Enter your tariff, the state of charge you are filling from and to, and your yearly distance. Charging losses are included, because you pay for the energy the charger draws, not the energy the battery keeps.
How much does it cost to charge an electric scooter or EV?
Multiply the energy drawn from the wall by your tariff. At $0.30 per kWh, a full charge of a 500 Wh scooter pack costs about 17 cents once charging losses are included, and charging a 60 kWh car from 20% to 80% draws about 40 kWh — roughly $12.
The number people forget: charging losses
Energy is lost twice on its way into a battery — in the charger converting AC to DC, and in the cells themselves as heat. Small scooter bricks run 85–92% efficient; car AC charging lands in the same band; DC fast charging is a little better at the vehicle but the station takes its own cut.
Left out, that gap understates your bill by 10–15%. A 500 Wh scooter charge at 90% efficiency actually pulls 556 Wh from the wall. It sounds trivial at scooter scale — and it is, a couple of cents — but on a 70 kWh car charged twice a week it is real money over a year.
Tariffs matter more than efficiency
The spread between tariffs dwarfs every other variable. Overnight EV tariffs in the UK can be a quarter of the day rate; time-of-use plans in California and Australia have similar gaps. Shifting all your charging to the cheap window is usually worth more than any efficiency tweak you could make to the vehicle.
Public charging is a different market. DC fast charging typically costs two to four times the home rate, and some networks add session or idle fees. If you rely on public charging, run the numbers with the public price — the comparison with petrol gets much closer, and occasionally goes the wrong way.
What a charge actually costs
Worked examples at a mid-range 0.30 per kWh tariff, with 90% charging efficiency applied. The per-100 km column uses typical consumption for each vehicle, from about 12 Wh/km for an e-bike to 18 kWh/100 km for a mid-size car.
| Vehicle | Pack | From the wall | Per charge | Per 100 km |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xiaomi M365 scooter | 280 Wh | 0.31 kWh | 0.09 | 0.53 |
| Ninebot Max G30 | 551 Wh | 0.61 kWh | 0.18 | 0.60 |
| Long-range scooter | 1200 Wh | 1.33 kWh | 0.40 | 0.87 |
| City e-bike | 500 Wh | 0.56 kWh | 0.17 | 0.40 |
| Compact electric car | 40 kWh | 44.4 kWh | 13.33 | 5.00 |
| Mid-size electric car | 60 kWh | 66.7 kWh | 20.00 | 6.00 |
Scooter economics in perspective
A 500 Wh commuter scooter used for a 20 km round trip at 18 Wh/km puts about 360 Wh back into the pack each day — 400 Wh from the wall once losses are counted. At 30 cents per kWh that is about 12 cents a day, or around 30 dollars a year over a 260-day commuting year. The electricity is close to a rounding error.
What actually costs money is the battery. A replacement pack every three to four years, at 200–500 dollars, works out to roughly 4–14 dollars a month — several times what the charging costs. Anything that extends pack life is worth more than anything that saves energy, which is a useful frame when you are tempted by a fast charger. The battery health calculator tracks that side of the ledger, and the electric scooter cost guide covers what the scooter itself costs at each price tier.
How the calculator works
Cost per charge is the energy that goes into the pack, divided by charging efficiency to get what the meter records, multiplied by your tariff. Running cost works the same way from your consumption per kilometre, then scales up by your weekly distance for the monthly and yearly figures. The public tariff is run through the same sums for comparison.
The formula
// you pay for what the charger draws, not what the battery keeps
Related calculators
To see the saving rather than the raw cost, put the same numbers through the EV versus petrol calculator and the CO₂ savings calculator. If you also want to know how long a charge takes, the charging time calculator covers every charger tier.
Questions riders actually ask
How much does it cost to charge an electric scooter?
Multiply pack watt-hours by your electricity price and divide by 1000, then add about 10% for losses. A 500 Wh pack at 30 cents per kWh costs roughly 17 cents for a full charge — under 5 dollars a month for daily commuting.
How much does it cost to charge an EV at home?
A 60 kWh car charged from 20% to 80% takes 36 kWh into the battery, or about 40 kWh from the meter after losses. At 30 cents per kWh that is roughly 12 dollars for 200–250 km of range — usually well below the cost of petrol for the same distance, and a fraction of it on an overnight tariff.
Should I use cost per kWh or cost per km to compare?
Cost per 100 km is the only fair comparison against a petrol car, because it folds in how efficient the vehicle is. Two EVs on the same tariff can differ by 40% per kilometre if one uses 14 kWh/100 km and the other 20 kWh/100 km.
Does cold weather increase charging cost?
Yes, in two ways. Cabin heating and battery preconditioning draw energy that never moves the vehicle, and cold cells accept charge less efficiently. Winter running costs are commonly 20–30% higher per kilometre than summer.
Are public chargers ever cheaper than home?
Occasionally — some workplaces, hotels and retail parks offer free or subsidised charging, and a few networks price off-peak AC below domestic day rates. As a rule, though, home overnight charging is the cheapest energy you can buy for a vehicle.
Sources
Primary and reference sources for the physics, standards and figures used on this page.
- Charging electric vehicles at homeU.S. DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center
- Energy price cap unit rates and standing chargesOfgem