Electric vs. Hybrid vs. Gas: Which One Saves the Most Money?
Electric cars are the future, sure. But how about the present? Our 10,000-mile road trip to find the best mobile network in the US [LINK] gave us a unique chance to compare electric, gas, and hybrid cars in a fueling face-off. We rented all three varieties of cars from Hertz [Link to Hertz story], which has libraries of hybrid and electric vehicles at dozens of locations around the US.
As our Tesla Model 3 tooled around the western part of the country, we drove 1,400 miles through Georgia and Florida in a 2021 Hyundai Ioniq hybrid, and the rest of our trip in gas cars. Here are three surprising facts we found about fueling our three varieties of car:
Many electric cars have a short range, but not the Tesla Model 3 Long Range.
The Tesla's range beat our 2022 Toyota Camry, which had curiously low fuel efficiency at 18.8mpg for our trip, and thus a range of 297 miles in its 15.8-gallon tank. It didn't match up to our 2022 Chevy Malibu, which got 27.8mpg and thus a 439-mile range, or our Hyundai hybrid, which managed 50.5mpg and a 595-mile range.
That said, we recharged the Tesla more often than we needed to because of range anxiety [link to range anxiety story]. Of the 21 charges where we have recorded data, five of them started with the battery at higher than 50%—the drivers were merely topping off a battery that was already half full. Clearly, our drivers were a little worried about finding chargers in convenient places or having time to charge when they needed to.
Our drivers didn't have trouble finding chargers, although they had to look for them using an app. We charged at 35 locations, from urban Los Angeles to isolated parts of Idaho and Utah.
Tesla's Supercharger system was absolutely critical to keeping our road
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