EV vs Petrol Running Cost Calculator
Find the exact break-even month where an electric car becomes cheaper than its petrol equivalent.
Result
- Petrol cost per km
- ₹6.33
- EV cost per km
- ₹1.33
- Average monthly saving
- ₹6,917
- Break-even point
- 58months
- Five-year net difference
- ₹15,000
- CO₂ avoided per year
- 0.54tonnes
Estimates only. Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere — the calculation runs entirely in your browser.
How this works
An electric car in India almost always costs more to buy and much less to run. The question that matters is not whether it is cheaper, but when. That crossover point is driven by three numbers: how far you drive each year, the gap between your petrol price and your home electricity tariff, and how much extra you paid upfront.
Charging at a home tariff of ₹8/kWh, a car doing 6 km per kWh costs about ₹1.33 per kilometre in energy. A petrol car doing 15 km per litre at ₹95 per litre costs about ₹6.33 per kilometre. That roughly ₹5 per kilometre gap is the engine of the whole calculation — at 15,000 km a year it recovers around ₹75,000 annually before any servicing difference.
Public fast charging changes the picture significantly. DC fast chargers in India commonly bill ₹18–24 per kWh, which can more than double your per-kilometre energy cost and push break-even out by years. If most of your charging will be public, raise the electricity tariff input accordingly rather than using your home slab rate.
Common questions
- Does this include battery replacement?
- No. Most EV batteries sold in India carry an eight-year or 160,000 km warranty, which is beyond the horizon most buyers evaluate. If you plan to keep the car longer, treat the five-year figure as optimistic.
- Why is servicing cheaper on an EV?
- There is no engine oil, no filters, no clutch and no exhaust system. Regenerative braking also extends brake pad life substantially. The default annual servicing gap used here is deliberately conservative.
- Should I include the resale value?
- Resale values for EVs in India are still forming and vary sharply by model, so this calculator deliberately excludes them rather than presenting a guess as a number.