US Northeast, $0.48/kWh for DC fast charging. What the in the world?

It could be worse. Where I live in California, the nearest fast chargers run $0.56 per kWh.

Every fast charger in California is above 50 cents per kWh, and home charging isn't dramatically cheaper either, unless you own your house and put money into solar ☹️. In CA, driving on electricity costs about the same as driving a gas car that gets roughly 30 mpg. An EV needs far less maintenance, though, so purely in financial terms you still come out ahead. I live in California and I'm fully sold on EVs even with the energy prices. My little Kia handles like a sports car and it's a blast to drive. I do sympathize, but I hope you understood this before buying. Buying and driving an EV is surrounded by misinformation, both pro and con. Electricity generation costs will take a long time to level off or come down, if they ever do. Gasoline is the same story; we just choose which poison we prefer. As for the infrastructure money, I'd say it's exactly that: funding for infrastructure, not for generating power.

I'm in Southern California on an EV rate plan, and it's much cheaper: $0.16 per kWh during the overnight window from 9pm to 4pm.

On PG&E's EV2-A plan, my off-peak delivery charge is $0.32454/kWh, and the off-peak generation charge is $0.1257/kWh, though the generation charges get credited back. Adding those up, charging at home off-peak costs me $0.45. Edit: since the generation charges are credited back, the real figure is about $0.32/kWh for off-peak winter charging.

Those prices are wild. Back home in Texas I pay $0.09 per kWh in total, 6 cents for the energy and 3 cents for delivery, along with a $23.50 monthly fee. I never have to think about peak versus off-peak. That's lucky, because my rural house is entirely electric and we have two plug-in cars. Our highest usage this year came in August, at 3,540 kWh for the billing period. I can't imagine receiving that bill at $0.45 off-peak! What do your peak rates look like?!?

This is exactly why you install solar and take advantage of Solar Capture on a Wallbox Pulsar or an Emporia charger.

Are you certain there isn't a generation credit that offsets part of the delivery charge? My bill lists that same .32454 charge, then subtracts a credit of about 10 cents per kWh. It's still too pricey, but once everything is tallied my off-peak rate comes to roughly $.34/kWh.

Thanks, you're right! Our generation comes from a local provider rather than PG&E, and PG&E shows the generation credit as a separate line below the totals for all the aggregated electricity costs. I'm updating my post now.

When a local provider is involved, they make it far harder than it should be to work out what you're really paying. It took me ages to figure out, and the billing statements only add to the confusion.

Wow, that's wild. Up here in Canada my overnight charging rate works out to about 0.04c per kWh, so some days a full day of driving costs me literally pennies. You folks should be demanding answers on why the price doesn't drop when demand is at its lowest.

What the state and PG&E say is that lots of customers now have solar panels and backup batteries, so they barely buy any electricity, and the utility has to bump rates for everyone else to cover the shortfall. Meanwhile they're shelling out millions in bonuses to keep top talent around. A utility like this ought to be run by a non-profit.

Ha, sure, they were probably just angry about being price-gouged. Less strain on the grid means less fuel burned to generate power, though, so blaming solar and home batteries smells like a load of nonsense to me.

I'm guessing you get around on an electric skateboard.

Sorry you're dealing with that. I'm paying an additional $120 at registration and it's annoying, though my tires haven't worn out any faster that I can tell. Going electric really shifts how you think about driving, refueling, and what it all costs. In my opinion, the people who end up most disappointed are the ones who bought an EV only because of gas prices or a discount on the sticker. Your actual costs swing a lot depending on your driving habits, where you live, and how you charge, and they're nowhere near uniform across the country.

Paying an extra $100 at registration? "Wow, that must be rough for you guys" - said by everyone who's still paying gas tax at the pump

In NJ the 2025 EV registration surcharge is $260, and that's on top of the regular weight-based registration fees. That's the same as the fuel tax on roughly 614 gallons. At 30mpg, that covers more than 18,000 miles of driving, which is about 50% above what the typical NJ resident drives in a year (around 12,000 miles). A flat EV fee is a lazy cash grab. A fee based on mileage would be better, and it'd only take a single trip to the MVC/DMV to record the odometer and charge a fair usage tax.

True, but most people drive SUVs that get closer to 20 MPG, so it more or less evens out.

You think most people trading in for an EV are coming from 20mpg SUVs? The best-selling new vehicle in NJ is the Honda CR-V, not some 20mpg truck. And what exactly evens out? It's still a cash grab, since a tax tied to mileage would be fairer anyway.

You're glossing over how the mileage would actually get collected. Either you build a costly inspection program or you set up electronic tracking. Which do you prefer? I was about to say it could just be read automatically during the smog check, but that doesn't work unless your state also does full vehicle inspections (busted taillights, rusty body panels, that sort of thing). Some states do.

