Why we focus on program design
As we've documented throughout Drive Economics, the base utility rate does most of the heavy lifting on EV total cost of ownership. In New York, that math is complicated by Con Edison's bill structure: delivery rates are set by the utility, but supply rates float on the wholesale market and can nearly double from winter to summer. On top of that, Con Edison offers two philosophically different EV-focused paths that don't combine well with each other.
The choice comes down to structure. Rate III shifts your entire household's delivery rate based on the clock — rewarding you overnight but penalizing you during the day. SmartCharge NY leaves your household rate alone and instead pays you cash for charging behavior. For most Con Edison EV owners in dense New York City and Westchester, one of these two paths is meaningfully better than the other. The finding may not match Con Edison's marketing.
Con Edison's EV options at a glance
Two options exist for New York EV owners. They target the same behavior (charge overnight) but structure the reward differently.
Rate III whole-household TOU
Con Edison's residential Time-of-Use rate. Shifts your entire household's delivery rate based on the clock — not just EV charging. Off-peak delivery is dramatically cheaper, but summer peak delivery rates are among the highest in the country. Weekends are off-peak all day. Summer rates shown below (winter peak is significantly lower).
Winter peak (Oct 1 – May 31) drops to approximately $0.29/kWh total. Weekends are off-peak all day year-round. All household electricity — not just EV charging — follows this rate structure.
SmartCharge NY cashback program
Stay on Con Edison's standard flat rate (~$0.25–$0.30/kWh total, no time-of-use variation) and earn direct cashback for overnight EV charging plus a monthly bonus for avoiding summer afternoon peaks. Applies only to your EV charging, not the rest of your household.
Effective off-peak charging cost: standard flat rate minus $0.10 cashback = ~$0.15–$0.20/kWh depending on season. Summer bonus totals $175 per year for full compliance. Rest of household stays on flat rate with no TOU exposure.
Path 1: Rate III — the whole-household TOU
Rate III restructures your entire household's delivery rate around the clock. Off-peak (midnight to 8 AM daily, plus all day on weekends) delivery drops to approximately $0.052/kWh. Add typical supply costs and you land around $0.17/kWh total for anything charged in that window. That is genuinely cheap electricity by New York standards.
The trap is what happens the rest of the time. Summer weekday peak (8 AM to midnight, June through September) hits approximately $0.28/kWh in delivery alone — add summer supply costs of $0.14 to $0.18/kWh and you're paying $0.42 to $0.46/kWh for every kilowatt-hour your household draws during those hours. That is roughly triple the standard flat rate.
For an EV-only comparison, Rate III looks compelling: charging exclusively overnight at ~$0.17/kWh beats the standard flat rate of ~$0.275/kWh. But Con Edison customers don't just charge EVs. They also run air conditioning across brutal New York summers, cook dinner, run laundry and dishwashers on weekday evenings, and stream television. Every watt of that non-EV usage during Rate III peak hours costs 50-80% more than it would on the standard flat rate. For a typical NYC or Westchester household running AC through July and August, this hidden cost frequently exceeds $150 per year — and can exceed $300 per year for households with heavy summer usage.
Path 2: SmartCharge NY — the cashback program
SmartCharge NY takes a different structural approach. Your household electricity stays on Con Edison's standard flat rate — no time-of-use variation, no summer peak penalty on your AC. Instead, Con Edison pays you cash rewards specifically for EV charging behavior.
The rewards have two components. The primary reward is $0.10/kWh cashback for every kWh of EV charging that happens between midnight and 8 AM daily. That effectively reduces your overnight EV charging cost from ~$0.275/kWh (standard flat) to ~$0.175/kWh (standard flat minus cashback) — essentially matching Rate III's off-peak effective cost of ~$0.17/kWh.
The second reward is where SmartCharge NY pulls ahead structurally: $35 per month for every summer month (June through September) that you completely avoid EV charging between 2 PM and 6 PM on weekdays. Add a $35 seasonal bonus and you're looking at $175 per year in fixed summer credits, on top of the per-kWh cashback.
The trade-off is minimal. To collect both rewards, you plug your EV in overnight and never charge on summer weekday afternoons. Anyone with a Level 2 home charger who plugs in when they get home in the evening already satisfies both conditions without behavioral change. Rideshare drivers, delivery drivers, and households with unusual schedules may occasionally forfeit a monthly bonus, but the per-kWh cashback continues regardless.
The economics: which one wins?
The chart plots annual EV charging cost by mileage under both Con Edison paths, assuming a compact EV (30 kWh/100mi) with all charging done overnight. The finding is unambiguous: SmartCharge NY wins at every mileage level.
The two paths' per-kWh charging costs are essentially identical for a disciplined overnight charger: Rate III off-peak lands around $0.167/kWh, SmartCharge NY effective rate (standard minus cashback) is $0.175/kWh. The $0.008/kWh difference favors Rate III slightly on the per-kWh math. But SmartCharge NY adds a $175 fixed summer bonus that decisively tips the total in its favor. At 12,000 miles per year (a common Westchester or NYC commuter mileage), SmartCharge NY saves approximately $147 per year on EV charging alone.
That $147 annual advantage is only half the story. Rate III's whole-household TOU imposes a separate cost that the chart doesn't show: every kilowatt-hour of AC, cooking, laundry, and general household usage during summer weekday peak hours (8 AM to midnight) costs approximately $0.16/kWh more on Rate III than on the standard flat rate. For a typical NYC or Westchester household with 240 kWh of summer weekday peak usage per month, that's an additional ~$157 per year that Rate III costs you and SmartCharge NY does not.
