The claim: Electric vehicles use more energy than hundreds of houses
A May 13 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) claims charging one electric vehicle uses as much energy as an entire neighborhood.
“In case you didn’t know … One EV supercharger pushes out 350 kw,” reads the post. “The average home uses 1.2 kw. So to put that into perspective. Your EV is pulling 260+ houses worth of energy off the grid so that you can feel better about the environment.”
The post was shared more than 3,000 times in about two months.
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Our rating: Partly false
On average, an EV uses less energy per year than one house, according to government estimates. While an electric vehicle connected to a 350 kilowatt (kW) supercharger could theoretically pull as much energy as a couple hundred houses during the time it is charging, this would have to occur under very specific conditions. Most EV charging occurs at home on much less powerful chargers rated at 19.2 kW or less.
Electric car energy draw misrepresented in the post
On average EVs use much less energy than the average U.S. household over the course of a year, Brennan Borlaug, a transportation energy system researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, told USA TODAY in an email.
Modern light-duty EVs get from 2.5-4 miles per kilowatt hour (kWh), according to the Department of Energy. This means such a vehicle driven the U.S. annual average − 13,476 miles − would use between roughly 3,369 kWh and 5,390 kWh in a year.
By comparison, the average U.S. household uses about 10,500 kWh per year, two to three times as much energy as the average EV.
In 2020, residential EV charging (which represents most EV charging) accounted for an average of 2,363 kWh per year, less electricity than what was used for residential air conditioning, space heating or water heating, according to the Department of Energy.
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But the post doesn’t actually examine overall energy use by EVs.
Though the post references kW and not kWh, it appears to be comparing the theoretical energy draw of a very high power commercial-grade 350 kW charger (350 kWh per hour) to the energy draw of the average residence (1.2 kWh per hour, assuming an average usage of 10,500 kWh per year).
Making these assumptions, a theoretical 350 kW charger running at peak power for some period of time would equal the theoretical draw of around 290 houses for that same period. But this hypothetical scenario is misleading because it isn’t representative of actual EV charging conditions.
First, it assumes most EV charging happens on 350 kW chargers, when in fact, this happens a minority of the time.
Most EV charging happens at home on Level 1 and Level 2 chargers, according to the Department of Energy. Level 1 chargers are rated to 1.9 kW and Level 2 chargers can be rated between 2.9 kW and 19.2 kW, though Bourlang said most are rated between 5 kW and 10 kW.
A 350 kW charger cannot be supported by standard residential electrical infrastructure, Randall Field, the executive director of MIT Energy Initiative’s Future Energy Systems Center, told USA TODAY in an email.
Very high power chargers are the minority even when public charging infrastructure is considered. Level 2 chargers represented around 80% of public chargers in 2022, while fast chargers, rated at 50 kW or higher, made up around 20%, according to the Department of Energy.
Another problem with the post is that an EV charger rated to 350 kW may not ever reach that output during a given charge cycle, and if it did, it would not push that much power throughout the entire charge cycle, researchers told USA TODAY.
This is because EV batteries have a max power rating and most EV batteries are not rated to charge at 350 kW, Field said. For these vehicles, a 350 kW charger is designed to push less than max power during charging.
Additionally, EV chargers do not push the same amount of power throughout a charging cycle, Andrew Meintz, an electric vehicle charging engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, told USA TODAY. Charging rates decrease as the battery fills and can also fluctuate based on temperature constraints and conditions on the electrical grid.
USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Our fact-check sources:
- Randall Field, June 25, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- Brennan Borlaug, June 24, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- Andrew Meintz, July 10, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- Department of Energy, accessed July 2, Charging Plug-In Electric Vehicles at home
- Department of Energy, accessed July 2,Compare side by side
- Department of Energy, accessed July 2, Electric Vehicle Benefits and Considerations
- Department of Energy, Sept. 11, 2023, FOTW #1307, September 11, 2023: Electric Vehicle Charging Consumed Less Energy than Water Heating in a Typical U.S. Household in 2020
- Department of Transportation, accessed July 7, Average Annual Miles per Driver by Age Group
- Pew Research Center, May 23, Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure in the U.S.
- Canary Media, Oct. 25, 2022, 5 charts that shed new light on how people charge EVs at home
- Energy Information Administration, accessed July 2, Use of energy explained
- Idaho National Laboratory, accessed July 2, Comparing Energy Costs per Mile for Electric and Gasoline-Fueled Vehicles
- Energies, March 2, 2023, Optimal Configuration of Extreme Fast Charging Stations Integrated with Energy Storage System and Photovoltaic Panels in Distribution Networks
- Inside EVs, Dec. 17, 2021, Charging Curves And Peak Charge Rates: Why It Matters
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