New Study: Most Electric Vehicles Cost More to Charge Than Filling Up a Car with Gas
Advocates for electric vehicles have once again been hit with a rather inconvenient fact.
With gas prices surging, the Biden administration has been relentlessly urging Americans to switch to electric vehicles as an alternative, with the supposed added benefit of being able to stop climate change.
The idea behind this push seems to be that it is cheaper to charge an electric vehicle than it is to fuel a car in the current economy. Thus, Americans who use EVs can rest assured that they do not have to worry about the price of gas.
However, a new report is bringing all of that into question, suggesting that it may in fact be more expensive to charge an electric vehicle.
On Tuesday, the publication Insider published a report that took a look at four different types of cars — trucks, entry-level cars, luxury cars, and mid-level cars — to see how much it cost to fuel them compared to the cost of charging them.
The results are bound to disappoint those who have jumped on the “electric vehicles are cheaper to power” bandwagon.
Trucks roughly cost the same to fuel and charge, with the average cost of fueling a truck coming between $17.10 to $17.58 for every 100 miles, whereas charging the truck at home costs $17.72 for every 100 miles, according to Insider. However, the cost to charge soars to $26.38 per 100 miles when charging in public.
Entry-level and mid-level vehicles each cost more to charge than they did to fuel. Fueling an entry-level vehicle costs about $9.78 for every 100 miles, and charging it costs $12.55 at home, and nearly $16 in public. Mid-level cars cost $11.08 per 100 miles to fuel, $12.62 to charge at home, and $16.10 to charge in public.
Luxury vehicles presented an interesting case, as it costs less to charge at home than it does to fuel them. Fueling a luxury vehicle costs about $17.56 for every 100 miles, $13.50 to charge at home and $17.81 to charge in public.
In short, unless you are lucky enough to own a luxury vehicle, it would cost you about the same or even more to charge a vehicle as it does to fuel one. Even if you do own a luxury vehicle, charging it in public costs more than fueling it.
This is not the first report to suggest this. In October 2022, energy analyst Bill Cinnamon said that it could cost consumers roughly the same amount of money to charge vehicles as it is to fuel them.
Motorists have found out the hard way just how expensive it can be to charge the vehicle, with some drivers finding their bill for a charging session coming close to $100 dollars!
This is hardly the affordable alternative to expensive gas that we are often told about by the Biden administration.
This revelation is only compounded by the fact that purchasing an electric vehicle in the first place is very expensive. With some paying upwards of $200,000 to get their hands on one, they are out of reach for most Americans.
In the current economic climate, electric vehicles are expensive, both to purchase and to power. There really seems to be no financial benefit to purchasing one.
Until the price of EVs comes down, you are probably better off financially if you stick with a gas-powered car.
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