10,000 miles in my IONIQ 5: charging cost vs. gas

Is there a charger at your home? That's where you really save money!

Yes, but it's level 1, so getting from 30% to 100% takes roughly 3 days. I'd need to ask property management whether they'd allow a 240 install.

It still counts as charging. I'm not sure what L1 delivers over there, but in Europe the slowest option is a single-phase Schuko outlet at 1800 W, and at that rate each hour plugged in saves you about a minute of fast charging, roughly. If you plug in whenever you're home, it's easily full by Monday morning and not drained by Friday evening.

In the US, L1 tops out at 1.44 kW. It's still the cheapest route for OP, even though it won't cover all of their charging.

Worth a call to your utility about EV charger rebates, provided your panel has spare slots and enough capacity to take a 50A breaker. In my case Duke Progress covered the electrician and the materials for a Nema 14-50 outlet. The one thing the program explicitly left out was the permit fee, roughly $120. After that I bought an e-Grizzle for $275 and I'm now charging at about 9.2 kW.

Even without space for a double-pole breaker, a single-pole 20A one would allow 16 amps of draw, which is a third more than they have now. They may already have a 20A breaker with 12-gauge wire, in which case all that's needed is a proper 20A receptacle plus an EVSE rated for 20A. And if there's room for a double-pole but the panel can't spare 50A, any smaller breaker and charger would still deliver at least double the current setup.

1440 W versus 1800 W isn't a big gap. Plugging in for about 10 hours each night from Monday to Friday adds on the order of 170 miles beyond whatever you have Monday morning, which should comfortably cover 80 miles a day.

That's roughly what Level 1 gives you. Here's some background, as I understand it. Most residential power in Europe is 3-phase at 50 Hz, while in the US and North America it's single-phase 240 volts at 60 Hz, split into two 120 V legs. Level 1 is 120 V at 15 amps (on a 20 amp circuit), so around 1.8 kW. Level 2 uses both legs, i.e. 240 V, typically at 30 to 40 amps or more. An Ioniq 5 can take about 48 amps. My Level 2 charger is a 50 amp unit, but it never reaches 50 because the car won't accept it. So Level 2 lands somewhere between 7.2 and 11 kW, since that's what the car limits it to even if the charger could theoretically do 12 kW. Level 3 is DCFC (Direct Current Fast Charging), which feeds high-voltage 3-phase AC through a transformer to the charger. Some chargers vary their voltage with what the car asks for. By the way, most Tesla chargers don't run a high enough voltage to use the Ioniq 5's full capability, since their voltage is capped. Anyway, say the charger peaks around 50% state of charge on an Ioniq 5 at 250 kW. That's far beyond Level 2, never mind Level 1. 250 kW at 800 V DC works out to about 312 amps. On a 4800 V distribution line it's still about 30 amps. A typical station with 12 chargers would draw around 360 amps if every one was in use, but pairs of chargers usually share load so total current stays limited. That's why I'm bothered when a lot of stalls are free and someone parks in the one right next to mine: you can watch my charge rate fall almost immediately. I don't hold it against them, since they likely don't know, so I say nothing and we end up chatting a bit longer..

Got a dryer in the garage? Products like DryerBuddy or SplitVolt give you a power-switched Level 2 plug. You charge the car as usual, and when the dryer starts, power goes to it instead and your EVSE gets cut off. Just make sure your EVSE lets you set an amp limit, so you never draw more than the dryer outlet is rated for. I went this route after being quoted close to $2,700 for a dedicated hardwired EV circuit. My SplitVolt has worked without a single problem since.

All I've got in the garage is an ordinary 15A, 120V outlet. And since it's an apartment complex, I can't change anything unless management signs off.

Which state are you in? A number of states have "Right to Charge" laws, which stop landlords, homeowners associations (HOAs), and condo boards from flatly banning EV owners from putting in a charger at their assigned parking space, or restricting it unreasonably. Depending on your location and what a 240V installation would involve, getting approval might be little more than a formality. You should still seek it if you can, but in some cases they legally can't refuse.

Banning unapproved alterations is common and sensible, but in California, where I live, a landlord in your position couldn't turn the project down if your plan is reasonable and meets code. In many places landlords don't have total control over their property, and tenants have quite a lot of rights.

