AAA: Gas Is $4.14 as Labor Day Heads Toward a Record; Public EV Charging Averages 42¢/kWh

AAA says the U.S. national average for regular gasoline reached $4.1436 per gallon on Sept. 3, with Labor Day weekend on track to set a record at the pump. On the same day, AAA's public EV charging tracker showed a U.S. average of $0.423 per kWh.¹²

Those two sticker prices are useful snapshots, but they are not a direct EV-versus-gas cost comparison. A gallon and a kilowatt-hour do not move every vehicle the same distance, so any cost-per-mile result needs vehicle-efficiency and charging or fueling assumptions that the national price figures alone do not provide.¹²

That distinction matters because AAA's 42-cent charging figure is broader than a typical road-trip fast-charging quote. AAA says its map represents the daily average per-kWh cost for all commercial/public charging, combining Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3/DC fast charging.²

AAA's public-charging average is not a station quote

The national charging number also hides substantial state variation. At the Sept. 3 verification time, AAA's live page showed $0.318/kWh in Kansas, $0.386 in Colorado, $0.476 in California and $0.528 in West Virginia.²

Those are broad state averages under AAA's methodology, not prices for a specific network, charger or route. They should not be read as the price every driver will encounter at a public charger.²

AAA's weekly fuel-price release said the national public-charging average had stayed at roughly 42 cents/kWh over the past week.¹ But the live EV charging page also says historical EV price data is not available there, so the current map should not be treated as a complete long-term charging-price series.²

The gasoline record has not happened yet

AAA identifies $3.82 per gallon on Sept. 3, 2012 as the current Labor Day national-average record and says the national average has never been above $4 per gallon on Labor Day.¹ Its Sept. 3 wording is forward-looking: Labor Day 2026 is on track to set a record, not a completed record already in the books.¹

The current gasoline number is also sharply higher than a year ago. AAA listed the national average at $4.0997 one week earlier, $4.0946 one month earlier and $3.1903 one year earlier.¹

The practical takeaway for EV owners is narrower than a simple 42 cents versus $4.14 comparison. AAA is showing unusually high gasoline prices heading into Labor Day and a current national public-charging average around 42 cents/kWh, but neither figure by itself answers which vehicle is cheaper to drive. That requires the missing denominator: how far the specific gasoline vehicle travels per gallon, how far the EV travels per kWh, and where and how the EV is charged.¹²

Sources

Footnotes

1. AAA Fuel Prices — “Labor Day On Track to Set Record at the Pump,” Sept. 3, 2026. https://gasprices.aaa.com/labor-day-on-track-to-set-record-at-the-pump/ Establishes AAA's $4.1436 national regular-gasoline average, week/month/year comparisons, on track Labor Day record language, $3.82 2012 record statement and roughly 42-cent weekly national public-EV-charging figure. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. AAA Fuel Prices — “EV Charging Prices,” live page observed Sept. 3, 2026. https://gasprices.aaa.com/ev-charging-prices/ Establishes the $0.423/kWh U.S. average at verification, state-level averages, AAA's commercial/public Level 1 + Level 2 + Level 3/DC-fast methodology, and its statement that historical EV price data is not available on the map. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