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An Arco gas station on the corner of 4th Avenue and 65th Street in Sacramento, CA on May 19, 2026.Ruth Finch\/CapRadio<\/p>\nMichelle Reynolds drives for Uber in Sacramento, and she\u2019s lived in Sacramento for 11 years. Two years ago, she got her electric vehicle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only kind of downside would maybe be long distance road trips if it\u2019s hard to find a charger, but I haven\u2019t experienced a lot of that recently,\u201d Reynolds said. \u201cI think I\u2019d only go electric from here on out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reynolds said she averages between 300 to 500 miles a day, and her car\u2019s range is about 280 miles. She owns a gas car as well, but she rarely uses it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so cheap when I charge at home,\u201d Reynolds said. \u201cIt\u2019s fractional for what I pay in the gas vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Arco gas station on the corner of 4th Avenue and 65th Street in Sacramento, CA on May 19, 2026.Ruth Finch\/CapRadio<\/p>\n
Interest in electric vehicles is on the rise, according to car shopping site Edmunds<\/a>. According to AAA<\/a>, the average gallon of gas in Sacramento has risen to $6.10, compared to $5.05 a year ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n Peter Mackin is the president of SacEV<\/a>, a Sacramento-based electric vehicle enthusiast group. He said that in the early days of electric vehicles, before cars like the Tesla Roadster came out in 2008, if you wanted an electric car you had to be a little more DIY.<\/p>\n \u201cYou had to take a gas car and rip out all the drivetrain and put in batteries and an electric motor and controllers and stuff and do it yourself,\u201d Mackin said. \u201cOur mission has evolved quite a bit since the beginning.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n These days, SacEV focuses on educating and advocating for the use of electric vehicles in Sacramento. Mackin said that if you can charge at home, you can save over $1700 a year driving electric.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEven if you have to run an extension cord out of the garage and plug your car in that way, EV is a no-brainer,\u201d Mackin said. \u201cIf you have to rely on public charging, it gets a little trickier.\u201d<\/p>\n Victor Mendoza lives in the Bay Area, but drives his electric car to Sacramento three days a week for work. He doesn\u2019t have a charger at home, and that it can be difficult to navigate.<\/p>\n \u201cI ink time, unfortunately, is not on your side, especially if you\u2019re busy. For me, it does require me to plan out my charges as opposed to just being at home,\u201d Mendoza said as he was waiting to charge his car at an Electrify America charging station in the parking lot of a Target. \u201cWhen I\u2019m out here in Sacramento, though, there\u2019s a lot of charging stations that I could use, so it\u2019s pretty convenient in that sense.\u201d<\/p>\n Loading alternative fueling station locator…<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Charging electric vehicles takes more time than pumping gas. At public direct current fast chargers, charging an electric car to 80% can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the model of car and its range, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.<\/a><\/p>\n Most electric vehicles come with a charger that can be plugged into any standard AC wall outlet. However, these chargers, usually referred to as level 1 chargers, can take a while to charge your car, averaging between 40 and 50 hours to fully charge a battery.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The faster level 2 home chargers, which many EV owners use, can fully charge a car between 4 to 10 hours.<\/p>\n Mendoza said that he\u2019s had his electric car for nine months. When trying to get a level 2 home charger, which requires a higher voltage plug than a standard wall outlet, he ran into some issues.<\/p>\n \u201cI found out after the fact that I have to do some more work because I have an older house, which did have to factor into the timing it would take to install something at home,\u201d Mendoza said.<\/p>\n After getting the correct wiring installed in your home, level 2 chargers can be another cost for vehicles that are on average $5,000 – $6,000 more<\/a> than their gas counterparts when purchased new. However, in Sacramento, SMUD can help cover that cost.<\/p>\n SMUD\u2019s Charge@Home program<\/a> can offer up to $600 of incentives to help cover costs of installing level 2 chargers. Louie Dias, a Product Services Coordinator at SMUD and an EV owner himself, said that using the level 2 chargers is the ideal way to charge.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s honestly just as easy as plugging in your cell phone at night,\u201d Dias said. \u201cWhen you wake up in the morning, it\u2019s full, it\u2019s ready to go and to take on everything that we\u2019re going to need it for throughout the day.\u201d<\/p>\n