YouTuber crunches the numbers to work out if a new gas Fiat 500 or its brand new EV equivalent has cheaper running costs over 3 years

A YouTuber has crunched the numbers and revealed which is more cost effective, an EV – electric vehicle – or a petrol-powered Fiat 500 for three years.

The future of motoring lies in EVs, as we need to consider the planet as well as our pocket, but where are we currently at?

YouTuber, Geoff Buys Cars, did the math and figured out whether owning a small car – very small, in the case of the Fiat 500 – was still cheaper than owning an equivalent EV.

Let’s take a look at the results.

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How does the EV Fiat 500 stack up in terms of cost?

First, let’s set the scene.

The brand-new EV Fiat 500 comes in at £28,000 and change – that’s about $33,500 – on a lease and boasts a 193-mile range.

Geoff calculated that over the course of a year, that means the car would have to be charged 51 times.

He then did some approximation and worked out that, between home and public charging, we’re looking at around 8.045p per mile, which we’ll call 10 cents.

It all adds up to £840 ($1044) per year for charging, a number that left our intrepid mathematician ‘shocked’.

It’s no secret that electric car charging is cheaper than fossil fuels, particularly if you’ve found a hack to make it even cheaper.

But perhaps he expected this cost to be lower.

Over the three years, he calculated that the running costs would be $3131 in total.

UK road tax is free for electric vehicles, so that’s not an issue for this model.

Would the petrol Fiat prove cheaper than electric?

Now, for the challenger – the petrol Fiat 500 Dolcevita Plus.

That car retails at around £14,990 or $18,926, which – right off the bat – is a lot cheaper than the EV.

As the YouTuber pointed out: “You can already see where I’m headed with this…”

Despite being ‘a whole car’ cheaper, this version is subject to road tax, which is £170 ($221) per year.

Not too bad, when you consider the significant price difference.

At 61 miles per gallon, this car is efficient by any standards.

Well, almost any standards.

When all is said and done, the non-electric car totals out at £3,927 over the three-year period, around $4,879.

The results are in

These figures don’t lie, do they?

The ‘elephant in the room’ is that the price of the EV is way more than the alternative, meaning that you’d have to save for years to make up the difference.

Over three years, Geoff deduced that – all in – the EV would cost £30,315 ($37670) whereas the petrol would be £18,992 ($23,600) over the same period.

That’s a difference of £11,393 ($14,157) – which is pretty stark.

While Geoff admitted he’d ideally buy neither of them, preferring an ‘old Volvo’ instead, he then suggested another used Fiat 500 that clocks in at significantly less than all of the other options, despite being more to run.

That’s because buying a cheaper car is – well – cheaper, despite it costing more.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t buy electric, or shouldn’t want to keep the planet a bit more clean, but it merely highlights the difference in price between new electric cars and older petrol ones.

It’s definitely something we need to consider, given that we need people to adopt EV cars for the environment.

As they can become more affordable, and the technology within improves, hopefully we can stop having arguments like this.

For more insights and stuff like this, get over to Geoff’s YouTube channel and check out his other videos.