What is the cost per mile for an electric car vs a gas car?

At the defaults: gas 15.29 cents a mile ($4.28 a gallon, 28 mpg), electric 5.76 cents a mile (18 cents per kWh, 32 kWh per 100 miles). The gap is 9.53 cents a mile, worth $1,428.86 in fuel over 15,000 miles.

Miles per gallon gasoline equivalent: the distance an electric car travels on 33.7 kilowatt-hours, the energy in one gallon of gasoline. The median 2026 electric car is about 91 MPGe. For budgeting, use kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, which is what the meter charges.

Is a hybrid cheaper per mile than an EV?

No, but it is close. A 40-mpg hybrid costs 10.70 cents a mile against 5.76 cents for the EV at the defaults. The EV saves $989 a year against the hybrid including maintenance, with a 5.06-year payback on a $5,000 premium.

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The charging ledger · Table No. 39

EV vs Gas Cost Per Mile

Gas costs 15.29 cents a mile at $4.28 and 28 mpg. Electricity costs 5.76 cents at 18 cents and 32 kWh per 100 miles. The 9.53-cent gap is the whole argument, and it multiplies by your miles.

Filed October 27, 2026 · figures checked against 2026 sources

Cost per mile is the argument, stripped to one number

Every electric-versus-gas debate eventually becomes a debate about cost per mile, because cost per mile is the only figure that survives contact with different cars, different prices, and different driving. The gas mile is the gas price divided by miles per gallon. The electric mile is the electricity rate times kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, divided by 100. At the October 2026 national averages, gas at $4.28 a gallon and 28 miles per gallon, the gas mile costs 15.29 cents. Electricity at 18 cents per kilowatt-hour and 32 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles costs 5.76 cents a mile. The gap is 9.53 cents a mile. Multiply it by your miles and you have the fuel saving. Add the maintenance saving and you have the running-cost saving. Divide the price premium by that saving and you have the payback. Everything else in the electric debate is commentary on those four steps.

The gap looks small because it is priced per mile, and miles are cheap. It stops looking small at household scale. At 15,000 miles a year, 9.53 cents a mile is $1,428.86 in fuel saving, plus $248 in maintenance saving from AAA's 2026 figures, for $1,676.86 a year. Over five years, that is $8,384.29 in running-cost saving against a $5,000 price premium, leaving $3,384.29 ahead. Over ten years, $11,768.57 ahead. The per-mile number is the seed; time and mileage are the multipliers. A household that drives 8,000 miles a year collects $1,010.06 a year and barely breaks even in five years, with $50.29 to spare. A household that drives 25,000 miles collects $2,629.43 a year and repays the premium in 1.90 years. Same cars, same prices, different lives, different answers.

Why the gas mile varies more than the electric mile

The gas mile carries two variables that both move a lot: the pump price and the car's efficiency. The EPA's 2025 Automotive Trends Report puts real-world fuel economy for new light-duty vehicles at 28.1 miles per gallon combined, with cars at 36.6 and trucks at 25.0. At $4.28 a gallon, the car mile costs 11.69 cents, the average mile 15.29 cents, the truck mile 17.12 cents, and a 22-mile-per-gallon SUV mile 19.45 cents. The pump price adds its own spread: the same 28-mile-per-gallon car costs 11.14 cents a mile at the year-ago gas price of about $3.12, 15.29 cents at $4.28, and 17.86 cents at $5.00. A driver in California in October 2026 paid about $6.14 a gallon, or 21.93 cents a mile in the average car. The gas mile is a moving target, and in 2026 it moved against the driver.

The electric mile varies too, but on one variable that moves slowly: the electricity rate. Efficiency across current electric models runs only from 28 to 35 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, a spread of $1.26 per 100 miles at the national rate. The rate, by contrast, runs from 12.72 cents in Louisiana to 48.00 cents in Hawaii, a spread of $11.29 per 100 miles at the same efficiency. The electric mile is therefore stable for a given household and wildly different between households, which is the opposite pattern from gasoline, where the price moves for everyone at once. That stability is itself a benefit: a household can budget an electric mile a year ahead with more confidence than a gas mile, because the utility rate is set in a rate case, not on a world market.

MPGe, explained without the marketing

MPGe, miles per gallon gasoline equivalent, is the EPA's device for putting electric cars on the same sticker as gas cars. One gallon of gasoline contains 33.7 kilowatt-hours of energy, so an electric car that uses 33.7 kilowatt-hours to travel a given distance is rated at the same MPGe as a gas car that travels that distance on a gallon. The EPA's 2026 model data put the median electric car at about 91 MPGe, or roughly 37 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, against a median conventional gasoline car at 21 miles per gallon. The comparison flatters the electric car slightly, because MPGe measures energy at the plug against energy at the pump without counting the losses of generating and delivering electricity, but for a household budget the honest figure is kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, not MPGe. Kilowatt-hours are what the meter charges. MPGe is a translation device. Use the device to shop, and the meter's units to budget.

