Cost comparison: electric Mercedes vs. Mercedes AMG

«Electric cars are too expensive» is an often-heard argument. True, the price tag on an electric vehicle is higher. On top of that, add the cost to buy a wall charger for your garage at home. And then it must be installed professionally. Better buy the gasoline engine and have peace of mind after the purchase. Or not?

Time to get to the bottom of it.

But since such a calculation should be as accurate as possible, I can’t simply compare a Tesla Model 3 Plaid with a Peugeot 206 built in 2001. A solid set of data is needed.

The comparison vehicles

For this comparison, I’ll draw on a car that’s electric but doesn’t look it: the Mercedes-Benz EQC 400 AMG Line 4Matic. It will allow for what is probably the most accurate comparison possible. The reason: the EQC – its shortened name – is essentially a Mercedes GLC with the engine replaced. Simply put: there’s a gasoline version of the same vehicle.

For the math, we’ll leave out all the tax breaks and such that you get when you buy or own an electric vehicle; these vary from canton to canton.

Mercedes-Benz EQC 400 AMG Line 4Matic

Mercedes-Benz has made its electric debut with the EQC. The car weighs 2,640 kilogrammes, is equipped with an 80 kWh battery, has a range of 400 kilometres and produces 308 kW or 408 hp. It costs 76,600 francs without any tax benefits.

Please note: the retail price through a licensed auto dealership for a new EQC in its standard version is 77,700 francs (website in German).

The electric Benz competes against its brother, the Mercedes GLC.

Mercedes-Benz AMG GLC 43 4MATIC

In typical gasoline fashion, there isn’t just one edition of the Mercedes-Benz GLC. Therefore, for the fairest possible comparison, we need to put together a vehicle that performs as equally as possible. On the official website of the manufacturer, you can find a configurator (website in German).

The Mercedes-Benz AMG GLC 43 4MATIC produces 287 kW or 390 hp and needs unleaded petrol 98. We leave all other options at their default. The result is a vehicle that costs 89,600 francs (website in German).

Now that we have our set of data for calculation, we can do the math.

Cost of first purchase

The result is obvious. The EQC wins. There is a cheaper GLC option that costs around 60,600 francs (website in German). But when trying to compare the technology equally, this is the result:

Game over. The EQC wins the first round. The GLC costs 13,000 francs more. However, there are additional costs that come into play.

Buying a charger

You can’t install a petrol station in your home. But, as the following calculation shows, the purchase of a wall charger for your garage is worth it. The charger must be installed professionally. And I don’t recommend skimping on the wall charger. There will be enough times when you’ll be happy to have the charger charge as many kilowatts as possible into the car in as short a time as possible. As of August 2021, the fastest and most reliable chargers deliver 22 kW.

Watch out: maybe you can’t install a charger at all. Depends on where and how you live. You can find advice on installation and answers to further questions in the following article by Martin Jungfer.

For example, getting an EV charger («Wallbox» in the graphs below) installed by your local electrician costs 2,350 francs, which is more than the charger itself. The price includes the installation of a high-voltage power connection in the garage. If you already have one of those, then things will be cheaper. Multiple other factors also have to be taken into account, such as a network cable for some chargers. This cost estimate should be taken with a grain of salt and may vary from electrician to electrician and from garage to garage. You can it a rough once-over here (website in German).

This is where the GLC is more convenient.

The overall cost breakdown now looks like this:

So the electric Mercedes is still 9,081 francs ahead of the gasoline-powered car.

Cost of a full tank

Now we’re ready to drive. At some point, the battery will run out. The tank will be empty, too. Therefore, we need to refuel. In the following example, we charge the EQC’s battery to 100 per cent. Electric car connoisseurs rarely do that, but we play the comparison fair. You don’t fill the tank of your GLC to only 80 per cent.

The GLC in our example has a consumption of 10.2 litres unleaded petrol (website in German) per 100 kilometres. The tank has a capacity of 66 litres.

The EQC consumes 19.7 kWh (website in German) per 100 kilometres. The battery has a capacity of 80 kWh.

In August 2021, a litre of unleaded petrol costs an average of 1.80 francs (website in German). Filling up the 66-litre tank of the GLC costs 118.80 francs.

Electricity prices are divided into high and low rates. On the network of Elektrizitätswerke Zürich (EWZ), a kilowatt-hour of electricity for electric vehicles costs 0.3797 francs (document in German) at the high rate (Hochtarif) – during midday and from 6 to 8 p.m. – and 0.1385 francs at the low rate (Niedertarif) between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. A full charge costs between 11.08 and 30.38 francs.

A fully filled tank and fully charged battery (with your own charger) look like this:

Costs of public charging stations

If you don’t have a charger at home or are unable to install one, you have no choice but to charge at one of the 6,200 public charging stations on the SwissCharge (website in German) network throughout Switzerland. SwissCharge is the de facto standard in Switzerland when it comes to a uniform charging solution. You can drive to virtually any charging station and charge with the app, as long as your car is compatible with the charging station.

In short:

• GoFast and Agrola chargers are fast and trouble-free.
• Ionity is moody.
• ABB chargers are far from compatible with all cars.

The prices at public charging stations are higher than the prices with a charger at home during low-rate hours. On average, a kilowatt hour on the SwissCharge network costs 0.365 francs.

