Is an electric car worth it?
The honest answer depends on two things most comparisons gloss over: how far you drive, and where you charge. Set both below and every figure updates as you move the sliders.
Where you drive, and how far
Charging mix
Where the kilowatt-hours come from. This matters more than almost anything else: rapid charging can cost nearly two and a half times what home charging does.
Moving one share adjusts the others, so the four always add up to 100%.
The electric car
What it fetches at the end of the period above. Change that period and this usually needs changing too.
The car you would buy instead
What it fetches at the end of the period above. Change that period and this usually needs changing too.
Electric, per 100 km
€7.18
blended price of €0.378 per kWh
Petrol, per 100 km
€14.17
€1.817 per litre
Saved a year on running costs
€1,349
the electric car is cheaper to run
Break-even
An electric car usually costs more up front and less per kilometre, so the answer depends on how far you drive.
Pays off above
11,722 km a year
over 5 years
Total cost, electric
€27,633
€7,000 more to buy than the other car
Total cost, petrol
€28,779
electric saves €1,147 overall
Why the lines start where they do, and how they cross
Year 0 is not the purchase price. It is depreciation: the part of the price you never get back, because you sell the car at the end and keep what it sells for. Buying a car is not a cost of €35,000; it is a cost of whatever it loses while you own it.
electric — €35,000 paid, €14,000 back after 5 years, so €21,000 lost
petrol — €28,000 paid, €12,600 back, so €15,400 lost
The car that costs more to buy, and loses more of that price, starts higher, before a single kilometre is driven. On the prices above that is the electric car. Both the price and the share you get back are settings above, and moving either moves this starting point.
Each later year adds the same energy and maintenance costs again, since prices are held at today's level throughout. Where the two lines cross is the year the cheaper running of the electric car has made up for that higher starting point.
Lengthening the period alone will not move that crossing. All of the depreciation sits in year 0, and how much depreciation there is comes from the resale percentages, not from the number of years. Keeping a car twice as long really does cost more of its value, so if you change the period, lower the resale figures to match and the crossing will move.
year 1 — electric €22,327 vs petrol €18,076
after 5 years — electric ahead by €1,147
Energy is priced from the charging mix you set, not from a single average. Both consumption figures are raised above their official test values, because official figures are optimistic for both: petrol and diesel by 20%, from the fuel meters of cars on the road, and electric by 15%, where the evidence is thinner.
Today's electricity and fuel prices are held flat for the whole period. No inflation is applied to either. That is a deliberate choice rather than a forecast: which of the two rises faster would drive the answer more than anything you can set above, and any figure we picked would be a guess. It does mean the comparison is a snapshot at today's prices. If you expect fuel to rise faster than electricity, which is the usual expectation, the electric car does better than shown here.
Insurance and road tax are not included on either side, so these are running and depreciation costs, not the full cost of keeping a car. Insurance is usually higher for an electric car and road tax lower, so leaving both out is not neutral. Every assumption is listed in the methodology.
Where the energy bill goes
Annual cost split by charging channel.
- Home — 70%€605
- Workplace — 5%€22
- Public slow (AC) — 10%€138
- Rapid (DC) — 15%€311
2,846 kWh a year in total, after allowing for real-world consumption running above the official figure.
How the split is worked out
Annual energy is your mileage divided by 100, times consumption. That total is then divided between the charging channels in the proportions you set, and each share is priced at its own tariff rather than at a blended average, because a motorway rapid charger and a socket at home are not the same purchase.
2,846 kWh a year at a blended €0.378 per kWh = €1,077 a year
Home — 70% of 2,846 kWh = 1,992 kWh × €0.304 = €605
Workplace — 5% of 2,846 kWh = 142 kWh × €0.152 = €22
Public slow (AC) — 10% of 2,846 kWh = 285 kWh × €0.486 = €138
Rapid (DC) — 15% of 2,846 kWh = 427 kWh × €0.729 = €311
Emissions
Fuel and electricity, well to wheel, per year.
Electric
334 kg
117 g CO₂ per kWh on the Austria grid, 2025
Petrol
3.52 t
well to wheel: extraction, refining and burning, like the grid figure
Difference
3.19 t
saved a year by going electric