A screaming deal on electric vehicle charging can be found just outside Washington. A fast e-filling station near the Beltway charges 16 cents a kilowatt-hour, a fraction of the price elsewhere.
Almost no one uses it.
Meanwhile, the most expensive Tesla charging station in the Washington metro area is at a shopping center in the District of Columbia. According to Plug & Play EV, a charging-analytics company that provided data for this story, prices reach 76 cents a kWh.
Lots of Teslas line up there.
Something new is afoot in how EV drivers choose where to charge, something different from the classic hunt for a cheap gallon of gas. And that suggests that one of the nation’s most reliable political and economic indicators — the dollars per gallon on that big gas station sign — could fade in importance as more electric vehicles show up.
“The dynamics of electricity pricing, and the cost of charging a car, are so much more complicated than gasoline,” said Jon Krosnick, a political science professor at Stanford University.
Krosnick should know. He co-authored a 2016 study on how gasoline prices affected the U.S. public’s view of the president. Examining three decades of data, the study found that when gas prices rose by 10 cents, the incumbent president’s favorability polling dropped by six-tenths of 1 percent. The cost of energizing a car plays a small but significant role in determining who holds the White House.
Buying gasoline is a frequent experience in a country where 78 percent of people drive to work. As a significant line item in most household budgets, gas prices can sway Americans’ view of their personal financial situation, not to mention their assessment of the overall economy and the government’s stewardship. A 2019 study found that when gas prices rise, optimism drops.
Such a clear relationship may break down in the new and dynamic world of EV charging.
At least in these early days of EV adoption, price isn’t the main driver. Take the two charging stations mentioned above. Were they gasoline prices, this astonishing price spread — like paying $1 a gallon at the first location and $4.75 at the other — would trigger an affordability stampede. People would drive miles out of their way to grab that lower price.
But EV drivers don’t, for lots of reasons.
Charging experts and conversations with EV drivers reveal the many factors at play. The convenience and low cost of charging in a person’s own garage, the dominance of Tesla, the relative affluence of EV drivers, the speed of EV charging, a new network effect and public ignorance of the cost of electricity all play a part in informing an EV driver’s decision.
This gas-versus-electricity relationship is playing out at a time when the price of electricity is more political than ever.
Electricity prices played a strong role in November’s elections. In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the governor’s office in part by promising to curb recent spikes in electricity prices. The same happened in New Jersey, where Democrat Mikie Sherrill tapped into voters’ worries that life has become unaffordable — including utility bills.
Meanwhile, today’s gasoline prices seem less connected than usual to the national temper.
During the last presidency, gas prices and Joe Biden’s disapproval rating moved up together. But today they’ve decoupled, as President Donald Trump touts low gas prices but still faces high public disapproval. Lots of factors make up the public’s view of a president, and the price of gas is just one.
The dynamic of EV charging isn’t as straightforward as pain at the pump. It’s also different from Americans’ current suffering at the switch. It’s more nuanced than either of them.
Care about cost? ‘Not really’
On a Saturday back in June, a lot of Teslas refilled at a Tesla Supercharger station at Dakota Crossing, a shopping center off U.S. 50 near the National Arboretum. At times it is the most expensive place to charge a Tesla in the entire metro area.
Do you care that this is the most expensive place to charge? “Not really,” said one guy walking back to his blue Model Y.
How much are you paying to charge? This query went to another fellow with a red Model 3. He held up a finger to suggest, wait a minute.
He slid into his car and looked at his screen. That and his phone were the only place to look if he wanted to learn what he was paying. Charging stations aren’t like gas stations, where the per-gallon price stares down from a big illuminated sign overhead. At this station, like all Tesla stations, the energy price is invisible.
He popped out and declared he was paying 51 cents a kWh. That’s on the low end of the prices that Tesla charges at this site, which varied between 47 and 69 cents a kWh. (The prices have since gone up.)
How Tesla sets its prices is opaque. The prices rise and fall through the day, and the company says on its site that this helps avoid congestion.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment, but its pricing strategy is a classic one: Lower prices draw people in and higher prices keep them away. Congestion is a problem at Supercharger stations because an electric fill-up takes so much longer than a gasoline one. Tesla owners often take to social media to complain if they are forced to wait.
So to keep its customers content, Tesla uses prices to pull drivers toward underused stations and away from crowded ones.
Charging stations have another incentive to avoid too many users. They aren’t like gas stations, where every dispenser flows at the same fast rate. Several charging stalls are connected to the same electric current. When all or nearly all charging stalls are in use, the flow of electrons can slow for everyone, raising another cause for customer frustration.
And it can be much more expensive for the charging station to offer electricity at certain times. That’s because, just like Tesla with its drivers, the electric utility has its own power demands to manage. The utility spends a lot to generate or buy a lot of power all at the same time. So to spread out power usage it also seeks to modify its users’ behavior through price, especially among large power consumers like charging stations.
“If you make electricity expensive at a time when the grid is heavily loaded, that might incentivize me to charge my vehicle sometime other than that,” said John Halliwell, an EV charging expert at the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute.
And finally, Tesla or other charging providers could be doing what gas stations have always done: lowering prices to attract customers.
Any or all of these reasons could explain why Tesla’s prices are so variable. In Richmond, Virginia’s capital, pricing at one Supercharger station was as low as 22 cents this summer, less than a third of the peak price in Washington.
The man at the Tesla station in Dakota Crossing didn’t know any of these pricing details. More to the point, he didn’t really care. Cost didn’t factor into his decision.
“It just says, go here,” he said, gesturing to his Tesla, “wherever the fastest charging is and where there’s the fewest number of people.”
