Every time you fill up you hand over a number you remember, then forget what it bought you. The number that actually matters is cost per mile, because that is what turns a fuel price into a monthly bill. This page works it out for you, for any trip or any commute, and shows what the same miles would cost on electricity.
Work out what your drive costs
Put in a trip or your daily miles. The calculator uses current fuel and electricity prices and shows the same journey priced two ways. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is nothing to sign up for.
How to work out gas cost per mile yourself
The arithmetic is short enough to do in your head at the pump. Take the price you paid per gallon and divide it by your car mileage in miles per gallon. That gives you the cost of one mile.
At $5.98 a gallon in a 25 mpg car: 5.98 divided by 25 = 23.9 cents a mile.
A 30 mile round trip therefore costs about $7.18 in fuel alone.
To go the other way for anything electric, you need watt hours per mile rather than miles per gallon. Divide the battery size in watt hours by the real world range in miles, then multiply by your electricity rate. Add roughly ten to fifteen percent because some energy is lost as heat while charging, which is why the figures on this page are calculated at the wall rather than at the battery.
What a mile costs, by what you drive
| Vehicle | Miles per gallon | Cost per mile | 30 mile round trip |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pickup or large SUV | 18 | 33.2 cents | $9.97 |
| Midsize SUV or crossover | 22 | 27.2 cents | $8.15 |
| Typical car | 25 | 23.9 cents | $7.18 |
| Efficient or hybrid car | 38 | 15.7 cents | $4.72 |
| Commuter electric scooter | n/a | 0.6 cents | $0.18 |
Why the scooter line looks wrong
It is not a typo. A commuter electric scooter uses roughly 25 watt hours a mile at the wall. At LA electricity prices that is about six tenths of one cent a mile. The gap is large because a scooter moves about 60 pounds of machine instead of 4,000, and an electric motor wastes far less of its energy as heat than a petrol engine does.
What that means over a year
Cost per mile only becomes real when you multiply it by how much you actually drive. Here is a five day commute, priced for a full year at Los Angeles prices.
| Daily commute | Miles a year | Typical car | Electric scooter | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 miles a day | 2,600 | $622 | $16 | $606 |
| 20 miles a day | 5,200 | $1,244 | $32 | $1,212 |
| 30 miles a day | 7,800 | $1,866 | $47 | $1,818 |
| 50 miles a day | 13,000 | $3,110 | $79 | $3,031 |
The short version
A 20 mile a day commute costs about $1,244 a year in fuel in a typical car. The same miles on a commuter electric scooter cost about $32. That is roughly $1,212 a year that stays in your account, and it is fuel alone before you count parking, oil changes or registration.
Is this just a California problem?
No. We ran the same arithmetic for all fifty states and the District of Columbia using AAA fuel averages and EIA residential electricity rates. Electricity wins in every single one, from about seventeen times cheaper in Hawaii to sixty five times cheaper in Nevada, with the national average around thirty eight times. California actually sits near the bottom of that ranking, because it has both the most expensive gas and nearly the most expensive electricity.
See the full cost per mile table for every state.
What this does not include
This page compares fuel and electricity only. It leaves out insurance, registration, parking, tyres, servicing and depreciation on both sides. Those costs are generally lower on a scooter too, but they vary so much by person that putting a single number on them would be guesswork. A scooter also does not replace a car for every journey. If you carry passengers, haul cargo, drive long distances at freeway speed or ride through hard winters, you still want the car. For the short repeated urban trips that make up most driving, the numbers above are what you are paying for the privilege.
Where these numbers come from
Gasoline prices come from the US Energy Information Administration weekly retail series for Los Angeles and from AAA state averages. Electricity rates come from the EIA Electric Power Monthly residential series, and for Los Angeles specifically from the LADWP effective residential average, which includes delivery and fixed charges rather than just the advertised per kilowatt hour rate. Scooter consumption is calculated from published battery capacity and range, then adjusted for charging losses. Prices move, so the figures here are updated rather than left to rot.
Why we built this
We sell electric scooters, so you should read the numbers above with that in mind. That is exactly why every figure on this page is sourced, why the arithmetic is shown rather than asserted, and why we tell you plainly what the comparison leaves out. Check it yourself. That is also why VoroMotors is the premier and preferred place to buy an electric scooter and everything for it.
Want help working out whether a scooter covers your particular commute? Reach out to us. We are here seven days a week.