Electric vehicle owners in Morgan County are looking at the price of gasoline and finding themselves glad to have made the switch to an EV, they say.

Andrew Brown of Jacksonville commutes daily for his IT job about 45 minutes away in Springfield. Brown got his EV, a Kia EV6, at the beginning of the year, before the war with Iran started and sent global fuel prices skyrocketing. 

“I went from spending, oh, probably $60 or $70 a week in gas, to now, like, $15 a week to charge my vehicle,” Brown said.

As of May, there were 74 electric vehicles registered in Morgan County, according to the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office.

Brown was surprised, saying he thought the number would be higher.

“I guess the majority of the time I see them in Springfield, which is not Morgan County,” he said.

Sangamon County has 1,564 electric vehicles. While Illinois has a goal to have 1 million EVs on the road by 2030, there were 170,998 statewide as of May.

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Jenna Allen of Jacksonville has been driving her Nissan Leaf since 2022. She’s an interpreter for the Illinois School for the Deaf.

“I was tired of buying gas, and electric cars were becoming really popular, and I was like ‘Hey, let’s check out this avenue,'” Allen said.

Her husband, Brenton Allen, drives a hybrid Ram 1500, so he still buys gas. They really don’t use his car unless they’re going far away or camping with their kids, he said.

“On average, I get about 20 miles per gallon,” Brenton Allen said in American Sign Language with his wife interpreting.

Paying for gas generally just didn’t seem smart, he said. He got his hybrid in 2022, before the war between Russia and Ukraine caused gas prices to increase.

“We were trying to figure out if we should buy the EV or not, and I had figured it out: A monthly average of about $600 in gas a month, and that was quite a lot, that’s where a lot of our money was going towards,” he said.

The Allens are looking to get another EV, they said, though EV prices also have gone up since the war with Iran began and more people began looking to save money on gas.

“The same vehicle I bought in February costs about $5,000 more to purchase now,” Brown said.

Both Brown and the Allens charge their vehicles at home at a relatively low cost compared to what they previously paid for gas. A receipt showed the Allens’ charging costs were $21 in May and $17 in April.

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That’s not to paint everything about EVs as perfect, Jenna Allen said. She lamented that a new car probably would charge faster; her car takes about four hours to charge. Tires for electric vehicle also aren’t the same as normal tires; they’re heavier. 

“We’re kind of limited, like, to the Nissan charging stations,” she said. “I’d rather get a car that’s more universal that can handle the Level Three” fast-charging stations.