Calling it "electronic surveillance" is cute, honestly. 🙄 And I don't see why the inspection program would be expensive. New Jersey already requires inspections for gasoline vehicles that support OBD2, so the infrastructure exists. EV owners would just drive to a station, get the odometer reading pulled with an OBD2 scan, and that's it, they pay the mileage-based tax. The only change needed is telling EV owners to show up for that scan.

Doesn't NJ waive sales tax when you buy an EV? Over in Colorado they've added a $45 annual EV road fee to stand in for gas taxes, and it rises with inflation, though we do get a $5,000 tax credit on the purchase to offset it.

That NJ exemption is on its way out. Right now buyers pay 3.3125%, which is half the normal rate, but starting July 1, 2025 EVs will be taxed at the full 6.625% like everything else.

My car is at about 26k miles on the 20" induction wheels, and there's still 6/32 of tread left. I'd guess this set of factory tires will make it to roughly 32k miles, which matches what the OEM tires on my earlier cars managed (30-35k).

Around San Jose, the 7-Eleven 7Charge units run only about 33 cents/kWh, and whenever I go, nobody else is using them. 🤷🏻‍♂️

That's pretty reasonable, particularly for California. In Colorado, Electrify America costs a hefty 52 cents/kWh. Tesla owners pay about 29 cents/kWh at Superchargers here (same in Georgia and South Carolina), with non-Teslas paying a few cents above that. At home I pay 11 cents/kWh off-peak. When I drove an ICE car rated 30 MPG on the highway that needed premium at close to $4/gallon, a full supercharge would've cost only a bit more than filling that tank. Charging fully at home now costs a quarter to a third of that. Still, I expect smaller savings during peak ski season, since that's when I take most of my road trips and have to rely on superchargers.

Then again, gas prices in California run much higher, which evens things out somewhat.

Not by much, though. Depending on how efficient your EV is, the cost works out about the same as an ICE car getting 30-some mpg. Where EVs truly excel is slow urban and suburban stop-and-go driving, thanks to regenerative braking and not having an engine idling and burning energy the whole time.

That only holds if the comparison is DC fast charging against gasoline. For most everyday driving EVs come out well ahead. Overall my energy cost with the EV is under 10% of what a comparable gas car would cost me (a Chevy Bolt against a Honda Fit, which are quite similar). A good share of my driving is on highways too, though the top limit around here is 100 km/h, lower than the 120-130 km/h (75-80 mph) limits in some places. I drive in the mountains a lot as well, and EVs do great descending, maybe even better than in stop-and-go traffic.

Sadly, even home charging in California doesn't escape this. On PG&E, the lowest rate I can realistically get for charging an EV is $0.34/kWh, and at peak it hits $0.61/kWh, which is basically DC fast charging pricing around the clock.

Count me in. California's push to electrify everything makes me hope power bills turn into a much bigger political fight there.

That's definitely not how it works where I live, in hydro country. We're billed a flat CAD$0.141/kWh, which is around USD$0.10/kWh. California has among the priciest electricity in all of continental North America, and it ranks high worldwide too. Honestly, $0.64/kWh looks higher than what any country charges.

Mine gets about 4.8 miles per kWh, so at 36 cents that's roughly 7.5 cents per mile in electricity. LA gas runs around $4.70 a gallon right now. To match 7.5 cents per mile on regular, a car would have to manage about 63 mpg, and more still if you count the premium fuel many upscale cars require. So yes, the EV is still cheaper.

Even paying 30¢/kWh where I am, I land at about 7¢ per mile. My old Prius cost me around 10¢ per mile, so claiming an EV is only comparable to 30mpg is a stretch. It's also smooth and very comfortable to drive. A luxury feel at a bargain price sounds like a good deal to me.

You only reach $0.07/mile if you assume three things. 1. Your car uses 215 Wh/mi. That would make it more efficient than any EV being built, even the class-leading Model 3. The Model Y, a top seller and still very efficient, is more like 275+ Wh/mi in normal mixed driving. A mid-pack Ford Mach E looks like 320 Wh/mi, and a Rivian R1S about 420 Wh/mi. Those are mild-weather figures, and cold weather pushes consumption up by 25% or more. 2. You're only paying for the energy that moves the car. That ignores charging losses: home L1 is around 85% efficient and L2 around 95%. Some people (linked source) measured a Mach E at roughly 318-370 Wh/mi from the wall. There's also vampire drain, about 1 kWh a day normally, closer to 5 kWh/day if features like sentry mode keep the car awake. 3. You truly pay $0.32/kWh. Look at your bills over several months; the off-peak rate often turns out higher than advertised once extra fees are added. You're also covering that cheap EV rate by paying steep peak prices (like $0.64/kWh) for everything else you run at those hours. Looking only at the marginal EV rate is like a buy-one-get-one-50%-off deal where you think one item cost half, when really you got two for 75% of the price each. So consider your blended rate across all usage. Mine is closer to $0.38/kWh. Take a Mach E at 340 Wh/mi from the wall in mild weather, using only the marginal $0.32/kWh. That's about $0.11/mi. Regular at my local station is $3.86/gallon, so a 35 mpg ICE car costs the same per mile. It gets worse for the EV once you factor in blended rates, cold weather, and vampire drain. So saying an EV is roughly like a 30s-mpg ICE in California isn't unreasonable, though YMMV, literally. It's a reminder that blanket claims that EVs are cheaper to fuel than ICEs no longer hold, and we need more nuance on both sides of the comparison.

