How much does charging an Tesla cost well? It depends I recently broke down the cost of charging my tesla model 3 over.
The first 10000 miles and it only came out to $66.57, as many people pointed out this is extremely low partly, because i have free charging at work. And also have a lot of free supercharger miles from the tesla referral program. Obviously not everybody has access to free charging like that so today I’m going to be breaking down how much I would have paid.
How many charging way?
If I didn’t have access to that free charging and I’ll be looking at three different categories charging my car. As an example, home charging, level 2 public charging and super charging. In reality, you won’t charge at any single one of these exclusively, it’ll probably be a mix of all three. Depending on where you are able to plug in and how much you spend on charging.
Depending on how efficient you drive and what kind of EV you’re driving. Just like someone with a gas car, that gets 20 miles per gallon will spend more on gas than somebody that has a 40 miles per gallon car. These are just my estimates based on how efficient my car is and my charging experiences, so over 10 000 miles my car used 2953 kWh, but that is just how much my car used not necessarily.
Beacuse energy losses.
How much I took from the grid and how much I paid for AC charging wallbox to will efficiency is about 85%. Which means if I take 10 kWh from the grid my car is only able to use about 8.5 kWh and this is just due to energy losses. While charging things like heat light and just internal charging losses are wasted and don’t end up making it into the battery. So all I have to do is divide by 0.85 to get the actual amountof energy.
That I got from the grid are not my car used and that comes out to 3474 kWh for home charging my electricity rate is about 14.6 cents per kWh.So if I charged exclusively at home I would have paid for 3474 kWh over 10 000 miles. I multiply that electricity rate by the energy used it comes out to a little over 507 dollars which honestly isn’t too bad it’s roughly 5 cents per mile. Public charging gets a little more difficult to estimate, just because some are completely free some charge per hour some charge per kWh, so it can get a little confusing depending on what kind of charger you are using.
Different charging stations spend different.
In researching for more place I found that most chargers averaged between 15 cents per kWh and 30 cents per kWh. But fortunately there were a ton of free ones when I was looking. So that is very good and proves that you can charge your car completely for free. If you want, you just got to do a little bit more hunting but again using my car as an example with paid public charging that could range anywhere from 521 dollars over 10 000 miles to 1024 dollars over 10 000 miles just depending on what the rate of the charger is and finally is super charging because I drive a tesla this is typically what I use for fast charging and the most convenient for me.
When I am traveling these can get a bit confusing too even though they’re all on tesla’s network some charge per kWh some are free some charge per minute and they actually charge different rates depending on what power level they are putting out as well. But to make things simple for this test the average cost of super charging in the united states is about 28 cents per kWh.
So again if we use my car as an example in my efficiency to charge up over 10 000 miles it would have cost me about 903 dollars. So how do stack up all these well for home charging is the cheapest?
Which is fortunate because that is where a majority of EV charging actually takes place most people just come home from work or whatever they’re doing throughout the day.Plug in their car and let it charge overnights and it’s all charged up when they’re ready to go in the morning if you own a tesla and want to save even more money.
How to charging more economically?
Charging at home, in some locations electricity costs can be more expensive at certain times of day. So you could be overpaying for electricity when your tesla is charging. Almost online app that can connects to your tesla account and can schedule charging for you to take advantage of cheaper electricity rates overnight.For example, if you get home from work and plug in your car you might be paying peak rates for a few hours before everyone goes to bed and those rates drop back down. If you use the app it will automatically start and stop charging when rates are low so you are paying the lowest amount possible to charge your car. All you have to do is set your desired state of charge and when you want to depart and that app handles the rest to charging you car.
So charging at home is obviously the most convenient you just do it where you live. But public charging can be a good option as well if you’re someone like me that lives in an apartment and doesn’t have access to home charging.And as I mentioned earlier a lot of businesses are starting to put in free charging stations to attract customers and you can take advantage of that and save even more money on charging.Supercharging costs unfortunately I think are hard to avoid unless you can take advantage of tesla’s referral program and get some free miles doing that. But one way to avoid costs is not charging more than you need to tesla starts charging more once you get to about 90 as those rates drop down it costs a lot, just to add that last 10% so if at 90. You’ve got enough to make it to your destination it’s probably better to just unplug and save that money tesla will also charge idle fees while your car is sitting there and not charging. So it’s best once you are completely done charging to unplug and move your car.
So can you save money with an electric car? Absolutely, remember I just covered charging in this test I did not talk about maintenanceat all which is much less with an electric car. As I mentioned here I do drive a tesla model 3 which is on the higher and in terms of EVs but there are a lot of cheaper options out there. Especially, if you don’t need a lot of range and just want a good car for commuting around town.
Post time: Nov-17-2023
