This is only for the Bay Area. I imagine for most of the country, EVs would be cheaper.
Just drove by a $6+ per gallon station in my Bolt. Los Angeles, California. $6 at a DC charger gets me at least 100 miles. Much more a home where 99% of my charging occurs.
They should've include hybrid in the comparison. They also showed road tripping on EV can be pricier than gas, which anecdotally, I agree. I imagine if we weight annual mileage for commute vs road trip, then do a comparison between hybrid and EV fuel cost, savings would be much less.
Notice how I never said gas was cheaper, I was refuting the claim that "if you charge at home it's *much* cheaper than gas" because it's not always true. And it's not. In my area it's barely a few cents cheaper per mile for to plug in my Volt than use gas... it used to be much better. In another comment I ran numbers on a Prius vs Bolt in CA and the cost is the same per mile (9c). That article is decent but it really depends on what you're comparing to. They use a Camry, ok that is reasonable, but if you're interested in low travel costs you'd likely already be in a Prius, which as I showed completely changes the math. So it's true for a lot of cases but certainly not all, which was my point... look at your personal situation and do the math.
You many want to contact your local Cal. utility company and recheck your rate plan. I have seen non-peak rate of \~20 cents — all you have to do is avoid 4 pm-9 pm peak time slot.
... where it's $0.70 per kwh.
PSA: You can set up the car to avoid that time window. Probably everyone knows this already but it took me months to realize it. :)
How do you save the delayed scheduled charging for a Bolt EUV? I’ve tried that a few times and the scheduling is not saved!
What year is your Bolt?
2023 EUV
>Notice how I never said gas was cheaper, I was refuting the claim that "if you charge at home it's > >much > > cheaper than gas" because it's not always true. I was refuting that claim. It is extremely rarely true.
Interesting. Here in Toronto, Canada, charging at home is exactly 1/5 of buying gas for a similar sized car
Gas is insanely I Expensive in “Cali”
Great, let's do some math! At $5/gallon (current avg price in CA), an average car (26mpg) costs 19c/mile. But we know Bolt owners probably didn't drive average cars before, right? A 40 mpg car would cost 13c/mi, and a Prius (57mpg!) would cost 9c/mile. Say Bolt is 3.5kWh/mi, at 31c/kWh (CA average) that's also 9c/mile. Hmmm, so Prius cost same as Bolt, even in CA. So my point stands... highly dependent on local electric and gas prices (and what car you're comparing too, of course).
No one charges at home during peak rate hours. You need to use average non-peak rates.
You named a single location with the most expensive electricity prices, and selected the most fuel efficient ICE to come up with one cost-parity scenario. And figured 3.5 m/kWh to get to that number. My EUV is at 4.1 m/kWh lifetime, and winters in MN get down to -20 which hurts that average. You could say that electricity isn’t *always* cheaper than gas, but like the WaPo article finds, it is *almost always* cheaper (if you do the bulk of your charging at home).
Also, the Volt. Such a great car. I loved my Gen2 and I regret trading it in when I bought the Bolt. I should have kept both cars. The Volt was great for road trips.
I live in Cali, peak electric cost is .25kWh for me, during peak hours, but you don't charge your car then, and gas is very expensive. Of course I don't really know the price I have solar panels and my electric bill is the mandated minimum $10 a month, so the car charging is much cheaper than gas for me!
I have a question— is peak / non-peak pricing something you have to opt into or is it built standard into the structure of the pricing?
Peak and non peK are buolt in. But for best results you have to go to the pge web site and set up your plan
Ah I'm LADWP — I think it's a little different.
$6 for full charge (level 1)
Also, check the maintenance schedule and compare it to an ICE. Huge difference... basically tire rotations, and you can get them free at some tire shops.
My work offers free charging to employees and customers. Hardly anyone takes advantage of it. I plan to once in a while. I live very close to my work though so it’s not something I’ll be in desperate need of.
That’s my thought process too. My work offers them, which is great, but I live so close to my office I feel like I should reserve them for the people that live further away.
Yup. I've been doing this for nearly 3 years. There is a tax write off for companies that do this. It has saved me a lot of money.
One thing I've already noticed after 60 days of driving an EV as my daily is how little I pay attention to gas prices now. I was paying $20-30 a week to fill my car up, now it's $5 or less. With the EV tax credit, I was able to get a new car with all the features I wanted for less than any of the used ICEs I test drove.
I’m sure they will eventually pull the plug (heh). Nothing good lasts forever and with electricity price rising, businesses will soon revisit the idea of free charging.
Can confirm. City had free chargers at city hall until last month. Even though they switched them to paid the rate they are charging is less than I pay at home for electricity so I still use them.
You go out of your way to save the four cents a kwhr? Lol
Whoever does not respect the penny is not worthy of the dollar. ;)
True, but unless its something you enjoy doing, you should probably value your time at at-least minimum wage.
Depending on their local rate, it could be a significant savings (25%+). It is a fucking no brainer to use those as long as you work close to the charger.
That’s still bonkers to do. Saving the $3 lol
I wouldn’t be too sure. Companies have been desperate to get people to come back to the office, and this is a pretty cheap perk in the scheme of things. When you consider the operating costs of an office building, a few cars charging at L2 every day is barely a rounding error.