In my 2023 Hyundai Kona I get 195-220 Wh/mi, depending on weather and how I drive. I schedule charging for off-peak in most cases, so I usually pay 32¢, and only rarely the 36¢ peak rate. Ignoring losses, that's 6.27-7.1¢/mile. Adding a 15% loss, my worst case is 8.35¢/mi and my typical is 7.38¢/mi. I also sometimes use free public chargers, which is minor but still a small plus. My other household electricity use is unchanged, so I'm not counting it. The fridge runs by day and laundry happens at night regardless, so it doesn't affect cost per mile. Gas where I am is $4-$4.70/gallon depending on the season, sometimes more. At 7.38¢/mi against $4.00/gallon, that equals 54mpg, and often I do better.

If you really get those numbers, hats off, you're an EV hypermiler. I suspect your source isn't accurate, because that's absurdly efficient for any EV, let alone a crossover shape. Real-world testing puts the long-range Kona EV nearer 280 Wh/mi. That's still efficient for an EV, but it makes it about $0.09/mi before counting other effects and losses. Also, even if your appliance use doesn't change with an EV, a TOU plan changes what those appliances cost you at peak hours. You're effectively funding the cheap off-peak rate by paying more at peak. Your total bill may be lower, but you aren't simply adding an EV at $0.32/kWh; you moved your whole rate structure to get that price. Put differently, a TOU plan with a $0.32/kWh off-peak rate probably wouldn't be your cheapest option if you didn't own an EV. In the end we're both demonstrating my original point: in California, EVs are no longer automatically cheaper to fuel than ICEs. It depends on local power and gas prices, your other electrical use, and above all the efficiency of the EV and ICE being compared. A few years ago you didn't need detailed math to know the EV would win on fuel. I love EVs and won't go back to ICE. There are many good reasons to choose one; I just don't think fueling cost in CA is one of them anymore.

I drive like a retiree in a Prius, so I know I'm likely more efficient than most. When I got the car, its lifetime average from earlier drivers was around 313 Wh/mi, while mine has been about 217 Wh/mi since I've owned it. I agree cost isn't the main factor anymore (unless you have solar, which I hope to install within a few years). I just thought you might be exaggerating, but evidently not, and I'm simply a very efficient driver compared with the average. Haha. Either way I still like the car, and might like it even more if I moved somewhere with cheap electricity again.

No hypermiling here, and my BMW i3 still averages 5 miles/kWh across mixed highway and city driving. At your off-peak rate that's 6.4 cents a mile. This is exactly why we need more small EVs rather than the huge monstrosities sold in the USA.

The i3 was indeed efficient; the EPA rated it nearer 250 Wh/mi, and their numbers tend to be optimistic. Comparing its $/mi to equivalent subcompact ICE cars would be interesting, but as you said, that's not a popular segment in America, which is probably why BMW swapped it for larger models. In Europe, plenty of small turbo and turbo-diesel cars achieve comparable MPG. It seems we agree that in the EV vs ICE fueling-cost debate, efficiency now matters a great deal. EVs aren't automatically cheaper anymore, depending on local energy costs, efficiency, and driving style and environment, and they'll have to compete on efficiency to keep any fuel-cost edge over ICE. Or, better, I'd like us to start caring about cheap electricity as much as we care about cheap gas.

The i3 got axed because it started life as a test: BMW wanted to put a carbon fiber tub into an ordinary production car, and that turned out to be far too costly to build. From what I've heard, BMW never turned a profit on it, even with a sticker above $50K. As a used buy it's a great deal, especially a car coming off a 3-year lease. And to answer the other point, no, small EVs still cost quite a bit less to fuel, provided you charge at home on off-peak rates or have solar panels. My own view is that EVs will break into the mainstream mostly as a compact, cheap-to-run second vehicle in a household with two cars. It's a shame that the Bolt is about the only American-built EV that gets anywhere close to being small.

If you charge your Kona up to 80%, what range in miles does the car display?

Does it matter? If you do all your charging at home and the car covers where you need to go and gets you back, that's enough. My commute is 40 miles round trip, so the i3's roughly 150-mile range is plenty. For a household with two cars, a small EV makes an ideal second one.

