A Prius gets around 55 mpg, which with gas at 3.25/gal and electricity at 0.11/kWh means a Chevy Bolt, for example, costs just a little over half what the electric does, per mile. The electric also has a significantly higher capital cost and depreciation rate. I wouldn't be at all surprised if over, say, five years, the Prius has a cheaper TCO.
This is sensitive to local costs of both fuel and electricity. In my part of Washington state I last paid $3.43 per gallon of gasoline but residential electricity is about 6.5 cents per kWh.
It looks like in Denmark electricity prices were 0.30 EUR (0.35 USD) per kWh in the second half of 2017, while gasoline prices are currently 12.26 DKK per liter (7.15 USD per US gallon).
Definitely it varies by location. The US national average price for fuel right now is 2.90, and the average cost per kWh for electricity is 0.12. Makes the running cost for the ICE vs EV even closer than my original numbers.
I kinda leave the European prices out of the discussion because what they pay tends to be extremely distorted by local taxes.
Based on a quick bit of TCO research, best I can tell is that without subsidies, EVs tend to have a TCO significantly higher than an efficient ICE vehicle. The market is young, obviously, and lots of EVs are aimed at people willing to pay a premium. A Model S, for example, has a TCO over five years of nearly 70 grand (!!). But, a Chevy Spark EV has a TCO of more like 20 grand, which is really showing how cheap they were due to GM dumping them at a loss and the big tax credit. A Prius is around 30K or so, for comparison.
I want an electric, and will get one as soon as there is something in the right price range with the characteristics I'm interested in (sporty, decent looking, sufficient range, reliable, good ergonomics). The Model 3 isn't too bad but it's more than I want to spend on a first-run car, and I won't buy any car with a single touchscreen as the sole interface.
Sure, I was just adding some more data points about locales where the payback time for going electric is shorter (Washington) and longer (Denmark).
I don't buy new cars and I don't drive very much in the first place. It's not worth it for me to go electric at present, despite access to cheap electricity and relatively high gas prices here. I'm hopeful that by the time my 2007 Camry is at end-of-life there will be affordable, reliable used EVs.
