Is an electric car actually cheaper to own?
Every comparison online answers this with someone else’s mileage, someone else’s electricity rate and an incentive you may not qualify for. The honest answer is a line, not a number: cheap fuel pays back an expensive purchase slowly, so the mileage you actually drive decides it. This sweeps the whole range at once.
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After you install, this is the model to open.
Is an Electric Car Actually Cheaper to Own?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
Eight rows of three numbers, with the difference column crossing zero exactly once:
- Break-even
- 20,800 miles a year
- At 12,000 miles
- +$4,195 the electric costs more
- At 22,000 miles
- -$559 the electric costs less
- Cost to move a mile
- 6.1c electric, against 12c of gas
The electric car is cheaper to run and more expensive to buy, and at the default numbers you need to drive about 20,800 miles a year before the running saving clears the purchase gap. That is a lot of driving, which is why the honest answer for most people is that mileage decides it rather than the badge. At 5,000 miles a year the electric car costs $7,523 more over eight years; at 15,000 it is $2,769 more; at 22,000 it is $559 less. Two numbers change the whole picture and both are yours: put your local incentive in and a $7,500 credit pulls break-even down to roughly 5,000 miles a year, and your own electricity rate moves the running cost directly. Switch to Goal Seek with the difference cell targeted at zero and it returns your exact break-even mileage rather than making you read it off the table.
The model
Eight years of ownership for each car, purchase to resale, covering everything that genuinely differs between them: price, the home charger, energy, servicing, the higher insurance on the electric, and what each is worth when you sell it. The purchase incentive starts at zero on purpose, because it depends on where you live, what you earn and which year it is.
| Electric car | $42,000, plus $1,100 for a home charger |
| Gas car | $32,000 |
| Purchase incentive | $0 by default, enter your own |
| Charging | 3.5 miles per kWh, 80% at home at $0.16, 20% public at $0.42 |
| Fuel | 30 mpg at $3.60 a gallon |
| Servicing and insurance | $700 vs $900 a year, plus $180 a year more to insure the electric |
| Resale after eight years | 36% of the electric price, 44% of the gas price |
| Miles a year | swept from 5,000 to 25,000 by the data table |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
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- Will you actually hit your savings goal?Will You Hit Your Savings Goal?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: What-if analysis in Google Sheets.