There is a physical reason the electric mile is cheaper, and it is not a subsidy. A gasoline engine converts only 12% to 30% of the fuel's energy into motion at the wheels, according to fueleconomy.gov, with the rest lost mostly as heat. An electric motor converts far more of its energy into motion, loses nothing to idling because it stops when the car stops, and recovers energy through regenerative braking that friction brakes would turn into heat. The electric car is not cheaper per mile because electricity is a bargain fuel, although at 18 cents it is. It is cheaper because the machine wastes less of what it buys. That is why the electric advantage survives even when electricity prices rise: the efficiency gap is structural, and only a very high electricity rate, or a very low gas price, closes it.

The AAA cross-check: $546 against $1,255

AAA's earlier comparison of a compact electric vehicle against its gas counterpart, at 15,000 miles a year, put the electricity bill at $546 and the gasoline bill at $1,255, a gap of $709. Those figures used the fuel prices of their day, which were far lower than October 2026 prices, and that is exactly the point: the gap was already $709 a year when gas was cheap, and it is $1,428.86 at today's gas price in this site's model, because the electric mile barely moved while the gas mile nearly doubled. Fuel price rises help the electric car twice: they raise the gas bill directly, and they raise the value of every electric mile driven instead. A household that bought an electric car when gas was $3.12 bought insurance against the $4.28 world, and the insurance paid out in the form of miles that did not get more expensive.

The same AAA work found that electric vehicles cost $949 a year to maintain according to manufacturer recommendations, $330 less than a gas car, in that earlier comparison. AAA's 2026 study, comparing models in the same categories, put the maintenance, repair, and tire saving at $248 a year on average. Either figure, added to the fuel saving, moves the per-mile picture by about 1.7 to 2.2 cents a mile at 15,000 miles a year. Maintenance is the junior partner in the saving, worth roughly a sixth of the fuel gap at current prices, and it deserves its junior billing: the fuel gap is what pays back the car, and the maintenance saving is what hurries it along.

The hybrid middle mile

A hybrid car splits the difference, and the per-mile math shows exactly how. A hybrid at 40 miles per gallon, the rating of a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, costs 10.70 cents a mile at $4.28 a gallon. Against the electric mile at 5.76 cents, the gap is 4.94 cents a mile, or $741 in fuel over 15,000 miles, plus $248 in maintenance, for $989 a year, with a payback of 5.06 years on the same $5,000 premium and a five-year net of negative $55. The hybrid is a genuinely good answer for a household that cannot charge at home, or that drives few miles, because it captures about half the fuel saving with no charging and no price premium of its own. The electric car beats the hybrid only when the household drives enough miles, or pays a low enough electricity rate, for the remaining 4.94 cents a mile to matter. At 25,000 miles a year it matters a great deal. At 8,000 miles it barely matters at all.

That framing also explains why the electric-versus-gas debate sounds so different in different households. A pickup driver at 22 miles per gallon pays 19.45 cents a mile and saves 13.69 cents a mile by going electric, or $2,302.18 a year including maintenance, repaying the premium in 2.17 years. A car driver at 36.6 miles per gallon pays 11.69 cents a mile and saves $1,138.10 a year, repaying the premium in 4.39 years. The pickup driver's electric case is nearly twice as strong as the car driver's, on the same electricity rate, because the gas mile being replaced is nearly twice as expensive. The question is never whether electric miles are cheaper. It is how expensive the miles being replaced are, and how many of them there are.

The boxed insight. The per-mile gap at the defaults is 9.53 cents: 15.29 cents for gas, 5.76 cents for electricity. Everything else is multiplication. Nine and a half cents times 15,000 miles is $1,428.86 in fuel, plus $248 in maintenance is $1,676.86 a year, and $5,000 divided by $1,676.86 is 2.98 years. If you remember one number from the electric debate, remember 9.53 cents, and then multiply it by your own miles, at your own prices, because the national gap is not your gap.

How to price your own mile

Divide your local gas price by your car's miles per gallon. That is your gas mile. Multiply your blended electricity rate by your electric car's kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, and divide by 100. That is your electric mile. Subtract. If the result is positive, the electric car saves fuel money, and the size of the result, times your miles, plus your maintenance saving, is your yearly saving. If the result is zero or negative, which happens at Hawaii's 48-cent rate, the electric car does not save fuel money at all, and the case has to rest on something else, or not at all. Run those two divisions before reading another electric car review. They take two minutes, and they are more informative than any review, because reviews price the average driver, and you are not the average driver.

Cost per mile questions

What is the cost per mile for an electric car vs a gas car?: At the defaults: gas 15.29 cents a mile ($4.28 a gallon, 28 mpg), electric 5.76 cents a mile (18 cents per kWh, 32 kWh per 100 miles). The gap is 9.53 cents a mile, worth $1,428.86 in fuel over 15,000 miles.
What does MPGe mean?: Miles per gallon gasoline equivalent: the distance an electric car travels on 33.7 kilowatt-hours, the energy in one gallon of gasoline. The median 2026 electric car is about 91 MPGe. For budgeting, use kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, which is what the meter charges.
Is a hybrid cheaper per mile than an EV?: No, but it is close. A 40-mpg hybrid costs 10.70 cents a mile against 5.76 cents for the EV at the defaults. The EV saves $989 a year against the hybrid including maintenance, with a 5.06-year payback on a $5,000 premium.