An electric SUV can carry a higher sticker price and still cost less to keep moving, but the size of that advantage depends heavily on how far it is driven and where it is charged. VinFast is putting that idea at the center of a new U.S. Energy Cost Saving calculator, using a five-year comparison that produces a striking result for its VF 8 Eco.
In the company’s example, a driver covering 2,000 miles a month would spend an estimated US$7,811 on electricity over five years, versus US$18,528 on fuel for a comparable gasoline SUV. That is a difference of US$10,717, or roughly 58%. The gap is large enough to get attention, yet it is best understood as a modeled high-mileage scenario rather than a promise that every VF 8 owner will save five figures.
The US$10,717 Gap Comes From One Specific Scenario
VinFast’s headline comparison becomes easier to understand when it is broken into miles and monthly costs. Driving 2,000 miles each month for five years means covering 120,000 miles in total. At VinFast’s stated estimates, the VF 8 Eco’s electricity works out to about 6.5 cents per mile, while the gasoline SUV’s fuel works out to roughly 15.4 cents per mile. The company presents that as about US$130 a month for electricity versus US$309 for gasoline. Spread across 60 months, the difference adds up quickly, especially for a household with a long commute, frequent highway travel or a job that puts unusually high mileage on a personal vehicle. For those drivers, even modest differences in cost per mile can become thousands of dollars over a typical ownership period.
The VF 8 Eco itself is a substantial all-wheel-drive electric SUV rather than a tiny efficiency-focused commuter. VinFast’s current U.S. specifications list an 87.7-kWh usable battery and an EPA-estimated 256 miles of range for the Eco trim. That makes the comparison relevant to buyers considering mainstream family-sized utility vehicles, but one important detail remains unspecified in the company release: VinFast does not identify the exact gasoline SUV used for the US$18,528 estimate. Without a named model, fuel-economy figure and gasoline-price assumption, the gasoline side cannot be independently reproduced from the release alone. The safest reading, therefore, is that US$10,717 is VinFast’s calculator result for a particular set of assumptions, not a universal savings figure attached to every gas-to-EV switch.
High Mileage Is Doing Much of the Work
The 2,000-mile monthly assumption is one of the biggest reasons the five-year savings cross the US$10,000 mark. It equals 24,000 miles a year, which is far above the mileage accumulated by a typical U.S. passenger vehicle. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center, using Federal Highway Administration statistics for 2024, reports average annual travel of about 11,026 miles for cars and 11,360 miles for light trucks and vans. In other words, VinFast’s example effectively assumes a vehicle is driven about twice as much as those national vehicle averages. That does not make the scenario unrealistic—many sales representatives, rural households, contractors and long-distance commuters easily exceed 20,000 miles a year—but it does mean the headline savings are concentrated among heavier users.
The sensitivity is easy to see by applying VinFast’s own per-mile difference to lower mileage. If the same energy-price assumptions and the same vehicle efficiencies were held constant, scaling the calculation to 11,360 miles a year would reduce the five-year energy-cost advantage to roughly US$5,070. That is still meaningful, but it is less than half the headline figure. A driver covering only 8,000 miles annually would see a smaller gap again, while someone driving 30,000 miles would see the difference grow. This is why ownership calculators are most useful when mileage is personalized rather than treated as a generic average. The more a household drives, the more energy efficiency matters; the less it drives, the more purchase price, financing, insurance and depreciation tend to dominate the ownership equation.
Where the Car Charges Can Change the Result
Electricity is not a single national price, and charging location can materially change an EV’s running cost. The latest U.S. Energy Information Administration data available before VinFast’s announcement put the average residential electricity price at 18.44 cents per kilowatt-hour in May 2026. Separately, EPA-derived figures for the 2025 VF 8 Eco indicate electricity use of about 46 kWh per 100 miles. Pairing those two figures gives an illustrative energy cost of roughly 8.5 cents per mile before accounting for charging losses—higher than the roughly 6.5 cents per mile implied by VinFast’s US$7,811 example. That does not invalidate the calculator, because electricity prices differ widely by state and utility, and off-peak plans can lower home-charging costs. It does show how strongly the result depends on the rate being used.
Charging habits matter just as much as the posted residential average. The U.S. Department of Energy notes that most EV charging is done at home and that some utilities offer time-of-use rates that reward overnight charging. It also cautions that drivers normally pay more at public stations, particularly DC fast chargers, than they do for electricity at home. A homeowner who plugs in overnight on a favorable utility plan can therefore have a very different five-year cost profile from an apartment resident who relies heavily on commercial fast charging. There can also be an upfront infrastructure expense: DOE says Level 2 home equipment can typically cost about US$500 to US$4,000 before installation and incentives, with electrical upgrades adding more in some homes. Those costs do not erase the energy advantage, but they belong in the broader ownership calculation.
Lower Energy Bills Are Not the Same as Lower Total Ownership Costs
VinFast is careful to describe the US$10,717 figure as an energy-cost comparison, and that distinction matters. Fuel or electricity is only one part of what a vehicle costs over five years. AAA’s 2025 Your Driving Costs methodology includes depreciation, financing, insurance, registration and taxes, maintenance, repairs, tires and fuel when estimating ownership costs. Its national analysis found that depreciation remained the largest single ownership expense for the typical new vehicle. That means a buyer can save substantially at the charger and still end up with a higher total cost if the vehicle loses value quickly, carries expensive insurance or is financed on unfavorable terms. The reverse can also happen: a vehicle with a somewhat higher purchase price can become competitive if operating costs remain consistently low for years.
EVs do have structural advantages beyond electricity. The Department of Energy notes that battery-electric vehicles avoid many routine internal-combustion service items, and its consumer material has shown lower average maintenance costs per mile for all-electric vehicles than for gasoline vehicles. AAA’s 2025 data also placed EV fuel costs well below the overall vehicle average, although its figures show that insurance and depreciation can be substantial. For a household comparing a VF 8 with a gasoline SUV, the useful question is therefore not whether electricity is cheaper than gasoline in isolation. It is whether the combined savings from energy and maintenance are large enough to offset differences in purchase price, financing, insurance, depreciation, charging equipment and eventual resale value. A five-year energy calculator is a useful starting point, but it is not a complete balance sheet.
Why VinFast Is Putting the Math in Front of Shoppers
There is evidence that consumers do not always value future fuel savings as heavily as economists might expect. A National Bureau of Economic Research study built around fuel-economy rating corrections affecting 1.6 million Hyundai and Kia vehicles found that buyers behaved as though one dollar of discounted future fuel savings was worth only about 15 to 38 cents in the vehicle’s purchase price when using a 4% discount rate. That helps explain why automakers want to translate operating savings into a simple five-year number. A four- or five-figure future benefit can feel abstract when compared with a monthly payment or sticker price visible at the dealership, even if the operating-cost difference is economically meaningful over time.
Other research suggests that how the information is presented matters. A U.S. study involving 3,199 participants found that showing five-year fuel savings alone did not significantly change vehicle rankings, while fuller total-cost-of-ownership information increased interest in electrified choices among small- and midsize-car shoppers; the same effect was not found among small-SUV shoppers. A 2026 study in Vietnam likewise found that providing fuel and maintenance-cost information increased the probability of choosing an electric car over a conventional car by 14.3 percentage points, while fuller total-cost information produced a smaller positive effect. VinFast’s calculator fits squarely into that behavioral challenge. Its US$10,717 result is plausible under the company’s high-mileage assumptions, but the more useful takeaway is that buyers should substitute their own mileage, local electricity rate, charging mix and comparable gasoline vehicle before treating the five-year number as personal savings.
