This post isn’t meant to be a cost analysis of driving an electric car. It’s to point out that charging a Nissan Leaf at home has a surprisingly small effect on my electricity bill. The two question people ask my family about our electric car is, 1) how far does it go on a single charge and 2) how much has your electricity bill gone up. This post is about the second question.

First, a little background data. We drive an average of 555 miles per month. We charge exclusively at home. Electricity costs us about $0.09 per KWH. We get about 3.5 miles per KWH. The car costs us very roughly $15.00 per month in electricity.

Look at the first panel in this Tableau story and see if you can spot the month we bought the electric car based on the electricity usage. Click on the grey boxes to move through the story. You can also see these visualizations at Tableau if the story below isn’t working.