I haven’t tracked every fill-up for gas in a long, long time, and I’ve stopped paying attention to the cost of gas, so I can only estimate. I estimate that we’ve done about 50% road trips and 50% local driving, but I’m not certain of that—I’d have to go back through my logs. This is not perfectly specific to my experience, but your local cost of electricity, cost of gas, etc., will have an impact on whether you see similar results.
The tl;dr is that we have saved around $10k in fuel costs since going EV in early 2022.
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Lightning miles: 23,686 miles
Mustang: 52,709 miles
The Lightning replaced a Tacoma. I was getting 16 mpg on the freeway and 12 around town, about 14 mpg combined. I got 8 mpg when I towed, but I won’t count that even though many of the miles we had driven in the Tacoma were towing a travel trailer—we sold that before we bought the Lightning.
We would have purchased something like a Rav4 if we didn’t get the Mustang. Let’s use the Rav4’s combined mpg from the EPA: 30 mpg. I don’t believe we would get anywhere near that, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Tacoma: 23,686 miles / 14 mpg = 1691 gallons.
Rav4: 52,709 miles / 30 mpg = 1757 gallons.
Local average cost of gas over the past years (estimated): $3.50
Road trip average cost of gas (estimated, but most of our road trips were in CA where prices along the highways can easily top $6.00/gal): $5.00
Average cost of gas (assuming we did 50% road trips and 50% local driving): $4.25/gal.
Cost to drive the Tacoma would have been: 1691 gallons * $4.25/gal = $7,186.75
Cost to drive the Rav4 would have been: 1757 gallons * $4.25/gal = $7,467.25
Total to drive ICE vehicles since early 2022 would have been: $14,654.00
Our average efficiency in the Lightning is 2.3 miles/kWh.
Our average efficiency in the Mustang is 4.1 miles/kWh.
Lightning: 23,686 miles / 2.3 miles/kWh = 10,298 kWh
Mustang: 52,709 miles / 4.1 miles/kWh = 12,856 kWh
Until this year, we were paying $0.32/kWh for DCFC. The last several road trips were at the higher prices of about $0.60/kWh. But not all of them were at that price. We get lower prices at EA and we prefer EA. But let’s say the past year or so (20%) of road trips have been at $0.60/kWh, which is higher than reality, but that’s okay. The total energy use for higher-cost road trips was about 2,315 kWh. At $0.60/kWh, that’s $1389.24
The rest of our road trip miles were at the $0.32/kWh or less (these have been free: hotels, friends and family giving us “free charge,” RV parks and campgrounds, and a tiny bit of solar during boondocking). Let’s just use $0.32/kWh for simplicity. That’s about 9262 kWh at $0.32/kWh = $2963.71.
Locally, we charge our EVs at home at a price of $0.035/kWh. That's 11,577 kWh * $0.035/kWh = $405.20
Total electricity cost: $1389.24 + $2963.71 + $405.20 = $4758.15
Since going EV, we’ve saved $9895.85 in fuel costs. More to be sure, because I’m not discounting our road trip costs by the “free” or lower cost charging at hotels, RV parks, campgrounds, or friends’ or family's homes.
Let’s say the next 75,000 miles will also be about 50% road trips and 50% local, but that the price of DCFC is all the way up to $0.60/kWh. And let’s say we get the same average efficiency.
DCFC: 11577 kWh * $0.60/kWh = $6946.20
Local: 11577 kWh * $0.035/kWh = $405.20
Total: $7,351.40
That’s still only half the cost of gas.
Even if all the charging was done on DCFC, the cost of charging would be less than our cost of fuel:
$0.60/kWh * 23,154 kWh = $13892.40
And I’m not counting the time saved every week we used to spend to go refuel. I’m not counting the convenience of always having a “full” or nearly full tank every morning.
I’m not counting the cost of maintenance. We’ve paid a total of about $350-$400 for maintenance on the EVs, and that includes me buying a software subscription to do some updating for things I wanted to have that wouldn’t be considered part of regular maintenance. The local Toyota dealer was charging me $200-$500 per maintenance visit every six months. I didn’t have time or desire to do my own maintenance, so I would have continued to pay that. With two ICE vehicles, we were paying at least $800/year in maintenance and more when it was a major maintenance event; we would have had several with the miles we’ve put on the EVs.