Someone set a reminder for me for 6 months out, once ski season ends and I put my summer wheels and tires back on, so I can compare winter efficiency to summer. So far my Model Y Performance averages 238Wh/mi across about 1,700 miles, with at least 1,300 of those on highway trips. I only took delivery in late August, and the autumn here was unusually warm until just the past few weeks, so most of the driving happened without A/C or heat. I've kept it in chill mode and skipped hard launches, hoping to make the tires last, the way F1 drivers are told to go easy on out laps to save rubber; my thinking was that being gentle during the first 1,000 miles might pay off. I also hypermile whenever I'm not rushed, especially on road trips. I drive like the old man I am, and only throw my sporty cars around when I'm running late, which sadly happens a lot. On my first mountain road trip, I ran the interstate at 80+ MPH for 75 miles with 2,300 ft of climbing, then stayed at a hotel about 2,500 ft lower and pushed hard each day, driving 36 miles uphill and passing people on winding 2-3 lane roads. I can't recall the efficiency for that 400-mile trip, but about 200 miles later I was sitting at roughly 238Wh/mi overall. On my latest mountain trip, a 180-mile round trip mostly on interstate at up to 80MPH, I managed 242 Wh/mi, even with FSD running as much as 12 MPH over the limit on the way up and 6,000 feet of elevation change. I recently bought and mounted 19" wheels with snow tires, the same size as on a standard Model Y, but to my surprise an errand showed worse efficiency than the stock 21" wheels with much wider tires. Tonight I'll compare again when I collect my girlfriend from the Park-n-Ride, a trip I do often and whose efficiency I know well. Here in Colorado I pay 12 cents/kWh off peak, transmission included. Rounding up to 250 Wh/mi, that works out to 3 cents/mi, compared with 10.5 cents/mi at today's Costco premium price of $3.15/gal in my WRX wagon, which got 30MPG on the highway. Even a car running regular at $2.43/gal and 30MPG would cost 8.1 cents/mi. So gas runs 2.7 to 3.5 times what I pay now. The worst case is winter, when nearly all my ski road trips happen. If I need to supercharge 50% of the battery (40 kWh) at 31 cents/kWh, that's $12.40, plus $4.80 for the home portion (40kWh at $0.12), totaling $17.20, which only barely beats the $18.90 I'd have spent on premium gas. A full 100% supercharge would run higher, at $24.80.

Great efficiency! Teslas really do top the field on that front. My Model 3 gets about 240 Wh/mi too, and I don't even drive with efficiency in mind. I'd love to see your numbers after winter. Keep in mind that the figure leaves out charging losses, vampire drain, and (I think) energy used while the car isn't moving. Even so, at $0.12/kWh you've got lots of room to use more energy and still come out cheaper than a similar CUV such as a RAV4. I miss when electricity was that cheap! Sadly, most of California no longer has that, and California sells about 5x as many EVs as the next state (FL). One in three registered EVs is in California, so what I'm describing is the reality for a big share of EV owners. Other states' EV fans should take CA as a warning and genuinely care about energy policy and vote on it. Seven years ago we also used to say EVs were much cheaper to fuel.

Also, don't forget to disable Sentry Mode before you go skiing!

Agreed, Sentry Mode still drains the battery, even after the supposed efficiency updates. I didn't note the exact figure, but it looked like well over 1% a day while parked in the mountains. I'll keep it on a while longer and try to work out the hourly usage. My ski trips had me worried, since the September drive to my ski house burned 48% of the battery over 88 miles and 6,000 ft of climbing. The drive home, though, used only 17%. A couple of weeks ago I saw similar results on the same route, using FSD for most of it once I was past the city on the interstate and rural mountain roads, and switching it off at traffic lights because FSD accelerates too aggressively. My 19" wheels weigh around 2 pounds less than the stock 19" Geminis and have no covers, but the Gorilla lug nuts are 2 to 2.5 times heavier than the stock uncapped ones, and the snow tires are likely heavier and draggier than stock 19s. Still, I'm surprised they're no better than the 21s, though I've only driven a few miles since resetting the wheel and tire settings (I forgot to choose the winter tire setting until I'd parked at my errand). Winter tire mode does seem to raise the regen force. Back in 2019, Xcel Energy capped my solar at 115% of the prior year's usage, and I still pay about $5 in non-winter months for other charges (HOA streetlights, low-income program subsidies, etc.), so I assume solar won't cover any EV charging. They did give me a $500 rebate on my wall connector install and $40/year for charging at least 80% within a 9-hour window. California home electricity rates are mostly outrageous, but the OP's and some other DCFC rates aren't worse than EA here, which charges 57 cents/kWh. Last year I could only learn supercharging rates by asking here, since Tesla didn't show prices at Superchargers or on its site before NACS opened to non-Teslas. I ran many gas-versus-electric calculations looking for the break-even point that would justify a $57k Model Y over a $40k Subaru Outback XT, before prices dropped and our state added, then doubled, the tax credit, which made it cheaper from day one.

Remind me in 6 months. Hmm, the bot reminder still isn't showing up for me?

