If you just bought an EV and you’re still on the rate plan your house came with, you’re almost certainly overpaying to charge it. PG&E has a plan built for home charging, EV2-A, and for most EV owners it’s the right move. But not always, and the cases where it backfires are predictable.
Here’s how the three plans an EV owner would consider actually compare, with the 2026 rates.
Want the answer for your own usage? See which PG&E plan is cheapest for a household like yours.
Find my best rate plan →The three plans on the table
EV2-A is the home charging plan. Three time windows, same every day of the week:
| Period | Hours | Summer | Winter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Off-peak | Midnight to 3 p.m. | $0.23 | $0.23 |
| Partial-peak | 3 to 4 p.m., 9 p.m. to midnight | $0.43 | $0.39 |
| Peak | 4 to 9 p.m. | $0.54 | $0.41 |
E-TOU-C is the standard time-of-use plan. Peak is 4 to 9 p.m. every day. It also gives a baseline credit of about $0.08/kWh on the first chunk of monthly usage, which EV2-A does not.
| Period | Summer | Winter |
|---|---|---|
| Peak (4 to 9 p.m.) | $0.52 | $0.40 |
| Off-peak | $0.40 | $0.37 |
E-1 is the old flat tiered plan. One price all day, stepping up after you pass your monthly baseline allowance: about $0.33/kWh in tier 1 and $0.41 in tier 2. No time signal at all.
The deciding number: your overnight rate
An EV adds roughly 250 to 300 kWh a month for an average driver. Where you charge that energy is the whole game.
- On EV2-A overnight: 300 kWh × $0.23 = $69
- On E-1 flat: 300 kWh × about $0.39 (you’ll be in tier 2) = $117
- On E-TOU-C off-peak: 300 kWh × $0.40 = $120
Just on the car, EV2-A saves about $50 a month against the other two, or roughly $600 a year. That overnight $0.23 is the lowest residential per-kWh price PG&E offers, and it’s the reason the plan exists.
E-1 looks close to E-TOU-C here, but E-1 is the worst choice for an EV for a different reason: it has no cheap window, so you can’t charge your way out of a high bill. Every kWh, day or night, costs the same tiered rate, and the car pushes you deep into the pricier tier 2.
Where EV2-A backfires
EV2-A’s nights are cheap because its evenings are expensive. The summer peak is $0.54/kWh, higher than E-TOU-C’s $0.52 and far above flat E-1.
That trade only works if you actually shift load to the night. The home I see get burned is the one that switched to EV2-A for the car, then runs central air conditioning hard from 4 to 9 p.m. all summer and doesn’t change a thing. The car saves $50, the AC loses $40, and the “EV plan” barely helped.
Before you switch, ask one question: outside of car charging, how much power do I use between 4 and 9 p.m.? (Check the exact peak window for each plan.) If the answer is “not much,” EV2-A is a clear win. If you have heavy evening AC or cooking and can’t move it, run the numbers on E-TOU-C too, because its baseline credit and lower peak can come out ahead.
A quick decision guide
| Your situation | Best plan |
|---|---|
| EV, light evening usage, charge overnight | EV2-A |
| EV plus a battery or heat pump, mostly off-peak | EV2-A |
| EV but heavy 4 to 9 p.m. AC you can’t shift | Compare EV2-A vs E-TOU-C |
| Low mileage, can’t charge overnight reliably | E-TOU-C |
| No EV, no interest in shifting load | E-1 |
PG&E also offers E-ELEC for fully electrified homes (EV plus electric heat, water heating, and cooking). It carries a daily charge and can win for high-electrification households, but it’s a narrower fit and worth modeling against your real usage rather than assuming.
Eligibility and the honest caveat
EV2-A requires you to attest that you own or lease an EV, plug-in hybrid, battery storage, or an electric heat pump. PG&E does not verify this against DMV records; it’s self-certification. The plan’s economics naturally reward people who can shift load overnight, which is exactly who it’s for.
The trap in all of this is that the “best plan” is a function of your entire home’s hourly usage, not a label. Two EV owners on the same street can have opposite answers depending on their evening AC. The reliable way to decide is to test your actual interval data against every plan rather than reasoning from averages.
See which PG&E plan is cheapest for your car and your house, using your real usage. Upload a bill and the Energy Advisor compares every plan in under a minute, no login.
Compare my PG&E plans →For the charging-cost side of this, see the cost to charge an EV at home. For the timing that makes any TOU plan work, see PG&E peak hours and California TOU rate plans explained.
Dana Whitmore
Energy Engineer & Billing Analyst · Optiwatt Energy Advisor
Dana has spent the past three years analyzing residential electricity billing data across PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E service territories. She's reviewed billing records for thousands of California households, and built the simulation engine that powers this site's rate-plan comparisons. She holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and lives in the Bay Area.