How much can drivers really save by trading their ICE truck for an EV? One driver parked his trusty 2023 RAM 3500 diesel and drove a new 2026 Chevrolet Silverado EV for a few days — and his real-world fuel savings are impossible to ignore.
America is full of rural communities that are miles away from its major cities, both geographically and culturally – but that doesn’t mean these more sparsely populated regions can’t reap the benefits of electrification. In fact, EVs offer rural drivers even more benefits than they do to city-dwellers. That’s truer than ever these days, with diesel prices climbing past $6.00 per gallon in many parts of the country (and approaching $8 in parts of California), it’s more expensive than ever to haul sailboat fuel around town in a big pickup truck.
“Diesel is sitting around roughly $6.00/gal. on average,” writes Robert Wallace, a certified energy manager and self-proclaimed rural energy innovator. “My [2023] RAM [3500] gets about 17 MPG, which means every time I drive a mile it’s costing me $0.35.”
This week, though, Wallace got his hands on a new 2026 Chevrolet Silverado EV and was shocked (pun very much intended) by the savings he was seeing.
“I’m getting about 2+ miles per kWh out of its 170 kWh battery,” adds Wallace. “When I plug it in at home (which is about 85% of the time), I’m paying $0.11 per kWh, so driving the new electric truck is costing me 5½ cents per mile. (!)”
For those of you doing the math, $0.35 per mile Wallace is spending to drive his RAM is over 600% more than the 5.5 cents per mile it’s costing him to drive the Silverado. Doing that same math on a (much) more efficient Tesla Model 3, the $0.35/mile RAM costs 1,400% more to drive than the Tesla at 2.5 cents.
Wallace did a great job sharing his experience on LinkedIn, writing out the math and sharing that he drives a whopping 48,000 miles per year. If he drove those miles in the bladder-busting Silverado EV, he’ll save more than $8,400 per year. Check out his original post, below.
Rural Americans are proud Americans. Unfortunately, every gallon of gas burned in their pickups and SUVs came from that was either oil drilled, refined, or traded on global markets, and that means supporting the oil business and economies of nations whose values don’t always align with, or maybe are even outright hostile to theirs.
Combine that idea with the fact that it’ll probably be years before global oil markets recover from Trump’s latest 10-duh-mensional chess move, and it might just be time for America’s casual truck drivers to check out an EV.
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