EV vs Gas Car Calculator

The electric versus petrol comparison is a trade of higher upfront cost against lower running cost, and whether it works out depends almost entirely on how many miles you drive and how you charge. Electricity at home is dramatically cheaper per mile than petrol — often a third of the cost — but that advantage accumulates gradually, so a driver covering twenty thousand miles a year reaches breakeven in a fraction of the time a five thousand mile driver does.

Home charging is the assumption on which most of the savings rest. At residential rates an EV typically costs four to six cents a mile in energy. Public rapid charging can be three times that, which brings the per-mile cost close to petrol and removes most of the reason to switch. This is why the honest answer to whether an EV will save you money starts with whether you have somewhere to plug in overnight.

Maintenance genuinely favours electric and is often understated. There is no oil to change, no exhaust system, no spark plugs, no timing belt, and regenerative braking means brake pads frequently last two or three times as long. Set against that, tyres wear faster because EVs are heavier and deliver torque instantly, and insurance is commonly more expensive because repair costs are higher and specialist labour scarcer.

The largest genuine uncertainty is resale value. EV depreciation has been unusually volatile as new models with longer ranges arrive and battery costs fall, which pushes down used values faster than for petrol equivalents. Since the resale assumption moves the total more than almost any other input, treat the output of this comparison as a range rather than a precise figure, and test it by varying that one number.