The price comparison for a full tank with public charging stations looks like this:

To make the price comparison between high-rate at-home charging and public charging stations a bit clearer, here is the same diagram but without the GLC.

Not included in these prices are any costs for parking. Some chargers are located in public underground garages, for which you have to pay additional parking fees.

Cost of a 100-kilometre drive

Assume that our test vehicles have linear consumption. This means that no matter how fast we drive the 100-kilometre fictitious test route, the vehicle consumes the same amount of fuel. So, in this example, things like « the car uses more power when going uphill» aren’t considered.

But the following figure helps put the cost of driving into a more accurate dimension, since a full battery won’t take the EQC the same distance as the GLC’s tank.

• The EQC can hold 80 kW of electricity and travel 400 kilometres.
• The GLC can hold 66 litres of unleaded petrol 98 and has a consumption of 10.2 litres per 100 kilometres, so it travels 647.058 kilometres on one tank.

Here’s what that looks like:

Cost of one year of commuting

It’s somewhat more realistic, but still theoretical, if we apply these figures to daily commuter traffic. In the following example, I compare a newly purchased EQC with and without an at-home charger with a new GLC.

The average commute in Switzerland is 14.5 kilometres one way. That means 29 kilometres per day. The year 2021 has 256 working days, from which 20 vacation days are subtracted. So 236. The total distance commuted by our test vehicles is therefore 6,844 kilometres.

In the diagram, if we buy the EQC plus charger plus installation it looks as follows. And, for comparison, the GLC:

In total it looks like this:

• Mercedes EQC with 100% high rate: 81,038.73 francs
• Mercedes EQC with 100% low rate: 80,708.58 francs
• Mercedes EQC with 100% SwissCharge: 81,018.61 Swiss francs
• Mercedes GLC with unleaded petrol 98: 91,156.56 francs

The verdict: as an EQC driver, you’ll save between 10,117.83 and 10,447.98 francs in the first year.

Cost of commuting without buying a car

But one thing stands out when we subtract the cost of the car from the operating costs above: the gasoline is cheaper than the electricity plus the charger, plus the installation.

That is obvious. In the first year, the operation of the EQC with a charger will cost you between 4,108.58 and 4,438.87 francs. On the SwissCharge network, a year costs you an average of 499.61 francs. The gasoline of the GLC will cost you 1,256.56 francs, assuming the gasoline prices don’t fluctuate too drastically.

The question is how long does it take to break even after installing the charger? If we calculate with the 236 commuting days of 29 kilometres each and constant costs, it looks like this:

The answer:

1. With SwissCharge, but without parking fees, the EQC is cheaper starting from month 0.
2. With 100% low-rate electricity, the EQC is cheaper starting from month 45.
3. With 100% high-rate electricity, the EQC is cheaper starting from month 66.

But that’s looking at it without the cost of the car, just the extra purchase plus the cost of gas. If we include the vehicle’s prices – 76,600 francs for the EQC and 89,600 Swiss francs for the GLC – the curve looks like this.

Preemptive note to counter criticism: for the sake of clarity, the y-axis doesn’t start at zero. This is due to a technological problem of Galaxus. In order for you to see the lines in the diagram on mobile, I need to make them thicker. You can’t zoom in. If I had made the graph’s y-axis start at , the lines would have been too close together. I hope that there is no confusion.

To ensure that you charge as much as possible using low-rate electricity, you can define either in the vehicle or in the charging station when no electricity should flow between your charger and the EQC. This works in pretty much all electric vehicles. Therefore, month 45 is well within reach, but requires initial setup.

Why the purchase of a charger is worthwhile despite costs

Something to end on: charging with SwissCharge from month 0 sounds appealing at first. But there are only few charging stations that don’t charge for parking, especially in cities where the charger network is well developed.

Let’s do the math quickly. The EQC commutes 6,844 kilometres per year. For this distance it needs 1,368.8 kWh of electricity. At a GoFast charger in an underground Migros car park, a kilowatt hour of electricity costs 0.49 Swiss francs. The total cost is then 670.71 francs per year.

For the EQC to cover the 6,844 kilometres, it has to be recharged 17.11 times. In addition, there’s a parking fee of 2 francs each time you charge. Therefore, we can add 34.22 francs in parking fees to the 670.71 francs. This brings us to 704.93 francs in fuel costs per year. Still cheaper than the 1,256.56 Swiss francs for gasoline for the GLC.

But – and this is an aspect you can’t underestimate – it’s uncomfortable. With each public charge, you spend about an hour at a charging station. If you’re close to a supermarket, you’re in luck. Agrola chargers often have a small store and the fast charger at Albis-Golf Driving Range (website in German) has a cosy restaurant. But it can happen that there is nothing at all. A socket somewhere on a pillar, but nothing else. Then you suffer boredom.

But when you charge overnight at home, you sleep, and your car takes care of the rest.

Mercedes could solve that, by the way, by running Netflix or YouTube on the EQC’s screen. Then it would be fine. Otherwise, just put a book in the glove compartment. That works too. Or an iPad, if it absolutely has to be audiovisual.

That’s where the GLC comes out on top: a normal gasoline pump delivers about 35 litres of gasoline per minute (website in German). That means the GLC’s 66-litre tank goes from empty to full in 113.14 seconds.