EV vs Gas Calculator
↻ Updated 2026Compare the annual cost of fueling a gas car against charging an EV, then see how many years it takes for the fuel savings to recover the EV's higher purchase price.
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How to read your EV break-even
At the page defaults the EV saves $951.43 a year in fuel and costs $8,000 more to buy, so it takes 8.4 years to break even on energy alone. That's a long time — and it's the honest answer to a narrow question. This page compares two fuel bills and one price gap. It is not a cost-of-ownership comparison.
How EV charging costs are compared against a tank of gas
Two annual fuel bills and a division. Each side converts distance into energy using its own efficiency measure, then multiplies by its own price. The units are different — gallons at dollars per gallon, kilowatt-hours at dollars per kilowatt-hour — but the shape is identical, which is what makes them comparable at all.
The break-even then asks a single question: how many years of the annual difference does it take to repay the EV's higher purchase price? It's a simple payback period with no discounting, no financing and no residual value.
gas cost/yr = (miles ÷ mpg) × gas price EV cost/yr = (miles ÷ mi-per-kWh) × electricity price annual savings = gas cost/yr − EV cost/yr break-even years = EV price premium ÷ annual savings (shows 'never' if savings ≤ 0)
- miles
- Miles you drive in a year — the dominant input — both fuel bills scale with it, the premium doesn't
- mpg
- The gas car's fuel economy, miles per gallon — 28 is the page default; use your real observed figure, not the window sticker
- gas price
- Price per gallon of gasoline — EIA's US regular average was $3.855 for the week ending 13 July 2026; the page defaults to $3.50
- mi-per-kWh
- The EV's efficiency, miles per kilowatt-hour — 3.5 is the default; EPA rates EVs in kWh per 100 miles, so 3.5 mi/kWh is about 28.6 kWh/100mi
- electricity price
- What you pay per kilowatt-hour — EIA's US residential average was 18.83¢ for April 2026; the page defaults to 16¢
- EV price premium
- How much more the EV costs upfront than the gas car — after any incentives you actually receive — the federal purchase credit ended in 2025
The two efficiency inputs aren't quite symmetrical. Miles per gallon is measured at the pump, so engine losses are already baked in. Miles per kWh is usually measured at the battery, so the 10% or so lost as heat in the charger and cables sits outside the figure — enter an EPA-derived 3.5 mi/kWh and your real cost from the wall is modestly higher than this page shows.
The prices are asymmetric too. Gasoline has one price at any given station and you pay it. Electricity has a residential average, a time-of-use overnight rate that can be half of it, and a DC fast-charging price that can be triple — and most drivers pay a blend. One slider cannot hold all three, which is why the assumption box says home charging is assumed.
Worked examples
Example: 12,000 miles a year, 28 mpg against 3.5 mi/kWh
The calculator's defaults, so you can follow along on the page. $3.50/gal, $0.16/kWh, and an EV that costs $8,000 more to buy.
| Gasoline used12,000 ÷ 28 | 428.6 gal/yr |
| Gas fuel cost428.6 × $3.50 — that's 12.5¢/mile | $1,500.00/yr |
| Electricity used12,000 ÷ 3.5 | 3,429 kWh/yr |
| EV charging cost3,429 × $0.16 — that's 4.6¢/mile | $548.57/yr |
| Annual savingsthe EV's fuel bill is 37% of the gas car's | $951.43 |
| EV price premiumwhat you pay extra upfront | $8,000.00 |
| Years to break even$8,000 ÷ $951.43 | 8.4 yr |
The EV's fuel costs about a third of the gas car's — a genuinely large gap — and it still takes 8.4 years to earn back $8,000. That's the arithmetic people underestimate in both directions at once: per mile the saving is dramatic, and 12,000 miles a year isn't enough distance to turn 8 cents a mile into eight thousand dollars quickly.
Example: the same two cars with EIA's July 2026 prices
Everything held at the defaults except the two price sliders, moved to the current EIA figures — $3.85/gal (reachable on the 5¢ step) and $0.19/kWh (reachable on the 1¢ step).
| Gas fuel costwas $1,500.00 at the $3.50 default | $1,650.00/yr |
| EV charging costwas $548.57 at the $0.16 default | $651.43/yr |
| Annual savingswas $951.43 — up $47.14 | $998.57 |
| Years to break evenwas 8.4 | 8.0 yr |
| Gas price alone corrected$3.85 with electricity left at $0.16 | 7.3 yr |
| Electricity alone corrected$0.19 with gas left at $3.50 | 9.4 yr |
Both defaults are stale and they're stale in opposite directions, so they very nearly cancel: 8.4 years becomes 8.0. Correcting only one is worse than correcting neither — fix the gas price alone and you get 7.3 years, fix electricity alone and you get 9.4. The two-point spread between those halves is the measure of how much this page's headline depends on numbers that neither slider defaults to.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cheaper to charge an EV or buy gas?
On home charging, yes, and by a lot — at this page's defaults it's 4.6¢ a mile against 12.5¢. Using EIA's July 2026 prices instead it's 5.4¢ against 13.8¢. The advantage holds in every US state on residential rates, though its size ranges from modest to enormous depending on local electricity and gasoline prices.
Public DC fast charging is the exception, and it's a big one. Fast-charging rates can run two to three times residential, which roughly erases the per-mile gap against gasoline. This calculator assumes home charging — it has one electricity slider and no way to express a mix. If you'd charge mostly in public, drag the price slider up: at $0.40/kWh the EV still saves $128.57 a year but takes 62 years to repay $8,000, and past $0.44 the gas car is simply cheaper to fuel and the break-even reads 'never'.
