Video: EV 101 How Much Does it Cost to Charge an EV at Home?

ou do. But what about an electric car? How much does it cost to charge at home? Will your electric bill go through the roof? No. Well, it's obvious using your home's electricity to charge your car will increase your electric bill. It's difficult for us to say how much it'll go up because the cost depends on a couple of numbers that might not be as familiar to you as gallons of gasoline or miles per gallon. Let's walk you through how to determine the cost of charging an EV at home, and trigger warning, there's gonna be some math here. You'll need three important numbers. First, you need to know the number of miles you drive per month. Second, electricity consumption is measured in kilowatt hours as opposed to gallons of gasoline in a traditional car. So you'll need to know the efficiency of your EV measured in kilowatt hours per mile. You can find this information on the EPA's website, fueleconomy.gov. And third, you need to know your home's energy cost per kilowatt hour measured in cents. To get an accurate cost per kilowatt hour, take the overall cost of electricity on your last bill and divide by kilowatt hours used, which will take into consideration all the fees and charges that come with delivering electricity to your home. According to the Energy Information Administration, in 2022, the average US residential electricity price was around 15 cents per kilowatt hour. But this varies depending on region and even time of day. So let's put it all together with an example. Here comes the math. With the known cost of electricity, we can figure out how much it costs to charge a popular EV like the Tesla Model Y standard range all-wheel drive. The EPA rates this model as using 28 kilowatt hours to travel 100 miles. In this estimate, the EPA includes vehicle consumption as well as charging losses. There's energy losses when taking power from the grid and transferring it to the battery so you're paying for more energy than simply what the car is using. From here, 28 kilowatt hours per 100 miles works out to 0.28 kilowatt hours per mile. So you can multiply the consumption of 0.28 kilowatt hours per mile by how many miles you drive per month to see the total kilowatt hours consumed by the vehicle. Let's say you drive a thousand miles a month. Take 0.28 kilowatt hours times a thousand miles to get an overall vehicle consumption of 280 kilowatt hours. Then multiply that by the utilities fee of 15 cents per kilowatt hour. The total cost of driving this Model Y a thousand miles a month comes out to $42. using the same calculation, a similarly sized BMW X4 xDrive30i would cost $183 to drive a thousand miles on premium gasoline. So those numbers get you in the ballpark of home charging costs, but what else should you consider? First, to get a more accurate average, account for any month to month changes in the electricity rate or billing variations by doing the same calculation for a few different monthly electric bills. Another thing to keep in mind is efficiency. Just like a gasoline powered vehicle, a less efficient EV could cost more to drive. An EV with lower rated efficiency like the Audi e-tron Quattro, would increase the cost from the Model Y's $42 to $64.50 based on the national average, because it uses more energy to travel the same distance. Now that you know how to calculate how much it costs to charge an EV, you can rest assured that it likely won't result in doubling or tripling of your average electric bill. But what about charging at a public station? How do you find them and how much do they cost? Well come along with us and we'll show you in our next episode of EV 101. And if you're looking to learn even more about electric vehicles, you can find it all at cars.com/ev. (bright music)