Electric car charging cost
What a charge costs and how far it takes you. Including the energy you pay for that never reaches the battery, which nobody mentions.
Your figures
Result
- [object Object]3690,9 %
- [object Object]49,1 %
- Range added (km)
- 212
- Cost per unit of distance
- $0.028
- Cost per 100
- $2.80
- Energy billed (kWh)
- 39.60
- Energy into the battery (kWh)
- 36.00
- Cost of a full charge
- $9.90
- Range on a full charge (km)
- 353
What we assume
- Charging losses default to 10%. Energy is lost as heat in the charger, the cable and the battery, and you pay for all of it.
- Losses are higher on a slow domestic socket and in cold weather; a home wallbox is usually the most efficient option.
- The real range depends on speed, temperature and terrain far more than in a combustion car. Cold weather can cut it by 30%.
- Battery degradation over the years is not accounted for.
How it is calculated
The energy that ends up in the battery is the capacity times the percentage you are adding. But that is not what you pay for:
billed = stored / (1 - losses)
At 10% losses, putting 50 kWh into the battery means buying about 55.6 kWh.
The bit that gets left out
Almost every published cost-per-mile figure for an electric car ignores charging losses, which makes it 10% to 15% too cheap. It is not a rounding error: over a year it is a real number, and it is the difference between the meter reading and the battery percentage.
An example
Charging a 60 kWh battery from 20% to 80% puts 36 kWh in the battery but bills you for 40 kWh. At 0.15 that is 6, buying about 200 of range: roughly 0.03 per unit of distance.
Frequently asked questions
Why do I pay for more than goes into the battery?
Because the charger, the cable and the battery all give off heat. That energy passes through your meter and never reaches the car. It is usually 8% to 15%.
Why charge only to 80%?
The last 20% charges much more slowly and is harder on the battery. For daily use, 20% to 80% is the usual advice; charge to 100% before a long trip.
Is public charging much dearer?
Considerably, often three to five times the home rate on a fast charger. Put the actual price per kWh in and you will see the difference immediately.
Keep calculating
All tools →- Real fuel economy calculatorFuel put in and distance covered. That is all it takes to know what your car really does, rather than what the trip computer claims.
- Cost per unit of distance of your carFuel is the part you notice and the smallest part of the bill. This adds the ones you do not: insurance, tax, servicing and, above all, depreciation.
- Compare the fuel cost of two carsTwo cars, two consumption figures, two fuel prices. What the difference actually adds up to over the years you will keep it.
Updated on 2026-08-26. Calculations run in your browser; nothing you type is sent to a server.