How much does it cost to charge an electric car?

It costs $2.64 to charge an electric car, assuming the car has a 24 kilowatt-hour battery with a 70-mile range and the electricity price is $0.11 per kilowatt-hour. The cost is equivalent to six hours of central air conditioning. A Department of Energy vehicle cost calculator is available at AFDC.Energy.gov/calc/.

To compute an electric vehicle's cost per mile, a person needs to know how much electricity the car consumes to travel 100 miles and the electricity cost in dollars per kilowatt-hour. If the car consumes 34 kilowatt-hours to travel 100 miles and the electricity costs $0.11 per kilowatt-hour, the per-mile cost is $0.04. A car that uses 2,520 kilowatt-hours per year uses less electricity than an average water heater.