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About this tool
Compare an EV and a BS6 diesel car per km including AdBlue, higher diesel service costs, CO2 and price-premium payback.
Diesel is the hardest engine for an electric car to beat on running cost, so a fair comparison has to count everything the diesel actually consumes. This calculator sets the EV's grid energy — battery capacity divided by real range, grossed up by charging efficiency and priced at a blend of home and public tariffs — against diesel at price divided by mileage, plus AdBlue dosed at a few percent of fuel volume on any BS6 car, plus each side's own maintenance rate, then reports the distance at which the EV's higher purchase price is repaid.
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Under The electric car, fill in Usable battery (kWh), Real-world range (km), Home tariff (INR per kWh), Public charger tariff, Charging done at home (%) and Charging efficiency (%).
Under The diesel car, set Mileage (km per litre), Diesel price (INR per litre), AdBlue dosing (% of fuel volume) and both maintenance rates, then enter Kilometres per year and How much more the EV costs to buy (INR).
Read the Running cost gap per km, the AdBlue used per year and Total rows for each car, and the Break-even distance, which reads Never on these inputs when the diesel wins.
BS6 diesels dose 2–6% of fuel volume as diesel exhaust fluid, and that line is priced separately instead of being ignored.
Diesel service is genuinely dearer — DPF, injectors, costlier oil — so both cars carry their own rupees-per-km rate.
When the diesel wins per kilometre the tool says the premium never pays back, instead of producing a meaningless number.
Usually, but by a much thinner margin than against petrol. A 20 km/l diesel at ₹92 a litre costs about ₹4.60 per km on fuel alone, against roughly ₹1.60 for an EV charged mostly at home — but an efficient diesel driven on expensive public charging can flip the result, which is why the tariff blend matters.
Roughly 2–6% of the diesel burnt, so about 1 to 3 litres per 1,000 km for a typical passenger car. At 20 km/l and 4% dosing, 20,000 km a year uses around 40 litres of AdBlue — about ₹0.14 per kilometre at ₹70 a litre.
Yes on both counts. A diesel carries a diesel particulate filter, high-pressure injectors, a turbo and costlier engine oil, so per-kilometre service typically runs above a petrol equivalent. An EV has no oil, filters, clutch, exhaust or spark plugs, and its regenerative braking makes pads last far longer.
It depends on the price gap divided by the per-km saving. On the tool's defaults — a ₹6 lakh premium and a ₹4.56 per km saving — break-even arrives near 131,000 km, which is about six and a half years at 20,000 km a year. Drive less and the premium may never be recovered from running cost alone.
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