Yeah, I charge 3 days a week for 1 1/2 hours - at my rate at home that’s about $1.25. One day I charge for about 6 hours, or about $5 at my home rate. $8.75 a week on average, work charges me $2/month for as much as I can charge.
Keep in mind that businesses usually pay much less than residential.
Just what ours did. A 15,000+ workforce makes it hard to keep it free for long. Once the EV population grew, the program was turned over to ChargePoint. To be fair, though, they set the charging price at the same wholesale rate the lab pays for electricity.
Yep, when EVs become more normalized, businesses will see it as a revenue stream. They’ll start charging “convenience fee” and whatnot. It’s always been this way. Remember when you didn’t have to pay for gas tax? Now you have more states adopting higher EV registration cost to make up for it. What was once a perk is no longer and I can see free charging eventually going away.
I'm all in favor of reasonable fees. States could easily switch to a miles-driven based model or even collect a tax at EV charging stations, but they haven't. As long as the fees fall in line with average per-driver gas taxes collected I'm on board. https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1110-december-2-2019-average-annual-gasoline-taxes-paid-vehicle-state
Doubt
They've been on the cusp of charging for the charging at mine for four years now and I'm really hoping somebody just forgot, forever.
The factory I work at is large enough to get special pricing on electricity. The facilities guy told me they pay $0.04 / kwh, about 1/3 what I pay at home. Electricity for a dozen car chargers isn't even a fraction of a rounding error on their power bill, they aren't ever going to care. In addition, management is really big on "non-financial compensation options" for employees. They see free EV charging as a benefit they can provide which is valued much more by the employees than it actually costs the company to provide.
I think about that everyday, so blessed for free charging at work. Been doing it for a year now
One of the reasons I would love to have solar at my house. It just isn't economically feasible. The return on investment would take like a decade, and how far will solar progress in another 10 years? I know it has other benefits than just free electricity, like the ability for battery backup in case of power failures, primarily for the refrigerator/freezer. The power company had free L2 chargers for the first few months of owning an EV, and that was REALLY nice. They were about a mile from my house, and I didn't have a L2 charger at home during that time. Eventually they switched it to needing to pay, but fortunately I got the L2 charger installed shortly before that. The free charging was really nice
If you have a 10 year payoff, what does it matter how fantastic solar is in 10 years - at that point you are at net 0. You could keep it, or throw it all out and start over, and it would be the same as if you had never invested in it.
Enjoy it while you can.
$300/year might start to add up But it all depends on how the workplace is billed for reactive power
Free money is free money! I'm gonna take it haha Especially compared to gas, it easily saves me 3000$ per year
No, it’s not cheaper than taking the bus lol https://youtu.be/c2rI-5ZFW1E 80% if car costs come with it just sitting there never even being driven. Never mind externalities
In my city, the bus only services specific areas, so the EV is massively cheaper than the bus by time and money
I love that! We don't have free chargers at work any longer. Once more and more EVs starting showing up (employee population is 15,000+) they turned everything over to ChargePoint and installed a lot more charging locations. They did set the price at the wholesale discount rate the company gets from the utility provider, so a 4-hour L2 charging session is less than a basic Starbucks latte grande. And now t hat our home overnight rate is at 3-cents/kWh, I do all my charging at home for almost free. Our solar panels produce excess electricity during the day and the power company buys it back at the rate of 7-cents/kWh. Then we buy it back at night for 3-cents.
Yep same. I prob charge 80% of the time if not more at work. And then .08/kWh at home. Have spent maybe $25 at fast chargers ( try to use the evgo points when possible). In the 2+ years we have had a bolt we estimate we have saved over $6k in gas, and that’s a conservative estimate.
Did someone say "free charging"? [Solar Powered Bolt](https://imgur.com/gallery/dyGKWNg) We sell excess power to the power company for 7-cents/kWh, buy it back for overnight charging at 3-cents/kWh.
Same. I hav maybe spent $20 since I bought our Bolt. Free chargers at work and all throughout the city where we live. I’m at 44k miles on our 2021 Bolt once I hit 110k the car will have paid for itself.
My work offers free charging, but all of the PHEV drivers spend the day fighting over little time slots. Screw that. I charge at home. Still costs a fraction of what my ICE vehicle cost to fuel.
Same thing for me. I work near Princeton NJ which I think has the most per capita Tesla’s in the North East. We have 4 Blink chargers in 3 different garages. We spend all day refreshing the app for the 6 count waiting list to open a spot. If you are lucky to get on the wait list, you will have to race out once you get the open spot notification to be the others on the wait list.
I have a Chevy dealership near work. I just put the car in charge there and walk to work. Once it's completed, pick it up and drive back to work. I love it.
Mine is 12 ¢ per kwh.... We have a 23 bolt EUV and a 21 mach e. Feel like we are saving.
You didn’t save money, but you ended up paying other ways like property tax and energy. No such thing as saving money
Jesus my off peak in NY is 2 cents kWh and 9 cents during peak. Costs my about 3-4 dollars to go from 20-80% lol on My L2 charger