Are electric cars cheaper to run than gas powered cars?
Generally the answer is a big, efficient yes.

The reason for this is efficiency, which means that you can drive further on a dollar’s worth of electricity than you could on a dollar’s worth of gasoline. There are always exceptions to the rule, but typically a home-converted electric car is somewhere around 30% more efficient than a gasoline powered car.

There are things to keep in mind when calculating the differences between the two forms of transport. Electric cars using lead-acid batteries typically require a new battery pack every three years under normal conditions. This could set you back around $2500 which must be factored in.

Depending on the type of lead-acid battery you may also need to buy a gallon or two of distilled water every 3 months to top up your batteries, though it’s not a big expense and you could distill it yourself if need be.
With that in mind, let’s work out the operating costs of an electric car:

First work out how much it’s going to cost in electricity each year to drive your car 10,000 miles. With a typical conversion you might expect to drive 4 miles per unit (kilowatt hour) of electricity. A unit of electricity might cost around 15 US cents, which makes the electric car cost around 3.75 cents per mile to operate. At 10,000 miles per year, it works out to around $375 of electricity per year. I’ll leave generating your own electricity for another story, but keep it in mind as an option to eliminate this cost.

Next we’ll add the cost of a replacement pack of batteries at $2500 every three years (which works out to $833 per year). Then there’s insurance, road tax if applicable, tyres and general wear & tear. Altogether you could be looking somewhere in the vicinity of $1700 (I’ve excluded devaluation as electric cars hold their value exceptionally well).

The US Department of Labor says the average gasoline powered car on the other hand costs $2,227 per year in gasoline and motor oil expenses and $2,355 in other vehicle-related costs such as engine parts, exhaust repairs, fluid replacement etc. That’s a total of $4582 US to operate a typical gasoline powered vehicle. Keep in mind these prices are based on gas being at (or below) $2.20 US per gallon.

Even when excluding the tax breaks and refunds available to many electric car drivers – as well as free parking, carpool lane access and free public charging – on average the electric car is much cheaper to own and operate than it’s gasoline powered counterpart. Also remember, the more expensive the price of fuel, oil and gets, the cheaper (by comparison) the cost of an electric car gets.