Yeah, that's nuts. But then, you all pay more for gas too.

The other day I got charged more than $0.60/kWh in CA. Unbelievable.

Even Washington State had one charging at $0.62/kWh, which is wild considering retail electricity there runs about $0.09/kWh.

Oklahoma is the same story, and it's absurd. At home my rate is just $0.11.

Since the original poster brought up the northeast: around NYC, some L2 chargers are priced insanely. A newer building near me lets tenants use L2 charging, but it costs $1.75 per kWh. Parking is already a pricey luxury in Manhattan, and on top of that, some garages tack on outrageous fees for charging.

My utility is SDGE, in California, and if you charge during the cheapest rate periods you can pay 20 cents a kWh or even less. Later on I also came across another Supercharger about 3 miles down the road at $0.17 a kWh. -> To be fair, those prices apply in the middle of the night. But I'm frugal like that.

California isn't the only place getting gouged. Michigan is robbing us too, at 52c.

The majority of the EVgo stations nearest to me charge $0.65 per kWh.

Sorry to revive an old thread, but in Kentucky almost every DC fast charger within 120 miles of me costs somewhere between $0.52 and $0.67/kWh (mostly $0.60 or $0.65), even though electricity here is really cheap. Is that just supply and demand?

Public charging costs a lot because providing it costs a lot. Demand charges take a big bite out of what charging operators pay, and the hardware itself is very pricey as well. Higher volume and more competition are the two ways prices could come down.

More volume doesn't fix what electricity costs at peak times, which is when most people are using public chargers. You'd need huge amounts of added capacity to deal with that.

Most drivers don't rely on public chargers at all, and those who charge tend to do it late at night, off-peak. Also, peak electricity hours fall in the late afternoon and evening, and plenty of people use public chargers outside that window.

Home charging isn't what this post is about at all. Claiming that people on public chargers don't plug in at about the same hours most drivers hit gas stations, meaning mornings and evenings when demand peaks, makes no sense. Nobody heads out at 11 PM to sit for an hour charging. And it's moot anyway, since hardly any charging stations lower their prices outside peak hours.

Around me in California it's $0.64. When I read your title I assumed you'd found a really good deal. At home I pay somewhere between $0.40 and $0.55 per kWh, depending on when I charge. Mostly I rely on the free EA charging that was bundled with my car, plus any other free public chargers I happen to come across.

Crazy. Back home in Nashville my rate is just $0.11.

It's odd how big the gap is between fast charging and home charging prices in the TVA region, especially since our fast chargers are able to outperform the ones in California.

I realize nobody asked for a smug Canadian to weigh in, but here I am anyway. Before moving to British Columbia I lived in the Bay Area. Charging overnight costs me about 6¢ per kWh in freedom dollars. Roughly 90% of our electricity comes from hydro, since we have plenty of rain and mountains.

You're lucky to have free EA. In my area EA runs 59 cents/kW, while Tesla superchargers are just 33 cents, and even those open to non-Teslas undercut EA at 49 cents. EA will be strictly for emergencies for me, and given how much they charge I'm not sure a $120 Tesla-CCS adapter is worth buying.

The government money really was meant to improve infrastructure, but that means adding more of the costly chargers, not bringing down what the electricity itself costs.

Honestly it comes down to which EV you have and your circumstances. When you can charge at home most of the time, it more than balances out. More efficient EVs also stretch your DCFC dollars further. Taking our EV6 on long drives costs us less than taking our friends' Mazda.

That tracks. We can also fill up to 100% at home before leaving, so with my home electricity rate, the first half of a 600 mile road trip costs only around $14.

Add solar and it gets cheaper still, eventually anyway. For now I'm still using the free 1.5k kWh Kia gave us with the EV6, so our road trips cost nothing. We can still see what they would have cost, though, and it's still the cheaper option.

Fair point, but people who bring up solar tend to skip over what it actually costs them up front and per month, since it's an expense too. Are you able to share those numbers?

Honestly the "it's cheaper if you have solar" line is a silly argument. My system ran 35k and I pay 180 a month on it, so nothing got cheaper; the cost just moved somewhere else. Think about what 35k could buy in gas or in electricity from the utility. If you put that money in an investment earning 10% annually, you'd pull in nearly 300 a month. I'm a big fan of both solar and EVs, but let's not act like charging at home is free, even when you've got panels.

Yes, I'd happily share. I'd like to invest in it, but the payback period would need to be shorter for me. A better support plan would also help.

I don't have monthly payments because I paid for the whole system myself and did the install on my own. Still, I'm about 45k into it, and roughly 22k of that was just the batteries.

Electrify America is run by a for-profit private company, which is the reason charging there costs so much.

Can you back that up with some actual numbers? Plenty of state-run industries are pricey and have no real competition, so being private isn't obviously the cause.

