Dmytro Gaivoronsky

🇺🇦 🇺🇸 Engineering leader & builder. 25+ yrs in tech including Google, AWS, and Meta.

2 minute read

Yesterday we were driving up to Snoqualmie Pass to ski with the family, and I realized I’d forgotten to charge the Rivian overnight. So we had to stop in Issaquah and top up at Electrify America, going from about 10% to 85%. The price there was roughly $0.56/kWh, which naturally turned into a conversation with my dad about how charging a Rivian really compares to fueling a gas car.

We came up with some rough numbers on the spot, but I was curious what this actually looks like in perspective.

The Question

The basic question is simple: when does charging an EV cost more or less than filling up a gas car for the same distance?

The answer depends on a bunch of variables:

  • Your EV’s efficiency (mi/kWh)
  • Battery size and how much you’re charging (10% to 85% vs 20% to 80%)
  • Electricity price (home charging at $0.12/kWh vs DC fast charging at $0.56/kWh)
  • Gas price in your area
  • What kind of gas car you’re comparing against (a Prius vs an F-150)

The Calculator

I built an interactive calculator that visualizes all of this.

The heatmap shows cost difference across two dimensions:

  • X-axis: Gas car fuel efficiency (MPG) - from gas-guzzling trucks to hybrids
  • Y-axis: Electricity price ($/kWh) - from cheap home charging to expensive DC fast charging

Green means the EV is cheaper. Red means gas is cheaper. The break-even line shows where costs are equal.

What I Learned

A few things became clear:

Home charging is almost always cheaper. At typical home rates ($0.10-0.15/kWh), my Rivian R1S beats everything except the most efficient hybrids. Even comparing against a 30 MPG sedan, I’m saving money.

DC fast charging changes the math. At $0.56/kWh (what I paid at Electrify America), my Rivian only beats gas cars getting worse than about 22 MPG. Against a typical sedan, gas is actually cheaper per mile.

The break-even point shifts dramatically by state. In Washington, we have cheap electricity ($0.12/kWh average) but expensive gas ($4.02/gal). That’s favorable for EVs. In Texas, cheap gas ($2.45/gal) makes the comparison tighter.

Try It

The calculator has presets for common EVs (Tesla Model 3/Y/X, Rivian R1S/R1T, Cybertruck) and all 50 US states. Select your car and state to see your specific scenario, or adjust the sliders manually.

Open the calculator

The state prices table at the bottom shows average gas and electricity prices across the US, with a ratio column showing which states favor EVs the most.

Source

Built with Plotly.js for the heatmap visualization. Single HTML file, no backend, works offline. Source on GitHub.

Updated:

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