Find the cost to charge an electric vehicle.
The energy needed to reach 100% is calculated from the battery's remaining capacity, then multiplied by your electricity rate.
Energy needed: Battery capacity × (100% − current%)
The EV charging cost calculator tells you what it costs to charge an electric car or scooter from its current level up to 100%. You enter the battery size in kWh, the starting charge percentage and the electricity rate, and it works out the energy the battery needs and the bill for it.
For many Indian EV owners, charging at home on a domestic tariff is far cheaper per kilometre than petrol, while public fast chargers cost more per unit. The calculator lets you compare home, office and public charging on the same basis, and shows how the monthly electricity bill will change once the EV is plugged in. It is also a useful sanity check when a charging app quotes a session price.
1. Find the battery's usable capacity in kWh from the vehicle's specifications.
2. Note the current charge level shown on the dashboard, in percent.
3. Energy needed = Battery capacity × (100 − current %) ÷ 100.
4. Find the electricity rate in ₹ per kWh, whether your home tariff or the charger's price.
5. Charging cost = Energy needed × Rate.
6. If you want to allow for charging losses, divide the energy by the charger's efficiency before multiplying by the rate.
A battery's capacity in kWh is the energy it can store. The state of charge, shown as a percentage, tells you how full it is. Charging from 20% to 100% therefore adds 80% of the capacity. On a 40 kWh pack that is 32 kWh. The calculator assumes you charge to 100% and that the percentage scale is linear, which is how dashboards present it, even though the battery management system hides a small reserve at each end.
Charging is not perfectly efficient. Some energy is lost as heat in the charger, the cables and the battery itself, and the car's systems may run while it charges. So the units drawn from your meter are somewhat higher than the kWh added to the battery. The calculator uses the battery figure directly, which makes its cost a lower bound. Slow AC charging and hot weather can widen the gap, and the only precise answer is a meter or charger reading.
To compare with petrol or diesel, convert to cost per km: rate per kWh divided by the vehicle's efficiency in km per kWh. At ₹7.5 per unit and 7 km per kWh, driving costs about ₹1.07 per km, compared with around ₹6 to ₹8 per km for a typical petrol car. At a public fast charger costing several times the domestic rate, the gap narrows, which is why most owners do the bulk of their charging at home.
Rahul's electric car has a 30.2 kWh battery, it is down to 15% after a week of office runs in Ahmedabad, and his home tariff works out to ₹7.50 per unit.
Answer: Charging cost ₹193; Energy needed 25.67 kWh
Using the gross battery capacity from a brochure instead of the usable capacity.
Ignoring charging losses and then wondering why the meter shows more units than the battery received.
Using the domestic tariff for a public fast-charging session that is priced much higher.
Forgetting slab tariffs: adding EV charging can push a home into a higher electricity slab.
Entering the charge percentage you want to reach instead of the one you are starting from.
Estimating the monthly electricity cost of running an EV at home.
Comparing home, office and public fast-charging prices.
Working out cost per km to compare an EV with a petrol or CNG vehicle.
Checking a charging app's quoted session price.
Does home charging cost the same as a public charging station?
No. Public fast chargers usually charge a higher rate than home electricity, so your real charging cost depends a lot on where you charge.