This is basic economics: being for-profit doesn't tell you much by itself. To make your case you'd need to show that EA is tuning its pricing to the supply and demand curve, or that its profits are unusually high next to comparable industries. As it stands, EA isn't even profitable.

EA is still building out and growing, a phase where spending is expected to exceed revenue. Once expansion levels off, steady recurring income should bring profit. Amazon and Netflix were similar, posting no profits for years, and look where they are now.

It comes down to supply and demand. Honestly, all the detail people are giving you about how stations get built and run, and what others pay elsewhere, doesn't matter much in my view. What counts is how many EVs need to charge, how many chargers exist, and the highest price you can set before drivers simply stop using yours. Operators watch their rivals closely: the prices, how busy each site is, and how often cars are plugged in versus sitting idle. The price ends up being whatever they believe maximizes usage and profit. You're upset that it cost a lot, but you still paid it, right? That's exactly why they charge what they do.

Wait, you pay 2.3 cents per kWh? That's insanely cheap. Even charging at home, I'd be paying around seven times what you do.

Here in Ohio I've run into DCFC prices up to $0.69 per kWh, and honestly it's pretty normal to see something in the $0.60 to $0.65 range.

Up in North Jersey, the BP station near me runs 48 cents per kWh for DCFC. EVgo and Electrify America cost more, but they're quicker, have more stalls, and break down less often than BP, so you get what you pay for. Mostly I plug in at work for free, and I only touch DCFC on weekends when a drive ends up longer than I'd planned.

Around Elizabeth, every fast charger I come across is listing 64c per kWh. I'm frugal enough that I'll go out of my way to reach one of the handful of Nissan dealerships that still give away free charging.

Honestly, 48 cents/kWh is a bargain for DCFC. Each charger and its supporting infrastructure can run over $100k, and utilities hit operators with hefty demand charges for pulling lots of power at once. Eversource, for example, bills roughly $18/kW in demand fees, so one 250kW station could owe about $4,500 a month to the utility on demand alone, before counting the energy itself or the hardware. Depending on how busy a station is, the true cost of DCFC is likely north of $2/kWh. So charge at home, where it's about $0.10-$0.30/kWh, and keep DCFC for road trips.

I put together a table comparing the cost of EV fast charging to filling up with gas, using EPA efficiency figures. |Electric Vehicle|kwh/100miles|ICE Equivalent|gallons/100miles|gallon equivalent price at $0.48/kwh (with 5% charging loss)| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |Audi Q4 45 e-tron|29|Audi Q3|4|3.65| |Genesis Electrified G80|35|Genesis G80 AWD|4.2|4.20| |Volvo XC40 Recharge|32|Volvo XC40 B5 AWD|3.8|4.24| |Chev Blazer EV AWD|36|Chev Blazer AWD|4.2|4.32| |MB EQE 350 4matic|39|MB E450 4matic|4|4.91| |BMW i5 eDrive40|32|BMW 530i|3.2|5.04| |Toyota bZ4X|28|Toyota RAV4 Hybrid AWD|2.6|5.43| |Ford F-150 Lightning 4WD|49|Ford F150 4WD HEV|4.3|5.74| |Chev Silverado EV|53|Chev Silverado 4WD Diesel|4.2|6.36| |Kia Niro Electric|30|Kia Niro FE|1.9|7.96| The formula is: Gallon Equivalent = (kwh/100miles) \ (price/kwh) \ (1.05) / (gallons/100miles) When DCFC costs $0.48/kwh, the gas-equivalent price can get awful! I've also made one for PHEVs, and it looks considerably worse.

What your chart shows is that America needs smaller EVs for its roads. My i3 is like that: it manages 5 miles per kWh, which works out to 20 kWh/100 miles.

I don't quite agree. The Kia Niro looks like the worst case in the comparison, but that's mainly because it's a terribly inefficient EV.

Even at home during peak hours I'm paying $0.50/kWh here in Northern California... screw PG&E.

Wow, that's nuts. I'm really happy we're on SMUD and not PG&E, since our peak rates don't come close to that. Overnight I think I'm paying about $0.15/kWh.

What's the reason for charging during on-peak hours? Is it that your work schedule falls in off-peak times and you can't reach a home charger then? I understand needing to now and then, but doing it on a regular basis?

Oh sure, I'm super careful to schedule my car's charging for off-peak, when it's only 0.32 per kWh. /s What's depressing is that peak rates in most of the country come in lower than what I pay off peak.

California really does have some of the priciest electricity anywhere. I'm curious whether residential customers there get to pick their provider, the way retail customers can?

No, there's no choice at all, and that's exactly why we get ripped off.

Up in the northeast I pay close to $0.30 per kWh, give or take with the season. Fast chargers need to make some profit to cover their equipment and upkeep, don't they? EVs save you money when you charge at home overnight. My rate is $0.15 per kWh between midnight and 8am. Highway DC fast charging isn't where the savings are; it's a convenience you pay extra for and shouldn't be your main way of charging.

