What Charging Really Costs a Rideshare Driver

April 28, 2026

Let's be straight about it: with Atrium, you pay for your own charging. The rental includes maintenance, 5,000 miles a month and a 120V home charger, and every car has access to Tesla's Supercharger network billed at Tesla's rates. Here's what that actually costs.

The weekly budget

These are not estimates. Across our own fleet this summer — 96,908 miles and 764 charging sessions — our cars averaged 3.25 miles per kilowatt-hour in real rideshare use, and we paid an average of 34.5¢ per kWh at Superchargers. A full-time driver covering roughly 1,000 miles a week uses about 308 kWh. What you pay depends on where you plug in:

• Home charging at Utah residential rates (roughly 11–12¢/kWh) — about $37–$41 per week if you can charge overnight
• Supercharging at the rate we actually measured — about $106 per week if you use it exclusively
• A realistic mix of both — most full-time drivers land around $75–$85 per week

Using the included 120V charger

Every Atrium rental comes with a 120V home charger. It adds roughly 3–4 miles of range per hour — not fast, but plugged in overnight it quietly covers your personal driving and tops you off between shifts, shrinking how often you need a Supercharger at all.

Supercharging along the Wasatch Front

Utah is one of the easiest states in the country to drive electric. Superchargers in Provo, Orem, Lehi, Draper, Salt Lake City and near the airport mean you're never planning your day around a charge — a 15–20 minute stop while you grab food puts you back near full. Charging during off-peak hours is usually cheaper, so many drivers plug in late evening after the ride rush.

What a Model Y driver is actually spending

One of our drivers in a 2026 Model Y Long Range covers about 5,000 miles a month and charges roughly 80 miles' worth at home overnight, Supercharging the rest. He reports spending $10–$15 a day on electricity.

Here is that arithmetic, so you can check it against your own driving rather than take our word for it:

• 5,000 miles over 31 days is 161 miles a day — 80 at home, 81 on Superchargers
• 80 home miles at Utah residential rates: about $3.40
• 81 Supercharged miles at the 34.5¢/kWh we measured: about $9.05
• That comes to $12.45 a day, or roughly $386 a month — inside the range he reported

The same 5,000 miles in a 25-mpg car at $3.80 a gallon costs $760 a month.

Your own figure will differ. It depends on how many miles you drive, how much of your charging you can do overnight, what you pay for electricity at home, and what a comparable gas car would return. The Supercharger rate above is the average we actually paid across our fleet; the home rate is the published Utah residential range. One driver's experience is not a guarantee of yours.

The bottom line

Budget $75–$85 a week for full-time charging on a realistic mix, or about $106 if you only ever Supercharge. It's a real cost — we won't pretend otherwise — but it replaces a fuel bill roughly twice the size, and it's the last variable expense on a car where maintenance is already included. The single biggest thing you can do about it is plug in overnight: on the numbers above, charging 80 miles a night at home is worth about $170 a month.