They can't just refuse a request on a whim, and as far as I know they're also obligated to respond within a reasonable amount of time.

It really depends on the circumstances. Depending on what the setup would require, some renters simply can't make it work, while for others it's entirely workable.

I've owned my Ioniq 5 for six years and have never charged anywhere but the outlet at home. Unless you're covering something like 250 miles daily, simply plugging in each time you get home will keep you well topped up.

I'm a bit lost here. Are you not using it whatsoever? I drive less than you do, and with my commute I burn roughly 15% each weekday, yet I still plug into L1 every night. Overnight I average about 10%, and I cover the shortfall on weekends or with public L2 or DC chargers. Also, I get what you mean about the "new relationship energy" or "honeymoon" stage with this car. Mine arrived in February, and I still catch myself looking back at it and I really enjoy how it drives.

That's the part that confuses me. As I said, I use more than my L1 supplies too. Even a mere 5% per night accumulates over time. My point is that you started a thread on saving money, yet you're skipping the one other option that would save you even more.

I don't want to come across as nitpicky, but the post was meant to compare what it costs to drive a gas car versus an EV. What you're suggesting would matter if my goal were squeezing out the maximum savings by using every available method, and it's a fair suggestion. Time matters here as well, though. Say I use up 70% of the battery in one day and need a full 100% for a trip the next day. An L1 charger that only gives back 30% overnight doesn't help me. I'd still have to use a faster charger, so the savings would be small, given that the faster option also saves me time.

I'd still plug in on L1 every night. Set it to pull the highest amperage your outlet can handle. You're clearly putting real effort into comparing costs, so you obviously care about this. Expect around 1% an hour, so at least 8% or so per night after work, and likely more on your days off. Across a week that's at least 60% added at a far lower price.

I don't know what your max amps are, but mine is set to 10 and it's currently going from 44 to 80 over 12 hours. Would stopping at 80 work for you? Charging slows down a lot for the final 20%, and the last 10% is especially sluggish compared with getting to 80. My level 2 install is still a few weeks off. If it weren't for the inconvenience and discomfort of leaving a window open, level 1 would be fine for me, since I only drive about 500-700 miles a month.

I did a quick check: homes in the UK run on 230v as standard, not the 120v used in North America.

Also 230v. Getting 400v to reach 11.6kw would take a pretty large upgrade, I think. Most units are 230v and 7.4kw, which is still a big step up from the 2.2kw my slow "level 1" charger draws from a wall socket. I don't know how it works where you are, but here the incoming supply is managed by a network operator who doesn't charge for it, so I had them come out and upgrade my home fuse to 100A.

Truthfully, level 1 can be plenty depending on how you use the car. Our commute is either 30km or 15km round-trip, depending on whether I or my partner takes the car and the other takes the bus, and level 1 brings us back to full (80%) each day. Even with cabin heating adding load in winter, it works fine for us. During one summer week I was driving 100km round-trips, and level 1 didn't completely make up each day's usage, but it was close enough that I made it through the whole week without any level 2 or 3 top-ups.

Between the rooftop solar and the level 2 charger in my garage, I end up producing more power than I use every single month. Vegas helps a lot, since the sun is basically out all the time. The result is that I spend nothing on electricity for the car. Nothing running on gas can beat that as a deal.

It does, and I financed mine over 30 years. Even so, the monthly payment came out below what my typical electric bill was, and that's before you factor the car into it at all.

That's really great to hear! I'm only starting to research electric cars right now and trying to make sense of how everything fits together.

Right, but then you're covering the electricity through your loan payments. Paying in cash wouldn't make it free either, since that money could have gone elsewhere. Solar does give most people cheaper power, and it's a good thing, but any real cost comparison has to include the capital cost.

When I drove a gas car, my electric bill averaged about $350 monthly. These days I make a fixed solar loan payment of $280, and the city credits me every month for the surplus I generate. With any kind of car, gas or electric, that $280 would be the same. A gas car would just mean that payment plus fuel. Since the panels cover the charging, my own out-of-pocket cost for it is $0.

