Avert your eyes at the gas pump because the price is well over $2 a litre. It’s making electric vehicles more and more appealing for commuting.

Brad Ouchi has been driving a Mazda EV for a year and a half but he still has some gas vehicles.

“We are going to drive the electric vehicle over any of our gas vehicles,” he told iNFOnews.ca, May 6, at an EV charge station in Kelowna. “We only use the gas vehicles for camping or something like that.”

“We got rid of our Ram truck and got an electric vehicle. It’s just way more economical. You don’t want to be driving around Kelowna in a Ram with a hemi in it.”

Many gas stations in Kelowna and Kamloops are selling a litre of regular for around $2.07. In Penticton prices are closer to $2.09 and in Vernon they’re about $2.06, according to GasBuddy.com.

The cheapest gas in Kelowna is $1.97.9, in Kamloops it’s $1.89.9, in Vernon it’s $1.94.9 and in Penticton it’s $1.97.5.

Ouchi said there are still the same old downsides to having an electric car like limited range and 20 to 30 minute charge times, but it’s worth it for the savings these days.

“My kids, if they have to use a vehicle or something like that, I guess they put their 20 bucks in for what it is. And they’re not driving much either,” he said.

The government has cut the carbon tax and reduced the federal fuel excise tax. Without those tax cuts a litre of gas would be around 27 cents higher.

“Before we paid the government… now the gas stations are actually shoving it in their profits,” Ouchi said.

Electric vehicle charging stations are easier to find in Kelowna than they were several years ago.

Kelowna has 196 charging stations around the city, and 18 of those are free, according to ChargeHub.

Charging an electric vehicle at home typically costs between $6 and $8 while using a fast public charger it’s closer to $20.

UBC professor of supply chain economics, Werner Antweiler, said these prices are likely to go higher as the U.S. and Israel continue to wage war on Iran, blocking 20 per cent of the world’s oil from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

“That means that prices will need to rise much further than they are today to balance supply and demand,” he previously told iNFOnews.ca.

“My prediction is we’ll be in for a summer of very high prices that will continue throughout the summer and even longer.”