How much does it cost to charge an electric car at home?

At 18 cents per kilowatt-hour and 32 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, $5.76 per 100 miles, or $864 for 15,000 miles a year. Your bill follows your utility rate: $4.07 per 100 miles in Louisiana at 12.72 cents, $10.76 in California at 33.61 cents.

Is public charging more expensive than home charging?

Usually, by a lot. At 45 cents per kilowatt-hour, 100 miles costs $14.40, against $5.76 at home. A driver who charges mostly in public should run the calculator at the public or blended rate, not the residential rate.

How much electricity does an electric car use per 100 miles?

28 to 35 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles for current models on fueleconomy.gov: 28 for a Nissan LEAF, 32 for a Kia EV6, 35 for a Chevrolet Equinox EV. Cold weather pushes efficiency higher, toward 38 in the calculator's winter example.

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The charging ledger · Table No. 39

How Much Does It Cost to Charge an Electric Car?

At the national residential average, charging costs $5.76 per 100 miles. At a public fast charger it costs $14.40. Your state, and your charging mix, decide which number is yours.

Filed October 27, 2026 · figures checked against 2026 sources

The short answer: $5.76 per 100 miles at home

Charging an electric car is priced by the kilowatt-hour, and the arithmetic is simpler than a gas station receipt. Take your electricity rate, multiply it by the car's efficiency in kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, and divide by 100. At the national residential average of 18 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2026, from the Energy Information Administration's Short-Term Energy Outlook, and an efficiency of 32 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, the cost is $5.76 per 100 miles, or 5.76 cents a mile. Drive 15,000 miles a year at that rate and the year's charging costs $864. The same 15,000 miles in a gas car at $4.28 a gallon and 28 miles per gallon costs $2,292.86 in fuel. The gap between those two numbers, $1,428.86, is the whole electric argument in one subtraction, before maintenance enters it.

Efficiency is the input most shoppers get wrong, because the window sticker speaks a different language. Electric cars are rated in kilowatt-hours per 100 miles and in MPGe, miles per gallon gasoline equivalent, where one gallon of gasoline equals 33.7 kilowatt-hours of energy. On fueleconomy.gov, a 2026 Nissan LEAF is rated at 28 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, a Kia EV6 Long Range at 32, and a Chevrolet Equinox EV at 35. The LEAF costs $5.04 per 100 miles at 18 cents a kilowatt-hour; the Equinox EV costs $6.30. The spread between the most and least efficient mainstream electric cars is $1.26 per 100 miles, or $189 over 15,000 miles. It matters, but it is a footnote next to the rate, where the spread between states runs into thousands.

Your state decides more than your car does

Residential electricity rates in July 2026, from EIA data, averaged 18.31 cents per kilowatt-hour nationally, but the state range is enormous. Louisiana was cheapest at 12.72 cents, Texas sat at 15.88 cents, California at 33.61 cents, and Hawaii at 48.00 cents. Run each through the same 32 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles. In Louisiana, 100 miles costs $4.07. In Texas, $5.08. At the national average, $5.86. In California, $10.76. In Hawaii, $15.36, which is more than the $15.29 that 100 miles costs in a gas car at the national gas price. The same car, the same driving, and the charging bill in Hawaii is nearly four times the charging bill in Louisiana. Anyone quoting a single national charging cost is quoting a number that describes no actual household.

The EIA expects the national residential average to reach 18.68 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2027, up from 18.21 cents in 2026 and 17.30 cents in 2025. That is a 5.3% rise followed by a 2.6% rise, and it narrows the electric advantage slowly: at 18.68 cents, 100 miles costs $5.98 instead of $5.76, and the yearly bill for 15,000 miles rises from $864 to about $897. Electricity prices move slowly and in one direction, which is part of their appeal against gasoline, a fuel whose national average moved $1.23 in a single year, from about $3.12 in early October 2025 to $4.35 in early October 2026, with California averaging $6.03 in the October 20 update, and the Gulf Coast at $3.91 in the October 5 update. Gasoline volatility is the electric car's best marketing, and it is free.

Home charging is the cheap case. Public charging is a different purchase.

Most electric charging happens at home, overnight, on a Level 2 charger, at the residential rate on the household's bill. That is the $5.76 case, and it is the case every electric cost comparison quietly assumes. Public charging breaks the assumption. A DC fast charger on a highway or at a retail site commonly prices electricity at 35 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour, and sometimes more, because the operator is selling speed, a location, and a high-power connection, not just electrons. At 45 cents, 100 miles costs $14.40, and the year's charging for 15,000 miles costs $2,160, leaving a yearly saving of only $380.86 against the gas car before maintenance, and a payback of 13.13 years on a $5,000 price premium. A household that charges mostly in public is buying a different product from a household that charges at home, and should run the calculator at the public rate, not the residential one.