Selling fuel alone wouldn't keep most gas stations afloat, which is why nearly all of them have a convenience store attached. A one-time subsidy can cover the upfront cost of building EV chargers, but that doesn't make the business sustainable over time.

Cost is about the same as gas, maybe slightly higher depending on your area. Today I drove from McAlester, OK to Austin, TX, covering 353 miles, and I only spent about 50 minutes charging in total, for $45.81. My real savings come from charging at home. On trips I don't mind paying a bit more, though I could probably have turned off FordPass and signed up for a Tesla subscription to pay roughly 25% less for charging.

I nearly fell over when I got a quote for putting three Autel DC chargers in at my dealership. Our transformer is already maxed out, so just running a line out to the road is priced at $100,000. We've got 3-phase service, and the utility wants either to tear up the whole parking lot to bury the line or to do "exploratory" drilling so they can bury it without wrecking the lot. And that's only the line, with installation not included. It's a huge number.

If it costs as much as a BMW at those rates, your EV must have pretty poor efficiency.

It's a Kia EV9. My BMW F30 is great on the freeway when you drive it moderately, though the EV9 is a much bigger vehicle than the F30 sedan, so that's that. Comparing the two directly wasn't really the point of my post. As I said originally, I know home charging matters, so that isn't what I was getting at either. What surprised me was the cost of DC fast charging. I just learned that the 48 cent charger near me is the only cheaper option, since the other EA chargers run 56 cents.

Should you use EA chargers a lot, their Pass+ membership could be worth it. It's $7 a month and cuts your per-kWh price by around 25%. Electrify America

Yeah, 56 cents is definitely price gouging. Nice to learn, though, that the Bimmer turned out to be fairly inexpensive to operate. 👍🏼

Cooking at home costs me under $8 a day, so why on earth are restaurants so pricey??

Fast charging costs noticeably more than plugging in at home, but it isn't really that bad. Take a car that gets 4 mi/kWh: fuel runs about $0.12 per mile. A 30 mpg gas car with gas at $3.50/gallon also lands around $0.12 per mile. So on a long trip, where DC charging is basically the worst case, you pay about what you would in a gas car. Charge at home or at a level 2 charger where you end up, and it's usually far cheaper, so over time an EV comes out well ahead. If your driving is mostly long trips and you rely mainly on DC chargers, you lose most of the EV's cost and convenience edge, yet DC chargers are what make long trips doable in an EV at all. Gas is nowhere near that cheap in BC/WA, and DC charging is maybe slightly cheaper, so the EV advantage is bigger here: even on DC power, our energy costs are about half those of a similar gas car, and with home charging they're under 10% of the gas car's. In my area, DC charging infrastructure on both sides of the border has gotten much better over roughly the past year, although most of the EV infrastructure upgrades tied to the Inflation Reduction Act haven't materialized yet.

Fair point, but one caveat: at highway speeds, which is nearly certainly how you'll be driving on a trip long enough to need fast charging, most EVs rated at 4 mi/kWh actually deliver closer to 3.0-3.5 mi/kWh. At $0.48/kWh that comes to roughly $0.137-$0.16 per mile. That's higher than the $0.12/mile for a 30 MPG gas car, but still not terrible, especially once you count the upkeep an ICE car needs that an EV doesn't, mainly oil and filter changes plus brake pads and rotors. Depending on what you assume about service costs and intervals, that adds around $0.01-$0.03 per mile. None of this means the "DC fast charging costs more" argument sinks EVs, particularly if you mostly charge at home. It just gives a more accurate picture.

Likewise, a car rated 30 MPG is closer to 25 MPG when you're cruising on the highway.

Building new infrastructure costs money: buying the equipment, installing it, and keeping it running. That's what the federal NEVI funding was meant to cover. Paying for the electricity itself was never part of its purpose.

Keep in mind that part of the price gap is a premium for speed. Imagine you could fill your gas tank slowly overnight for $1/gal, or pay $4.50/gal to fill it during a quick bathroom break on a road trip. You'd probably be fine with that.

Haha okay, but gas doesn't work that way, does it?

Funny thing, I've seen chargers being up and working more often since prices went up.

Honestly I'd happily pay $1/kWh if it meant skipping the line.

Prices swing a lot depending on time of day, since time-of-use rates drive them. Infrastructure isn't a problem for me, either at home or wherever I travel. On cost: my utility is SDGE, in California, and if you charge during the cheapest windows you can pay 20 cents per kWh or less. I later spotted a different supercharger just 2 miles up the road that was charging $0.18 per kWh. To be fair, those rates apply in the very early morning hours, but I'm frugal like that.

The root problem is that there's little competition. Once demand is high enough to bring in competitors, prices should drop.

Stop whining. Back home in Europe we pay nearly that much!

So in UK money that works out to roughly £0.35? Wow. Here, most public DC charging runs above 70p. Earlier today I paid 0.89 for a quick top-up. Tesla is the outlier, and even they rarely go beyond 0.50.