Congestion and climate
This price inattentiveness may be surprising to anyone who pays for gasoline, but is especially surprising in a congested metro like Washington, where EV adoption is high. In the second quarter of this year, almost 19 percent of new cars sold in the District were EVs, ranking behind only California and Colorado, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an auto industry trade group.
In 2022, a pair of researchers sought to compare two seemingly unrelated things: the length of U.S. commutes and support for the incumbent president’s party in presidential elections.
They found that in regions with easy commutes, about 10 minutes long, a $1 increase in the price of gasoline correlated with a drop of less than 3 percent in support for the incumbent party. But in areas like D.C., where commutes average half an hour, a one-buck surge in gasoline price increase corresponded with a 7-point loss in incumbent support.
While cautioning that a lot of other factors swing presidential elections, the study authors saw a logical connection between fuel price and political sentiment.
“The longer a person spends driving to work, the more substantial the economic burden of fuel she shoulders and the more likely she would be to turn against the incumbent when gasoline prices increase,” the study authors wrote.
Still other reasons account for why the price of charging electrons might not matter much to EV drivers.
Danielle Grant, an analyst at the Social Security Administration, said as she walked away from her black Model 3 at Dakota Crossing that climate change was her top consideration, because electric vehicles don’t warm the atmosphere.
“I didn’t get my car because it costs less to fuel,” she said. “It’s because of the environment.”
‘It’s less about the price’
In a car that runs on gasoline, the driver has a wide selection of refueling stations to use. The person makes the call on which one gets the business.
With EVs, and especially Teslas, it’s the other way around.
When a Tesla driver punches in a long route, the car recommends at what stations to recharge, based on route efficiency and the availability of Supercharger stalls. Some non-Tesla EVs work in a similar fashion, offering fragmentary information on charger availability, depending on which networks’ data they can access.
But the options are limited. Whether driving a Tesla or a different brand, there’s just not a lot of public charging stations out there.
Fast-charging stations are still scarce, even for Tesla drivers. The boundaries of the District of Columbia contain nine public fast-charging plazas, half of them Tesla stations. By comparison, the capital city has 112 gas stations, according to a city database.
So with a recommendation on the screen and few options, most Tesla drivers simply go where the car tells them to go, regardless of the expense.
“It’s less about the price and more about the lack of friction,” said Loren McDonald, the proprietor of Chargenomics, a charging-data firm.
And while any given public charging station may be expensive, circumstances can blunt the impact.
Many people turn to public stations only on the occasional road trip. Home charging is less expensive, and more convenient, if one has a charger in the garage. Some automakers offer new car purchasers an incentive of free charging for a certain number of years or miles. And besides, the price of fuel isn’t as painful for drivers who can afford a car that can cost $60,000 to $100,000.
“It’s not enough money to make a difference,” McDonald said. “If you’re someone who’s on a road trip or needs to top off for the week, [the difference in price is] a cup of coffee.”
Why drivers don’t seek cheap charging
Conversely, there are reasons that a station is ignored — reasons that have no corollary in gas stations.
Remember that super-inexpensive station near the Beltway that charges only 16 cents a kilowatt-hour? It is by far the cheapest in the entire D.C. metro region. But it has several killer flaws.
Its top charging rate is 50 kW. That means it will supply, at best, 50 kWh of juice. (That’s what a kWh is — a kilowatt of power delivered for an hour.)
That’s not much, considering that the best stations now deliver up to 350 kW. Even a relatively modest 100-kW station will fill a battery twice as fast as the inexpensive one. And time is precious.
“The savings just isn’t worth it for an hour or two of your time,” said Steve Birkett, the principal of Plug & Play EV, the company that provided D.C.-area data for this story.
Then there’s the station’s location. It sits in a neighborhood of office buildings next to a hedge. There’s no public restroom, or food or drinks for sale. However, one user of the charging user-review site Plugshare did note, “It’s quiet and peaceful and under shade in the summertime.”
And importantly, many EV drivers may have no idea that the station exists.
Because EV drivers rely on their car’s screens to inform them where to charge, their cars may simply not offer it as an option.
“It’s unlikely to be one that a vehicle’s navigation system would route travelers to as the charge would be much longer than competing stations nearby,” Birkett said after examining the site’s data.
Meanwhile, only six minutes away, a different station provides a more multifaceted experience.
It is run by the charging network EVgo, a big network that appears in many EV navigation systems. It has a maximum speed of 200 kW, four times the juice at the office building. It is way more expensive, with rates last summer of 41 cents to 59 cents a kWh. But, situated in the parking lot of a shopping center with restaurants and a grocery store, at least there’s something to do.
The mysteries of paying for electricity
The final factor is a squishy one: People don’t seek out cheap electrons because they simply aren’t accustomed to thinking of electricity as a competitively priced product.
Electricity is sold by utilities, and people generally have little choice in their electric rates. And if they do, they don’t often understand the details.
“People don’t know what a kilowatt-hour is,” McDonald said. “Even though you’ve been getting this utility bill for 20 years, you still don’t understand it, because you try to read it and it’s Greek.”
One Tesla driver at the Dakota Crossing station had a clear grasp of the prices.
“It’s 51 cents. That’s too high,” said Dannen Strachan, the owner of a construction company. He was on the way from North Carolina to New Jersey, filling up briefly before heading to a less expensive station. “Fifty-one cents is almost close to the gas price per gallon,” he added.
But he understood why others, more used to gasoline, couldn’t wrap their heads around it.
“If they were standing there holding the pump and seeing the price go up, they would care,” Strachan said, spinning a finger in the air like the tumbling numbers on a gas station price meter.
“But in the EV you don’t see it,” he said. “It’s just on your credit card.”