Add the two together and SmartCharge NY delivers a total advantage of approximately $300 per year, or $1,500 over a typical 5-year ownership period. A concrete scenario: a Model 3 driver in Astoria covering 10,000 miles per year in a two-bedroom apartment with window AC units running through July and August pays approximately $350 in annual EV charging costs on SmartCharge NY versus $500 on Rate III — and avoids roughly $120 in additional summer household TOU exposure. Total: SmartCharge NY comes out $270 ahead for that driver every year.
Under approximately 3,300 miles per year in a compact EV, SmartCharge NY's combined cashback and summer bonus exceed the annual charging cost outright — Con Edison effectively pays the driver to own an EV. This is a niche case, but not unusual for NYC second-car households or Manhattan owners who primarily drive on weekends.
Which path should you choose?
Three characteristics determine which path fits best:
- Household summer usage pattern. If you run AC heavily during summer weekday afternoons and evenings — which describes most NYC and Westchester households — SmartCharge NY is unambiguously better because it avoids the Rate III household peak penalty. If you leave your apartment vacant most summer weekdays (frequent traveler, second home elsewhere), Rate III becomes more competitive because you're not exposed to its peak hours.
- Charging discipline. Both paths reward overnight charging. If you can consistently plug in at night and never charge during summer weekday afternoons, SmartCharge NY collects both the $0.10/kWh cashback and the $175 summer bonus. If your schedule is genuinely irregular — rideshare drivers, delivery drivers, night shift workers who need midday charging — Rate III's time-based rate structure may be more forgiving because there's no monthly bonus to lose, just a per-kWh rate that stays cheap when you can charge overnight.
- Total annual mileage. For most Con Edison EV owners under 20,000 miles per year, SmartCharge NY delivers a positive net difference of approximately $130-$170 per year in EV-only charging cost, plus the whole-household TOU savings. Below 3,300 miles per year, SmartCharge NY becomes net-positive — you receive more in credits than you spend on charging. Rate III does not have a comparable "utility pays you" threshold at any mileage.
The New York summer heat factor
The economic case for SmartCharge NY strengthens the hotter your summer household usage. Con Edison territory spans New York City's five boroughs plus Westchester County — areas where summer heat routinely pushes temperatures into the high 80s and 90s with high humidity for weeks at a time. Air conditioning is not optional. It is also not efficient overnight in most NYC housing stock: window units and older split systems run through evening and overnight hours in older buildings and top-floor apartments.
Under Rate III, every hour of that AC usage between 8 AM and midnight on summer weekdays costs approximately $0.44/kWh. Under the standard flat rate (which SmartCharge NY leaves untouched), the same usage costs approximately $0.275/kWh. For a typical 1,500 square foot Westchester household running central AC through July and August, the difference can easily reach $200-$400 for the summer alone. That is a Rate III cost that no amount of disciplined EV charging can recover.
The counterintuitive result: Con Edison's marketed "residential TOU rate" — which sounds like an EV-friendly structure — tends to work against most residential EV owners specifically because their non-EV summer usage is punished more than their EV charging is rewarded. SmartCharge NY sidesteps this trap by isolating the reward mechanism to EV charging alone.
See it in our case studies
Our Westchester Ioniq 6 vs Elantra Hybrid case study shows Con Edison EV economics in practice with a real buyer scenario. The driver is a Yonkers-based sales rep covering 15,000 miles per year mostly on the Cross County Parkway and I-287, with a Yonkers house running central AC through the New York summer.
On SmartCharge NY, annual EV charging cost lands around $612 with the summer bonus factored in — versus approximately $1,600 in annual gasoline cost for the Elantra Hybrid at New York's $4.48/gallon average. The utility-choice math tilts firmly toward SmartCharge NY given the household's summer AC exposure. Rate III would add roughly $200 per year in avoidable household TOU costs on top of the EV comparison, further widening the gap.
See how your New York EV math compares
The calculator applies Con Edison's residential rate structure to any specific EV and mileage combination. Enter your ZIP, vehicle, and annual mileage to see 5-year charging costs, and compare against a gas alternative at current New York prices.
Rate values reflect Con Edison published tariff data as of September 2026 and are subject to change. Rate III delivery rates ($0.0522/kWh off-peak, $0.2786/kWh summer peak, $0.1711/kWh winter peak) reflect current published tariffs. Supply costs are variable, averaging $0.10 to $0.13/kWh in off-peak and winter months and $0.14 to $0.18/kWh during summer peak months; verify current supply rates at coned.com. Standard flat rate of $0.25 to $0.30/kWh total reflects typical all-in residential pricing. SmartCharge NY program terms ($0.10/kWh cashback, $35 monthly summer bonus plus $35 seasonal bonus) reflect current published program terms; verify at fleetcarma.com or coned.com. Break-even mileage of approximately 3,300 miles per year assumes 30 kWh/100mi EV efficiency and a compact EV. Household TOU impact estimates assume typical NYC / Westchester summer air conditioning usage of approximately 240 kWh per month during peak hours across four summer months; actual household impact varies substantially with building type, AC efficiency, and behavior. New York gasoline price of $4.48/gallon reflects current statewide average as of September 2026. Case study specific numbers reflect the scenarios documented in the linked case study and may not directly translate to all Con Edison EV owners.