Think about the full amount you'll have paid, interest included, by the time that loan is done. That's the true price of having electricity for three decades from your system. It might undercut 30 years of utility bills, but a loan stretched over 30 years is nowhere close to free.

Yes, I'm with you on all of it. What I was after was getting them to look at the actual economics instead of assuming the electricity is "free," because that matters a lot for the kind of cost comparison this whole thread is about.

Our 2022 has 120k miles on it now, and compared with the Subaru we had before, I'd guess we've kept about $22,000 in our pockets on fuel. That's not counting the roughly 400 fill-ups we skipped, or the many hours we'd otherwise have spent standing at pumps.

It was the same dilemma every time: drive out of my way and possibly wait in line at the cheaper station, or just fill up near work and pay extra...

Remember to budget for the other upkeep too, like brake service and oil changes.

Seeing "$4.25/gal" made me want to work out how much I've saved since switching to my Ioniq. Where I am in California, I was looking at $6 to $6.50 at the pump today 🥵

True, but paying upfront means that once the panels have earned back their price through what you saved, which takes roughly 6 to 7 years, your electricity is free from then on.

In a proper cost analysis you'd spread the system's price across its expected lifespan. Nothing is actually free. You've simply paid ahead of time, up to the point where the system has to be replaced.

Plus you're not paying for electricity for decades afterward.

Here's how it compares with the older car we replaced: yearly fees in NC are $650 now versus $120 before, and insurance jumped from about $550 a year to $1700. There are no more oil changes, and the cheap electricity helps balance things out, but the fees and the insurance cost caught me off guard.

Classic North Carolina: the gas tax is on hold through November 30, 2026, supposedly to ease the pain of expensive fuel. 🤦

None of these fees existed back when I bought my car 😡 The explanation is that they make up for gas tax revenue the state isn't collecting from EVs, but I ran the numbers and what I'm charged is several times what I'd have paid in gas taxes.

The roads have to be paid for somehow, and normally that's through the gas tax, which EV owners obviously skip. I'm also curious whether insuring an EV costs extra in itself, or whether the higher premium just reflects a pricier new car.

I don't mind paying a fee provided it's fair relative to what gas drivers pay. The commenter above says they were hit with an extra $450 in fees, so is that really comparable to the gas tax?

I can't say for certain, but where I live, fees on new cars are always steep and then drop after several years. So the real question is whether that's what's happening here or whether the EV tax is truly excessive.

Gas taxes don't pay for all transportation infrastructure; a large share is made up by sales and property taxes, and EV owners do pay sales tax on electricity. On top of that, the added registration fee on EVs generally ends up larger than the gas tax an ICE car owner pays.

I'm hoping the fee structures get more sensible as time goes on. In Utah, for example, you pay either a flat $180 per year or 1.25 cents for every mile, and for the per-mile option you have to report your odometer, through telemetry or by submitting photos of it. What nags at me a bit is that fuel taxes fall short of paying for the roads. That means people who barely drive end up helping cover the costs for those who drive a lot.

You could also add in what a few oil changes cost.

Honestly, $4 gas wasn't what pushed me into the I5. What did it was my worry that the old car I was replacing wasn't safe anymore. That 30-year-old car was far cheaper to keep legal and covered: roughly $600+ a year in tax (new-car property tax plus the EV surcharge applies to the new one) and about $1000+ a year for insurance, going from liability-only up to full coverage. But I had zero peace of mind in it. On cost alone I probably should have just held onto it, since it's so much cheaper. $1600 buys around 400 gallons of gas, or more if prices fall, and at the 14 MPG it managed that would have been at least 5600 miles. A shop quoted me $2000 to repair the old car, and even fixed it wouldn't have been worth that much, because it had other problems on top of its age. I could technically have kept driving it unrepaired, but a ticking noise from a loose chain in the drivetrain sounded like disaster waiting to happen whenever I drove. I guess I could have kept topping off the oil to quiet it, but a leak, the very thing that caused the problem, meant adding about a quart every month. Fixing that leak would have run nearly $1800 too, so none of it appealed. Plus I wanted an electric car for the fun of it anyway...

I honestly don't believe fuel prices are going back to what they were before February. Even after the supply chain problems get sorted out, and that includes months for refineries to come back online, the oil and petrochemical executives will bring prices down as little as they possibly can while posting record profits.

