You still need to account for efficiency of the various fuels when working out which one is cheapest.
An electric vehicle is on the order of 5X more efficient than a gasoline vehicle per kWh (that is, an EV that will go 5 km on 1 kWh of electricity would be lucky to get 1 km per kWh if it were running on gasoline).
So in this case, it's still cheaper to operate an EV than a gasoline vehicle in MA, even if electricity costs more per kWh.
The fleet average real-world fuel efficiency for light petrol vehicles in my country, based on government data, is 9.2 litres/100km. (I'm guessing it's significantly worse than this in the USA where the average vehicle is larger and there is less focus on fuel efficiency)
At 8.9 kWh per litre, that means gasoline takes 81.88 kWh to get you 100 km. A typical EV, on the other hand, will use about 18 kWh to go 100 km (at 5.5 km per kWh). That makes the EV around 4.5 times more efficient.
As for carbon emissions, burning 1 litre of gasoline creates 2.3kg of CO2. At 9.2 litres per 100 km, that works out around 210g per km.
Grid carbon intensity varies greatly by country and region. In France at only 42g/kWh, an EV's energy would emit less than 10g per km, even after accounting for grid and charging inefficiencies! But even in coal-dependent Germany at 354g CO2/kWh (2023), an EV would be well under 100g per km, still better than an average petrol car.
(Also, remember that auto industry emissions/efficiency numbers are based on testing protocols which produce far lower figures than the real world. And do not account for upstream emissions in the fossil fuel supply chain - there is an awful lot of upstream carbon emitted to produce 1 litre of gasoline!)
I agree we should look at the whole picture but that would mean to look at how much CO2 is rejected to produce an EV compare to a Petrol car and how much to recycle it.
Enough of this theory. I live in Boston area. I have rented an EV and a gas vehicle and covered the same distance. The EV cos more to cover the same distance. Like 2x more. And that’s before the inconvenience of hunting for places to recharge and the time wasted at charging stations, and range anxiety.
Maybe the math is different for those who can charge at home. I’m tired of people waving abstract thermodynamics math at me when talking about real life economics I faced
An electric vehicle is on the order of 5X more efficient than a gasoline vehicle per kWh (that is, an EV that will go 5 km on 1 kWh of electricity would be lucky to get 1 km per kWh if it were running on gasoline).
So in this case, it's still cheaper to operate an EV than a gasoline vehicle in MA, even if electricity costs more per kWh.