The honest input is therefore a blended rate: the share of charging at home times the home rate, plus the share in public times the public rate. A driver who charges at home 80% of the time at 18 cents and in public 20% of the time at 45 cents pays a blended 23.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, or $7.49 per 100 miles. The calculator on this site takes a single rate, so enter the blended figure, not the number on your utility bill alone. If you cannot charge at home at all, the public rate is your rate, and the electric case has to survive on it. For many apartment dwellers it does not, which is a charging access problem, not a math problem, and it is the single largest reason the electric advantage is unevenly distributed.

What fueleconomy.gov says, and what it assumes

The federal fueleconomy.gov site publishes an annual fuel cost for every model, based on 15,000 miles a year and current fuel prices. Its figures for current electric models sit at $650 a year for the LEAF, $700 for the EV6, and $800 for the Equinox EV, each described as the cost to drive 25 miles for about $1.04 to $1.32. Those figures use fuel prices at the time of calculation and a 45% highway, 55% city driving mix, and they assume charging at the residential rate. They are useful as a cross-check, and they agree with this site's arithmetic: at 18 cents and 32 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, 25 miles costs $1.44, a little above the site's figures because the site's assumed prices and efficiencies differ slightly. The lesson is not the exact dollar. It is that every official source, using its own prices, lands in the same place: roughly a dollar and a half to drive an electric car 25 miles, against $3.82 for the gas car at the October 2026 prices.

Charging time belongs in the same conversation as charging cost, because time is the cost that never appears on a bill. Home charging takes no driver time at all: plug in at night, unplug in the morning, and the car is full. A DC fast charge on a road trip takes roughly 20 to 40 minutes to add a useful amount of range, depending on the car and the charger, against about five minutes at a gas pump. Households that road-trip often should count those minutes honestly, and households that mostly commute should count the minutes they never spend at gas stations at all. The calculator prices money, not minutes, and the minutes cut both ways.

Cold weather, and the efficiency you should actually enter

Electric cars use more energy in cold weather, because the battery is less efficient when cold and because heating the cabin draws power that a gas car gets free from engine waste heat. The efficiency input in the calculator is yours to raise in winter: at 38 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles instead of 32, the yearly charging bill at 18 cents rises from $864 to $1,026, the yearly saving falls from $1,676.86 to $1,514.86, and the payback stretches from 2.98 years to 3.30 years. That is a real effect and a modest one, and it is smaller than the effect of charging in public or living in Hawaii. Drivers in cold climates should also know that range falls in winter for the same reason efficiency falls: the car is doing more work per mile. Enter your winter efficiency for a winter answer, and your summer efficiency for a summer answer, and treat the difference as the honest range of the result.

The boxed insight. Your electricity rate is the whole charging decision. At Louisiana's 12.72 cents per kilowatt-hour, the electric mile costs 4.07 cents. At Hawaii's 48 cents, it costs 15.36 cents, more than the 15.29-cent gas mile at the national gas price. Before comparing cars, find your rate on your bill, estimate your home-versus-public charging share, and blend them. Every other input is refinement. The rate is the answer.

How to get your own charging number in ten minutes

First, find your all-in electricity rate: divide a recent bill's total by the kilowatt-hours used, because fixed customer charges and delivery fees are part of what you pay, and the EIA averages already include them. Second, find your car's efficiency on fueleconomy.gov, or use 32 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles as the middle of the current range. Third, estimate your public charging share honestly, and blend the rates. Fourth, multiply the blended rate by the efficiency, divide by 100, and multiply by your yearly miles. That product is your charging bill. Compare it to your gas bill, which is your miles divided by your miles per gallon, times your local gas price, and you have the fuel comparison without anyone's marketing in it. The calculator on this site does the same arithmetic with the payback and the maintenance saving attached. The ten minutes are worth it, because the national averages will happily tell you the wrong answer for your address.

Charging cost questions

How much does it cost to charge an electric car at home?: At 18 cents per kilowatt-hour and 32 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles, $5.76 per 100 miles, or $864 for 15,000 miles a year. Your bill follows your utility rate: $4.07 per 100 miles in Louisiana at 12.72 cents, $10.76 in California at 33.61 cents.
Is public charging more expensive than home charging?: Usually, by a lot. At 45 cents per kilowatt-hour, 100 miles costs $14.40, against $5.76 at home. A driver who charges mostly in public should run the calculator at the public or blended rate, not the residential rate.
How much electricity does an electric car use per 100 miles?: 28 to 35 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles for current models on fueleconomy.gov: 28 for a Nissan LEAF, 32 for a Kia EV6, 35 for a Chevrolet Equinox EV. Cold weather pushes efficiency higher, toward 38 in the calculator's winter example.