Know before you plug in
EV charging cost calculator
Pick your car, set how full the battery is, and see exactly what the charge will cost, how long it will take and how much range it buys — against your own tariff, not a guess.
Not listed, or you know your pack size? Type it in the battery box.
Set it yourself, or pick a car to fill it in.
Seeded from 125 real published rates (₹9.5–₹15). Use your operator's exact rate.
Real-world range runs below the claimed figure.
Against a petrol car
Same distance, your own fuel price and mileage.
Battery sizes and claimed range come from our own model catalogue (67 electric cars with a published pack size). Tariff seed data: state EV portals. Station data: BEE national register (28,789 locations). Every figure here is an estimate — charging losses, temperature and how the charger tapers all move the real number.
How EV charging costs actually work
Charging is billed by the unit — one kilowatt-hour of electricity. Your bill is simply the number of units that went into the battery multiplied by the operator's rate, which is why two cars at the same charger can pay very different amounts: a bigger pack takes more units.
Three things the arithmetic has to allow for:
- Charging losses. Not every unit drawn from the grid reaches the battery. Roughly 10% is lost as heat, more in cold weather, so the meter always reads higher than the pack gained. This calculator adds that back in.
- The taper. A DC charger only runs at its rated power while the battery is relatively empty. Past about 80% it slows sharply, which is why going to 100% on a fast charger costs you a disproportionate amount of time.
- Your car's own limit. Plugging a 30 kWh car into a 120 kW charger does not give you 120 kW. The car's onboard limit decides, and the calculator caps the speed accordingly.
Home charging remains the cheapest way to run an EV in India: a domestic connection bills at household rates with no service fee, and the car is parked overnight anyway. Public DC fast charging is a convenience you pay for — worth it on a highway run, expensive as a daily habit.
Charging cost — your questions answered
How much does it cost to fully charge an electric car in India?
It depends on three things: your battery size in kWh, the tariff your charge point operator charges per unit, and whether you are charging at home or in public. A 40 kWh battery taken from 20% to 80% draws roughly 24 units plus charging losses. Multiply that by your tariff and you have the cost. Public DC fast charging is the most expensive way to do it; charging at home overnight on a domestic connection is the cheapest.
Why does this calculator ask me for the tariff?
Because there is no national EV charging tariff in India. Each charge point operator sets its own rate, and the Bureau of Energy Efficiency's national register does not publish prices at all. Rather than invent a figure, the calculator starts from the median of the real rates published by state portals — which currently range from about ₹9.5 to ₹15 a unit — and lets you put in the exact rate from your operator's app.
Why does charging slow down after 80%?
Lithium-ion cells take charge fastest when they are relatively empty. As the pack fills, the charger steps the current down to protect it, so the last 20% can take as long as the first 60%. That is why manufacturers quote DC fast charging as "10 to 80%" rather than to 100%, and why this calculator warns you when you ask it to go past 80% on a DC charger.
Is charging an EV cheaper than filling petrol?
Per kilometre, almost always yes — and by a wide margin when you charge at home. Public DC fast charging narrows the gap but rarely closes it. The calculator shows both figures side by side using your own tariff and your own petrol price, so you can see the real difference for your car rather than a generic claim.