Is there still a federal EV tax credit in 2026?
No, not for buying a vehicle. The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, signed 4 July 2025, terminated the §30D clean vehicle credit for vehicles acquired after 30 September 2025, taking the $7,500 new-EV credit and the $4,000 used-EV credit with it. The IRS closed the dealer portal that delivered the credit at point of sale on the same date. A narrow exception survives for buyers who had a binding written contract and a qualifying payment on or before that date.
This matters here because the credit used to be the thing that made the break-even work. An $8,000 premium against $951.43 of annual savings takes 8.4 years; the same premium net of a $7,500 credit is $500, which breaks even in 0.5 years. That's the entire difference between the pre- and post-2025 arithmetic. Some state programmes continue, and the federal home-charger credit runs to 30 June 2026 — enter the premium you'll actually pay after whatever you actually qualify for.
How much does it cost to charge an EV at home?
At the defaults, $548.57 a year — 3,429 kWh at 16¢. Priced at EIA's April 2026 US residential average of 18.83¢ it's about $646, or roughly $54 a month for 12,000 miles.
The number moves more by geography than by car. EIA's regional figures for 2026 put New England near 30¢/kWh and the Pacific region near 24.9¢, against a national average around 18–19¢. At 30¢ the same driving costs $1,028.57 a year and the EV's advantage over a 28 mpg car nearly halves. Many utilities offer overnight time-of-use rates well below the residential average, which is the single largest thing an EV owner controls about this number.
Are electric cars cheaper to maintain?
The evidence says yes and this calculator ignores it entirely — a deliberate omission that makes the break-even shown here conservative. No oil changes, no spark plugs, no exhaust or timing components, and regenerative braking that means brake pads often outlast the loan. Reported per-mile maintenance and repair costs for EVs run roughly 40% below comparable gas vehicles.
The offsets are real too: tyres wear faster on heavier, higher-torque cars, and out-of-warranty battery or drive-unit work is rare but expensive. Whatever your view, none of it appears above — the 8.4-year figure is fuel against purchase price and nothing else. If you want to model maintenance differences, run both cars through the true cost of ownership calculator instead.
How long does an EV battery last?
Longer than the break-even this page calculates, on current evidence — the relevant comparison, since an 8.4-year payback is worthless if the pack dies at year 7. Federal rules require manufacturers to warrant EV batteries for at least 8 years or 100,000 miles, and California requires 10 years or 150,000 miles with a minimum capacity retention threshold.
Degradation typically shows up as gradual range loss rather than sudden failure, and it raises this page's cost per mile in a way no slider captures: 3.5 mi/kWh becomes 3.2 or 3.0 as the car ages, and the model has no mechanism for that. Battery health also drives resale, which is one reason EVs have historically depreciated faster than gas cars.
At what mileage does an EV pay for itself?
Distance is the fastest route to break-even, because savings scale with miles while the price premium is fixed. At the defaults, 12,000 miles a year takes 8.4 years. At 30,000 — the top of the slider — it's 3.4 years, on an identical pair of cars with an identical $8,000 gap.
Working it the other way is the cleaner framing: the EV saves 7.9¢ a mile at the defaults, so an $8,000 premium needs about 101,000 miles to repay regardless of how long you take to drive them. Miles, not years, are the unit this calculation is really denominated in — the years figure is just that mileage divided by how fast you accumulate it.
What this EV comparison leaves out
It compares two fuel bills against one price gap. Almost everything else that separates an EV from a gas car is outside the model.
- The two prices that decide the answer are stale defaults — Gasoline ships at $3.50/gal and electricity at $0.16/kWh. EIA — which publishes both, free and weekly or monthly — had regular gasoline at $3.855 for the week ending 13 July 2026 and residential electricity at 18.83¢/kWh for April 2026. Neither default is sourced or dated anywhere on the page, and both are below current. They happen to err in offsetting directions today, which is luck rather than design.
- Charging losses — Miles per kWh is typically measured from the battery, but you pay for kilowatt-hours at the meter. Home AC charging loses roughly a tenth of that energy to heat, so entering an EPA-derived efficiency understates the real charging bill by a similar proportion. There's no charger-efficiency input.
- One electricity price, three real ones — Overnight time-of-use, standard residential and DC fast charging can differ by a factor of three or more, and most drivers pay a blend. The single slider forces you to pick one. Anyone doing serious road-trip mileage on public chargers will find the result here optimistic by a wide margin.
- Maintenance, insurance and depreciation — None are here, and they pull in opposite directions. EV maintenance runs materially lower; EV insurance often runs higher; EV depreciation has historically been steeper. The break-even above is fuel-only and is not a total cost comparison — the assumptions box says so, and it's the most important sentence on the page.
- The charger and the money's time value — A home Level 2 charger and its installation are a real upfront cost that belongs in the premium and isn't prompted for. The payback is also undiscounted — $951.43 saved in year eight is treated as identical to $951.43 saved in year one, and the $8,000 you didn't spend is assumed to earn nothing in the meantime.
- ·Standard auto-loan amortization; depreciation & running costs are estimates
Rates, brackets and limits here are checked against primary sources. If a number still looks off, email support@realmoneyiq.com and we'll review and fix it.
RealMoneyIQ provides free educational calculators, not financial, tax, investment or legal advice. Results are estimates based on the assumptions you enter and publicly published rates; your actual outcome will differ. Always confirm decisions with a licensed professional who knows your full situation.