I'd like to think you're wrong, but you may be right. People generally don't do the right thing until the wrong thing starts to hurt.

Registration for EVs ought to be charged by the mile, the way fuel tax works, instead of as one flat fee, and we should be pushing our lawmakers to make that happen.

"People would comply to save money." They'd also cheat to save even more. That's why mileage can't be recorded through self-reporting alone; the method has to be authoritative, like an OBD device that reports back on its own or a yearly inspection. Just 12 states still require annual inspections, so the others would have to create that program (costly, and a hassle for owners) or collect mileage through a device, which also costs money. I'm not debating what's fair. Somebody who drives 1,000 miles a year clearly should pay less than somebody who drives 30k. I'm just laying out why states choose a flat fee over charging by mileage.

Where I live, EV registration carries an extra $175. With state gas tax at 30.9¢ a gallon, that works out to around 566 gallons, or roughly 15,000 miles at 26.5 mpg. I drive well under that each year, so part of me would prefer a mileage-based charge. Still, I know I'm fairly well off, and when the money goes toward improving infrastructure I'm usually glad to pay (unless it's only about building more and wider roads for even more cars...)

Utah's road usage charge program just about breaks even once expenses are taken out, and through FY2025 it really cost more to run than it collected. Source

All that does is push EV prices up by about $7500. We bought our Ioniq 5 while the credit was still around. Soon after it ended, Hyundai somehow cut the price (or maybe ran promotions, I don't remember which) by nearly the same amount. Besides, it isn't right for my tax dollars to help pay for someone else's car.

That's not really what the federal incentive is about. The money is meant to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and over the long haul that could actually save public funds, since climate-driven disasters mean enormous FEMA payouts.

Whatever the car costs more once the incentive is applied, that extra amount just ends up as the automaker's profit.

Hyundai dropped its price by nearly the same amount, or maybe it was just running promotions, I don't remember which. Keep in mind that around the same time they stripped premium features out of the cheaper trims: leather seats, a heated steering wheel, ambient lighting, and others disappeared, and getting them meant buying the top trim, while earlier model years had them in the lower ones. It really comes down to targeting a price point. With the $7,500 credit coming off the price, Hyundai could pack in more features at that figure, but once the rebate vanished they trimmed features so they could keep hitting the same price.

I doubt Hyundai and Kia could get away with being that greedy, and if they tried, buyers have plenty of other brands to pick from.

Not even Tesla would be that greedy. There are so many automakers competing in the US that when this rebate returns, we consumers are sure to see very good deals.

They put out some deals at first to soften the change and they still do, but the MSRP itself never moved. I purchased a Limited a few months before the announcement that the credit was being cut, and a Limited today is still listed at basically the same price.

I'm not as confident in voters as you are.

If the GOP wins again, they may slap a special tax on every EV. Just look at what they've done before: they paid out billions in penalties just to kill off wind power.

I'm not the OP, but here's my experience: over 30k miles my upkeep has amounted to $47 for new Bosch wiper blades and $34 for a replacement cabin air filter.

A home charger paired with solar is exactly why I'm so fond of my setup.

By my math that's about $0.60-$0.83 per kWh, which I think is really steep. Even $0.53/kWh, the most I've ever paid, makes me feel sick. I hope you at least left home at 100% and plan to arrive back nearly empty before charging again. You seem to be getting around 3.2 miles/kWh, so you're clearly battling headwind or running the AC, and heat could make it worse.

Yes, I leave home at 100%. I average roughly 2.9 to 3.2 at a steady 70-73 mph, and it sinks to 2.9 when the AC is on, even over gentle hills. Honestly, for long trips I'd choose a gas car over my EV.

A lot hinges on your speed and when you plug in. Driving 80 mph eats range fast, and some stations bump up their rates at peak hours or when most of the stalls are occupied.

The stations I use are normally listed as open 24/7 with prices around $0.50-$0.60 per kWh, and I'm driving about 70-73 mph. On top of that, some of them place a $50-$90 hold on your card even when the session costs far less, which is ridiculous.

