How Much Does It Cost to Charge an EV Per Mile?

Charging cost per mile comes down to just two numbers: how far your EV travels on a kilowatt-hour (its efficiency, in miles per kWh) and what you pay for electricity (your rate, in dollars per kWh). Nothing else moves it - not the brand of charger, not the size of the battery. Get those two numbers and the per-mile cost is a single line of arithmetic, which is exactly what this page shows.

The formula

Cost per mile is the cost of the energy it takes to go one mile:

The 0.90 matters. About a tenth of the electricity your meter records is lost as heat in the cable and the car's onboard charger instead of becoming range, so a calculation that skips it lands about 10 percent too low. We keep it in every figure on this page and in the calculator below.

A worked example

Take an efficient EV that gets 3.5 miles per kWh, on the US residential average rate - which has recently been in the neighborhood of 16 to 17 cents per kWh, though you should check your own bill because it varies a lot by state and utility. Plug 3.5 mi/kWh and $0.16/kWh into the formula:

• Energy per mile: 1 / 3.5 = about 0.286 kWh into the battery
• From the wall, with the loss: 0.286 / 0.90 = about 0.317 kWh
• Cost: 0.317 x $0.16 = about $0.051, or roughly 5 cents per mile

That is about $5 per 100 miles. Drive 12,000 miles a year and you are looking at roughly $600 in electricity - the kind of number that makes an EV pencil out against gas. For that head-to-head, with the gas side laid out the same way, see EV vs gas cost.

The two levers, in one table

Because only efficiency and rate move the answer, you can read your own cost straight off a grid. Here is cost per mile at four common rates and two efficiencies - a thirsty 3.0 mi/kWh (a heavier SUV or truck) and an efficient 4.0 mi/kWh (a small, aero sedan), both including the 10 percent loss:

Notice the spread: even at a steep 35 cents per kWh, an efficient EV stays under 10 cents a mile, and at a cheap 10 cents it is under 3. The whole range sits below what most gas cars cost to fuel. Where your car and rate land in this grid is your real per-mile cost.

Why the charger brand is not on this list

Look again at the formula: the charger does not appear. Every home Level 2 charger pushes the same kilowatt-hours into your car, so a budget unit and a premium one cost exactly the same per mile to run. The only way hardware changes the number is indirectly - a smart charger that shifts your charging to cheaper off-peak hours lowers the rate half of the equation. That is a scheduling win, not a hardware one; see off-peak and time-of-use charging for how it works.

Turning cents per mile into a bill

Per mile is the cleanest way to compare cars, but you probably want to know the monthly damage too. Multiply your cents-per-mile by how far you drive: at 5 cents a mile and 1,000 miles a month, that is about $50. We do that math, with the assumptions shown, in cost to charge per month, and the full per-charge version lives in cost to charge at home.