With BC Gas Prices Surging, Going Electric Could Save You Thousands Of Dollars

Gas prices are out of control. 

They recently soared to above $2.00 per litre in Vancouver. 

“I’m just trying to wrap my head around everything,” one resident said of fill-up costs only the wealthy can afford.  

In the Skeena last week prices were up above $1.63 per litre, and with global fuel disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, experts expect prices to stay high for the foreseeable future. 

The good news is that there’s a relatively straightforward way to reduce your fuel costs: go electric. 

“It’s saving us a lot in gas,” says one man in Ontario who just bought his second electric vehicle. “For every 10,000 km you drive [in a gas-powered vehicle], you use about 1,000 litres of gas, so at $1.70, that’s about $1,700.” 

A website operated by BC Hydro provides estimates of the savings. 

People who drive a Nissan Leaf S Plus in B.C. pay about $400 per year in electricity costs (or approximately $33 per month), according to the site. 

“In an equivalent gas-powered vehicle,” it calculates, the costs are “around $1,848 (or $154/month) on gas.”

So in one year alone you’d save more than $1,400. 

Electric vehicles can be more expensive to buy up front. And supply chain issues due to the pandemic are causing backlogs for some models. 

But with gas prices getting more insane all the time, going electric is starting to make a lot of financial sense.