Do Electric Cars Save Money? We Ran the Numbers for All 50 States

Gas just had its most expensive September on record, averaging $4.33 a gallon according to AAA, and the national average is still around $4.35 this week. That makes the case for an electric car sound obvious. It isn’t. The federal clean vehicle credits ended for EVs acquired after September 30, 2025, and AAA’s 2026 ownership-cost study found that EVs still cost more per year to own than comparable gas cars and hybrids, mostly because they lose value faster.

Both things are true at once. Whether an EV saves you money comes down to three numbers: where you charge, how far you drive, and what electricity and gas cost where you live. We ran all three for every state. Here’s who comes out ahead, and who doesn’t.

The verdict up front

• No plug at home: a new EV doesn’t save money anywhere in the country at today’s public fast-charging prices.
• Plug at home, 15,000 miles a year: a new EV beats a new gas SUV in 10 states, nearly all in the West. In the other 40, it costs more.
• Plug at home, 20,000 miles a year: a new EV wins in 43 states, though often by only a few hundred dollars a year.
• Against a hybrid: a new EV loses in most households. At 15,000 miles, it beats a hybrid only in Nevada and Washington.
• Used EV with a home plug: the strongest money case of all, because the first owner already paid for the steep depreciation.

How we ran the numbers

We started with AAA’s 2026 Your Driving Costs study, which for the first time compares electric, hybrid, and gas versions of the same vehicle classes over five years and 75,000 miles. We used the compact SUV class, the most common family-car shape. AAA’s figures at 15,000 miles a year:

AAA priced fuel at a national average of $4.152 a gallon and 18 cents per kilowatt-hour. We pulled fuel out of those totals so we could put each state’s real prices back in. That takes three efficiency assumptions, which are ours, not AAA’s: a gas compact SUV at 30 mpg, a hybrid at 36 mpg (the figure AAA’s own hybrid fuel cost implies), and an EV using 30 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles from the wall, charging losses included.

Strip out fuel and the hurdle is clear. Before it uses a single kilowatt-hour, the EV costs about $1,500 a year more to own than the gas SUV and about $1,600 more than the hybrid. Depreciation drives the gap; the EV’s lower maintenance costs claw back only part of it. Fuel savings have to clear that bar for the EV to win.

Then we priced fuel in every state, using AAA’s state gas averages from October 2, 2026, and the Energy Information Administration’s residential electricity prices for July 2026, the latest month EIA has published.

Slice 1: Where you charge decides almost everything

At home, at the national average of 18.31 cents per kWh, the EV costs about 5.5 cents a mile to fuel. A 30-mpg gas SUV at $4.40 a gallon costs about 14.7 cents.

At public fast chargers, the math flips. The national average price for DC fast charging was 53.8 cents per kWh in the second quarter of 2026, according to charging-data firm Paren. That’s about 16.1 cents a mile, more than gasoline, before the EV’s $1,500 ownership hurdle even enters the picture. Even in Nebraska, which has the cheapest fast charging in the country at 42.8 cents per kWh, fast charging saves only about 1.4 cents a mile over local gas. At 15,000 miles that’s roughly $210 a year, nowhere near $1,500.

If you would rely on public fast charging, a new EV costs more than a gas car at every mileage, in every state.

Who has a plug? As of 2021, about two-thirds of U.S. housing units had a garage or carport, according to Department of Energy analysis of Census housing survey data. That share runs from 80% in the Pacific states to 53% in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Apartment residents fare worst: in a National Renewable Energy Laboratory survey, fewer than a quarter had electricity at their parking spot or a realistic way to add it.

Slice 2: How far you drive

With a home plug at national average prices, each mile in the EV saves about 9.2 cents over gas. Divide the $1,500 hurdle by 9.2 cents and you get the break-even: about 16,400 miles a year. Against a hybrid, which already saves on fuel, the break-even is about 23,900 miles.

Per year, national average prices, home charging.

Slice 3: Where you live

Here’s the same math with each state’s own prices. “Break-even” is the annual mileage at which a new EV with home charging matches a new gas SUV.

Three patterns stand out.

The winners pair expensive gas with cheap electricity. Nevada, Washington, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon all combine gas near or above $5 with power well below the national average. California is the odd one: electricity costs nearly twice the national rate, but $6.40 gas is expensive enough that an EV still edges ahead at 15,000 miles.

The South has cheap power but also cheap gas. Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida all have below-average electricity, but gas under $4.20 shrinks the per-mile savings, pushing break-even past 16,000 miles.

The Northeast and Hawaii lose on electricity. At 30 cents per kWh and up, the per-mile advantage shrinks to 6 cents or less, and break-even climbs past 25,000 miles a year.