My point is about peak-hour charging costs. Where I live, Tesla "super" chargers run $0.36/kWh overnight, from 10pm to 8am, but during the daytime window of 8am to 10pm the price climbs to $0.52/kWh. On top of that, a congestion charge of as much as $0.45/min kicks in once 80% or more of the stalls are occupied. Costs can balloon fast. For that reason I treat Tesla chargers as a last resort, and I'd rather go to IONNA, which stays cheaper around the clock (I believe it's about $0.37/kWh at any hour).

Your comparison leaves out that there's basically no maintenance at all.

Fair, but then the other side leaves out that EVs cost more upfront. A truly complete side-by-side would get way too complicated.

Thanks for working through the numbers! I'd been curious how they compared.

Even with gas at $3 and a car getting 30 mpg, the savings hold up, and they're bigger still if you only charge at home.

Try comparing against an Elantra Hybrid. At today's prices I average about 450 miles for every $38, which works out to roughly $844 per 10K miles. On trips where I'm held to 65 mph, if I make good use of regen I see about 58 MPG on the highway, though my daily commute is driven harder and does worse. Having said that, I drove a 2022 Ioniq 5 SEL for 14 months, until a coolant pump problem led me to seek a buyback, and I can say that having an energy source easily available everywhere matters a lot. Also, a fully loaded 2026 Elantra Limited Hybrid can be bought for around $27K, so going back to a fully electric car would be a hard decision.

Yes, practicality now matters most to me, and I really like driving this car apart from the low roofline. I covered 1,400 miles on 3.5 tanks (refueling when about 40 miles of range remained), averaging 70 MPH, with refuel stops of just 4 minutes. That beats anything I managed in my Ioniq 5 for real-world usefulness. To my mind, fully electric cars suit city driving, or situations where you can wait for a Level 2 charger to fill you up. For long trips, you could rent one and hammer it on DC fast charging without caring about wear.

Aside from the excellent fuel economy, what's your overall impression of the Elantra? Is it a 2026 model?

The one thing that bugs me is the low roofline. With the sunroof, if I'm sitting fully upright and have to brake hard, my head actually bumps the sunroof's edge, so I've ended up reclining a bit more than I'd like.

Do you charge at home too? If you really are getting the EPA-rated efficiency, your average electricity cost would come out near 20 cents a mile, and that seems unrealistically low to me, particularly when DC fast charging is part of the mix.

I plug in at home during off-peak hours and pay just 11 cents per kWh!

I pay 6.5¢ per kWh for electricity at home, and the savings compared with what I used to spend fueling my diesel car are enormous.

Charging at home costs us roughly $22-$27 a month, and we drive about 940 miles in that time.

Also remember to include maintenance for both types of car, since that adds a few hundred more dollars in savings across those 12k miles.

Nothing prepared me for the registration tab fees during my first year owning an EV. They were wildly expensive, and I never saw that coming.

My old car was a 2010 Ford Fusion that had nearly 240,000 miles, and I didn't treat it kindly either. As for crossovers similar to the IONIQ 5, here are a few of those so-called bad ones, with combined mpg figures: Hyundai Tucson AWD: 26 Mazda CX-50 AWD: 26 Honda CR-V AWD: 29

I wanted to get away from gasoline altogether, so hybrids never entered the picture. I only compared what I'd been driving, a purely gas car, against a purely electric one.

You should factor in the higher insurance premium too. If saving money is the goal, a hybrid such as a Prius at 50-60 mpg does the job, and it costs about half as much as an Ioniq 5. I own both, by the way. The Ioniq 5 only makes financial sense for me because I have a 11.5kw solar array that was paid off years ago, so charging at home is basically free, and I've built up an 18 megawatt hour credit bank to pull from.

I just got a brand new 2027 Ioniq5. Compared with insuring my previous 2018 Kia Soul, it adds only around $5 a month.

Do you really not get that covering a $50k EV costs more than covering a $30k hybrid? You also won't make back that $20k difference in purchase price over the car's life, particularly since the insurance bill keeps running higher. The post is about fuel savings, and while I like EVs as much as anyone, I'm just trying to put those savings in context.

Our earlier insurer wanted to double what we pay because the car is an EV. We went elsewhere and found a company charging nearly what we'd been paying before. I'll need to keep watching this and make changes when necessary.