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Are Electric Cars Worth It? Here's A 3-Year Cost Analysis

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The Editors
·9 min read
electric vehicle lifestyle
Are EVs Worth It? martin-dm - Getty Images


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EV aficionados will tell you that electric vehicles are cheaper to fuel and maintain, so that means they must be cheaper to own and operate. EV skeptics will counter with the premium pricing of many EVs. So, are electric cars cheaper than gas cars over the long haul of ownership? Sort of. Sometimes. As they say, it's complicated.

To investigate whether the cost per mile of an electric car is truly cheaper than its gas-powered counterpart, we chose two models in the US market that are available with both powertrains to compare.

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From Hyundai, we looked at the Hyundai Kona and the Kona Electric. From the BMW Group, we chose the Mini Cooper Hardtop two-door and the Mini Electric.

Are Electric Cars Worth It?: Three-Year Cost Analysis

To determine whether electric cars are really more financially efficient than gas cars, we decided to run an examination of the first three years of overall ownership cost.

For the purposes of the clearest comparison possible, we stuck with the numbers we could pin down. For this reason, we are not including either financing costs or insurance premiums, as the choices you make around both can have a significant impact on your total costs.

Starting Cost

Our journey starts with the straight base price of the most basic model of each subject vehicle. Any applicable Federal tax credits for the two EVs are figured in later in the calculations. The cars' purchase prices (including destination charges) are as follows:

  • Mini Cooper Hardtop: $24,250

  • Mini Electric: $30,750

  • Hyundai Kona: $21,440

  • Hyundai Kona Electric: $38,330

As you can see, the gas vehicles are about $6,000 or $7,000 dollars cheaper than their electric counterparts. This is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone. The real question is, do the savings electric vehicles earn down the road make the initial sticker shock worth it?

Miles Driven

In order to do some important cost calculations, it's important to know how many miles we're talking about.

To keep things fair, we went with a theoretical annual mileage 15,000 for all our contenders. This has been the de facto average mileage stat for U.S. drivers for decades. The result of our calculations is a three-year mileage count of 45,000 miles for all four cars.

Maintenance Costs

If you're wondering whether maintenance on electric cars is expensive or what routine maintenance they need, you're certainly thinking about this comparison the right way.

Maintenance costs are a major factor in the total cost of a vehicle, so it's important to consider the maintenance requirements and expenses for both types of vehicle.

Our Source

To calculate maintenance costs, we used AAA's 2019 Your Driving Costs analysis. It determines how much you pay per mile in maintenance to drive a vehicle by reviewing costs like those for tires, brakes, oil changes, and repairs over a five-year period.

Yes, that's longer than our three-year timeline, so it's helpful to note that the report might offer a slightly inflated version of the data. Regardless, AAA's data gives us a solid baseline to build from, and all the subject cars are treated equally.

The Data

Maintenance costs per mile and over the full 45,000 miles are as follows:

  • Mini: $0.0853 per mile/ $3,839

  • Mini Electric: $0.066 per mile/ $2,970

  • Hyundai Kona: $0.0909 per mile /$4,091

  • Hyundai Kona Electric: $0.066 per mile / $2,970

Our Analysis

As expected, the EVs are cheaper to maintain. This makes sense, as they avoid costs from oil changes and other related other engine maintenance.

Both Mini and Hyundai also offer free maintenance for three years or 36,000 miles, whichever comes first. As the deals are the same, we've chosen to disregard them for the sake of a simplified analysis.

Energy Usage

To calculate the energy usage of both types of cars we used the EPA's gallons and kWs used per 100 miles. For both of these units, the lower the number, the more efficient the vehicle. Here's what we found:

As you can see, the Mini Hardtop gets better gas mileage than the Kona, but the Kona Electric is more efficient than the Mini Electric.

To understand how this data impacts the overall cost, we'll have to determine how much it costs to charge an electric car compared to gas vehicles.

Gasoline Costs

For gasoline costs, we used the national average price of gas in February, 2020: $2.44 for regular and $3.11 for premium (the Mini requires the higher- grade fuel). We avoided more recent national average data because they may be higher than future gas prices due to the pandemic and trade issues.

Here is the cost to drive the gasoline-powered Kona and Mini for 45,000 miles.

  • Mini Hardtop: $4,478

  • Hyundai Kona: $3,623

This means the Mini costs $855 more in gas to drive for 45,000 miles than the Hyundai.