Across all 50 states, the count looks like this:

• 12,000 miles a year: a new EV beats gas in 3 states (Nevada, Washington, Utah).
• 15,000 miles: 10 states (Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska by a hair, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming).
• 20,000 miles: 43 states. The holdouts are Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. In several of the 43, including Indiana, Connecticut, Vermont, and Maryland, the margin is under $100 a year.

Against a hybrid, the list shrinks to Nevada and Washington at 15,000 miles, adding Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Arizona, Montana, and Wyoming at 20,000.

Slice 4: What happens if gas falls back

A year ago, the national average was $3.16 a gallon. At that price, the national break-even for a new EV with home charging jumps to about 29,900 miles a year.

Flip the question around: what gas price makes a new EV break even nationally? At 15,000 miles a year, about $4.66 a gallon. At 12,000 miles, about $5.41. Even this fall’s record prices don’t get a typical-mileage driver over the line, and a car is a five-to-ten-year decision. Buy for the gas price you expect over that stretch, not this month’s.

Slice 5: New vs. used

Most of the EV’s $1,500 hurdle is depreciation: $5,298 a year versus $3,568 for the gas SUV. A used-EV buyer sidesteps a lot of it, because the first owner already took the hit.

Cox Automotive data shows how far that has gone. In February 2026, the average used EV listed for $34,821, just $1,334 more than the average used gas, hybrid, or plug-in hybrid vehicle, and 18 of 26 brands had used EVs priced below their gas equivalents. New EVs, by contrast, still carried a $6,532 premium over gas, even at the lowest gap on record.

With a home plug at national prices, an EV driven 12,000 miles saves about $1,100 a year on fuel. That would recover a $1,334 price premium in roughly 15 months.

Two cautions. That payback assumes a used EV’s remaining depreciation and insurance track a comparable used gas car’s, which no data we found pins down, so get real insurance quotes before you buy. And check battery health on any used EV, because a weak pack can turn a good price into a bad car.

Slice 6: The hybrid answer

AAA found hybrids had the lowest cost per mile in every class it compared: medium sedans, compact SUVs, medium SUVs, and pickups. In the compact SUV class at national prices, a hybrid saves about $470 a year over the gas version: roughly $370 in fuel plus about $100 in lower ownership costs. It needs no plug, and it doesn’t depend on where gas goes next.

Find your slice

What the decision is worth

Take Marcus in Texas, driving 12,000 miles a year with a garage. At Texas prices, a new hybrid costs about $870 a year less to own than a new EV. Invest that difference every year for the five years AAA models, at an illustrative 5% a year after inflation, and it’s about $4,800 in today’s dollars. That’s not a guaranteed return, but it’s the scale of what’s at stake when you pick a car on the headline instead of your slice.

If an EV is the car you want, buy it. Just buy it because the numbers work for your driveway, your commute, and your state, not because gas had a record September.

How we did this

Sources

• Ownership costs: AAA, Your Driving Costs 2026, compact SUV class (five years, 75,000 miles). Electric, gas, and hybrid cost-per-mile figures as published in Kelley Blue Book’s coverage of the AAA study.
• Gas prices: AAA state gas price averages, October 2, 2026.
• Electricity prices: EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, July 2026 residential averages. These spread fixed charges across usage, so your marginal rate for charging may be lower, especially on a time-of-use plan.
• Fast-charging prices: Paren, State of the Industry Report: US EV Fast Charging, Q2 2026.
• Used and new EV pricing: Cox Automotive EV Market Monitor, February 2026, as reported by Kelley Blue Book, a Cox Automotive company.
• Home parking access: U.S. Department of Energy, Fact of the Week #1268 (Census American Housing Survey, 2021) and Fact of the Week #1219, summarizing NREL report TP-5400-81065 (2021).
• Tax credits: IRS, Clean Vehicle Tax Credits. The federal clean vehicle purchase credits are not available for vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025, and the home charger credit expired June 30, 2026.

Our assumptions

We assumed 30 mpg for a gas compact SUV, 36 mpg for a hybrid, and 30 kWh per 100 miles for an EV. We held non-fuel costs at AAA’s 15,000-mile figures across all mileages, which slightly flatters high-mileage EVs, since depreciation rises with miles. We did not include home charger installation or state EV registration fees beyond AAA’s national average; both would raise the EV’s cost. Investment figures are illustrative, not guaranteed.

Last reviewed October 12, 2026.

Thousandaire Editorial Team

The Thousandaire Editorial Team creates practical, evidence-based personal finance content for people building real wealth. We break down investing, retirement, taxes, real estate, and other wealth-building decisions with clear explanations, real numbers, and no hype