Miles per gallon in my old gas guzzler is easy. But how is the cost per miles in an electric car.?
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It’s the same as for calculating cost per mile for gas cars, only instead of gallons of gas it’s kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Gas cars: $/~~gal~~ × ~~gal~~ ÷ miles = $/mile
Electric cars: $/~~KWh~~ × ~~KWh~~ ÷ miles = $/mile
(~~Strike through~~ for units that cancel).
**Examples with made-up numbers**
Gas car: $4/gal × 10 gal ÷ 200 miles = $1/5 miles = $0.20/mile
Electric: $0.10/KWh × 400 KWh ÷ 200 miles = $0.20/mile
It’s exactly the same process to figure cost per mile you’re just swapping gallons of gas for kilowatt hours of electricity.
So you’re old car gets 20 miles per gallon and if it’s $4/gallon then it’s costing you $0.20 per mile (excluding vehicle wear items) [$4 ÷ 20 miles = $0.20]
If the new electric car (using a ’22 Chevy Bolt as example) has a 65kWh battery and a range of 259 miles then it uses roughly 0.25 kWh per mile [65kWh battery ÷ 259 miles = 0.25 kWh/mile]. If it costs you $0.11/kWh to charge at home then it’s costing you 0.25 kWh × $0.11 = $0.0275 (3¢) per mile in electricity (excluding vehicle wear).
You determine the cost per kilowatt to charge your car’s batter and multiply that by kilowatts used. Then you divide that by the range of travel.
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