How frequently do you actually take long road trips? You seem to have known about this before buying, so I'd guess it isn't very often.

The reason public charging costs so much is that the hardware is incredibly pricey. All you see is a slim little dispenser and it seems like there can't be much inside, and in fact there isn't; it's mostly a radiator for the coolant loop running through the cable, because the only way to push 350kW through a cable that thin is to water-cool it. The real electronics sit in a cabinet roughly the size of a fridge, placed some distance away, and it's crammed full of expensive components. A level 2 station is different. It just passes along the ordinary 208/240/277V supply already in the building and lets your car's onboard charger do the conversion, so the dispenser is around $500 with a couple thousand more for installation, and pricing can be reasonable. The catch is that it needs about 7 hours to add 60 kWh. And you were looking for something faster. Also, if you used a fast charger right before or after going to bed, you wasted a chance. Next time, favor level 2 charging at hotels.

I charge exclusively at Superchargers with my Model Y. When I bought it in summer 2023 I averaged 17-22 cents per kWh, and I can still get a great off-peak rate between midnight and 4am, though afternoon charging averages about 33-38 cents (New Jersey). With a job or a long commute I'd never keep it this way, but for errands and road trips it's still a decent deal compared with gas, in my opinion.

There used to be a handful of free L2 chargers near me, but every one of them eventually broke. The ones that got fixed now cost far more, even those where I get a discount, since they're often abused and repairs are expensive. A lot of them have been left broken for years.

We drive an Ioniq 5 in the Antelope Valley, CA. At home we pay $0.28 per kWh off peak. The fast charger at the dealership is free indefinitely, or at least until they decide otherwise, and we use EA chargers whenever possible since they're free for 3 years. There are also free level 2 chargers around, but you have to plan carefully if you want to play the free game. And don't forget, Trump said he'd cut power costs in half, so all of this will soon be irrelevant!

For those of you on the road, what does a full fast charge usually cost you? In other words, what's the typical price of a fill-up?

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Part of it might simply be that power costs more in some places, since what a site owner pays the utility drives what they charge. Often, though, it's plain greed. Along I-89 there are plenty of car dealerships run by jerks who own some of the only chargers on that heavily traveled route. They know drivers have nowhere else to go, so they gouge people and get away with it. That's how you get Cody Chevrolet in Montpelier, VT, which asks $1 per kWh plus a $1 session fee for its underwhelming 50 kW chargers.

I'm in the tri-state region (NY, NJ, PA). Pennsylvania runs the highest, usually around $0.46/kWh, while New York and New Jersey sit near $0.35. Back home, I pay roughly $0.11 to charge.

Along the I-35 corridor in Central Texas, between Austin and Dallas, what I've seen is somewhere from $0.45 to $0.58 per kWh. Tesla Superchargers might come in a bit cheaper, though I can't vouch for every one of them.

Out in western Washington I pay about $0.14/kWh charging at home, and DC fast chargers go for something like $0.38 to $0.52/kWh.

Look at England if you want high prices. Motorway service stations commonly charge around £0.79 per kWh, which works out to roughly $1.

Home electricity in Massachusetts costs about $0.31/kWh at retail. Nobody is going to sell charging at that price, otherwise there'd be no point in putting up pricey charging stations. Honestly, $0.48 seems like a good deal.

Competition just isn't there yet. Give it another decade or so and new players will show up and push prices down.

In Kentucky and Ohio, Pilot/GM was asking $0.72, and the Buc-ee's in Kentucky was $0.54. Pretty crazy given how cheap their rates supposedly are.

The reason public DC fast charging costs more than charging at home is that the equipment is incredibly expensive, the electric bills are punishing, and the federal funding you read about in headlines only reduces those costs rather than eliminating them. Unless operators charge about $0.50 to $0.70 per kWh, the numbers just don't add up.

Credits from the administration were handed out to cover the cost of installing and buying equipment, specifically for stations along major travel corridors. Owners still carry the ongoing bills, though: maintenance, power, day-to-day operations, and network fees. What they pay for electricity varies by utility and state, but a typical business should plan on about $0.27 per kWh in normal operation. The final number shifts with demand, how many hours the site is in use, overall utilization, the electricity contract, and where the station sits. The CHIPs act lowered the upfront barrier, which lets businesses earn back their investment faster, but it does nothing to the everyday running cost. A set of 4 DC fast chargers runs roughly $230k to buy, install, and commission. CHIPs softened that, yet it remains a real obstacle. Think of it like a gas station: when the owner finishes paying off the cost of building out the pumps, the price of gas doesn't drop. The additional profit simply stays with the owner.

Charging at the evGO stations at Flying J costs close to 65¢ per kWh, and I've come across a few rural DC fast chargers that hardly get used and charge more than $1.00 per kWh. It's expensive to build and run charging infrastructure.