People with plugin Priuses actually need gas to be $5 or higher for plugging in to payoff at my energy costs.
Californias love complaining our fuel costs 30% more than most states. Yet most don't know our electricity is 300% more.
We bought our BEV in California and were on Schedule EV with PG&E, and it was always a delicate dance of "charging at the right time" to make things cheap. Here, our EVs just don't cost us much.
I just signed up for $0.0949/kWh in Pennsylvania, but I'm paying a little bit extra for that feel-good wind power.
It's even cheaper in my part of my state: 0.029/KWh
Subaru Outback Full tank of gas (ca avg 4.89 18.5 gallon capacity) = 90.46 Range = 476 mi Cost of fuel per mile = $0.19
Its still almost half the cost of gas. That said, experientially at times it feels more expensive. Also, there are rate plans that move the cost lower to something like $0.21 instead, which really relies on you managing your charging times.
They've both been paid off for years and years. A new set of tires for each were the most expensive maintenance. We fill up the PHEV with gas around once a year for $40 and get an oil change whenever it prompts us, which is around every two years because we use gas so rarely. Insurance and registration for both cars ends up being a little over $1000/year total - both included. Our power costs are around $.055/KwH here - mostly renewable at this point - so we pay a few hundred in extra power costs each year charging them up.
Back when we got both the conventional wisdom even then was "lease don't own because the technology will be better in three years". Actually, the conventional wisdom was "wow, don't buy an electric car, what are you doing?" You know what? These guys still get around town just fine, don't look like junk yet, and paying a grand total of $750 or so per car per year feels real good.