Independent · Not affiliated with Tesla

Your zip code.
Your numbers.
Your payback.

Every Tesla review tells you what it saved them. Enter your real driving, your real electric rate, and what you still owe on your current car — we'll tell you what changes, both over ten years and next month.

See the assumptions

Free. No email. No account. Two short steps.

Example Salt Lake City, UT defaults shown below — enter your own zip for an accurate result.
Your home & power
Time-of-use plan at home?
Charging at home 85%
15% on Superchargers or public chargers, at roughly 2–3× the home rate.
Blended rate
$0.155
What you'd actually pay per kWh.
Your driving
Miles driven per week 240
12,480 miles/year
Your current car
What's it worth? $12,000
Trade-in or private sale — whichever you'd actually do.
How do you hold it?
Equity toward the Tesla $2,600
Already decided? Jump to the referral link

2026 Model 3 Standard RWD vs. a mid-size gas sedan (e.g. Accord)

Pays back
5.3 years to break even

Middling. It pays back, but slowly enough that you should want the car for other reasons too.

Saved per year
$1,330
Cost to switch
$7,090
Trade-in equity
$2,600
Net after 10 yrs
+$6,211
Cumulative position 10 years
Y1Y2Y3Y4Y5Y6Y7Y8Y9Y10

Bars below the line are years you're still behind. You cross into the black in year 6.

Where the money moves
Gas you'd stop buying +$1,515/yr
Electricity you’d start buying −$515/yr
Blended charging rate $0.155/kWh
Maintenance saved, less insurance +$330/yr
Net annual effect +$1,330/yr
Price gap vs. a mid-size gas sedan (e.g. Accord) −$8,590 + $1,100 charger
Trade-in equity applied +$2,600

If the number worked, here's the link.

Ordering through a referral link gets you credit toward Supercharging or accessories, and it's what keeps this calculator free. Same price either way — the credit doesn't come out of your pocket.

Your estimated 10-year net
+$6,211
After the $7,090 cost to switch.
Use my referral link →

Opens Tesla's site. Nothing you do there comes back to us.

Clicking this saves an anonymized version of your numbers — rough location, no name or exact address — so we can see what's actually working for people. Privacy Policy.

What's under the math

No calculator can be exact. These are the assumptions we use, so you can argue with them.

240 Wh/mi
Vehicle efficiency

From the trim and options you picked — real-world mixed driving, not the EPA sticker.

+11%
Charging loss

Energy that goes into heat and battery conditioning, not miles.

−42%
Overnight rate discount

Applied to home charging only, if you're on a time-of-use plan.

$0.41/kWh
Supercharging default

A national middle, blended with your home rate by the split you set.

$520/yr
Maintenance saved

No oil, no plugs, no exhaust. Tires and brake fluid still count.

−$190/yr
Insurance premium

EVs generally cost more to insure. Subtracted, not hidden.

$1,100
Home charger install

A Level 2 charger and a typical install, added to the cost to switch.

6.9% / 72 mo
Loan terms

Applied identically to both cars in the monthly view. Your rate will differ.

$99/mo
FSD, if you add it

Subscription only. Counted as a cost — it returns nothing measurable.

$0
Federal credit applied

The $7,500 credit ended for vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025.

What we compare against

Not "keep your old car forever" — that always wins on cost. The comparison is buying the Tesla vs. buying a comparable gas car, so what you see is the extra cost of choosing electric. Your trade-in equity comes off that gap, and both sides are financed identically in the monthly view.

If you're upside down on your current loan, we count that against the switch. Strictly it would follow you into any car — we'd rather overstate the cost than quietly flatter the Tesla.

Federal EV tax credit Ended

The $7,500 federal credit for new EVs ended for vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025, and is not included in any number on this page. If you signed a binding purchase contract before that date, you may still qualify — check with a tax professional.

Full Self-Driving Subscription only

FSD is no longer sold as a one-time purchase, so there's no price to pay back — it's a recurring cost of ownership. We treat it as an opt-in $99/month line item that reduces your savings, because it produces no measurable financial return. Buy it for the experience, not the math.

Figures shown are illustrative estimates, not quotes. Vehicle pricing, loan rates, subscription pricing, and utility rates change often and vary by state, utility, and credit. Verify before you buy anything.

About this tool

There is an enormous amount of Tesla content and almost none of it is arithmetic. Reviews are shot in California with cheap solar and a 12-mile commute. That's not most people.

This tool answers two questions most calculators skip: what it does over ten years, and what it does to next month's budget. Those can disagree — a car can pay back eventually and still be unaffordable now, and we'd rather show you both than pick the flattering one.

Required disclosure

This is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Model 3, Model Y, Powerwall, and Full Self-Driving are trademarks of Tesla, Inc.

How we make money

Referral credits, if you order through our link after the calculator tells you it's worth it. We are not paid to tell you yes.

Privacy

Short version: we keep an anonymized snapshot of your numbers, and only if you click the referral link. No name, no email, no account, no exact address. That's the whole thing — the rest of this is just detail.

Collected only on referral click
Rough location Your state, and the first three digits of your zip code — enough to know the utility region, not enough to find a house.
Driving & rate inputs, as ranges Mileage and electric rate are bucketed before they’re stored — the exact numbers you typed aren’t kept.
The calculated result The 10-year net and the monthly change the tool showed you, plus which model you configured and whether you added FSD.
That a referral click happened A timestamp and the fact of the click, so we can tell how often a good number leads anywhere.
Never collected

No name, email, account, exact zip, or cross-site tracking — ever. There's no login, so there's no profile to attach anything to. Playing with sliders, changing your rate, re-running the numbers — none of that is recorded; only the click is.

Housekeeping

Kept indefinitely — it's aggregate and anonymized, never more than the bucketed fields above. Seen only by us; never sold, and never used for advertising or retargeting. Once anonymized, we can't find a specific row to delete on request — the tradeoff of never collecting identity in the first place.

Tesla's side is not our side

The referral link opens Tesla's own site, under Tesla's own privacy policy — nothing you do there (configuring, ordering, payment) comes back to us. Our side of this ends the moment you click through.