With energy supplies intense increasingly and environmental protection being concerned in particularly, electric vehicle gained great development in recent years with the characteristics of low exhaust emission, low noise and independent of petroleum. For electric vehicle, the onboard battery capacity is limited. Therefore, the technology of energy utilization improvement has become the research focus. An improved A * algorithm based energy optimal path planning method for electric vehicle was proposed and verified. Energy consumption cost function was built with consideration of the energy loss and recuperation along the path. New heuristic estimated energy cost function was designed to improve A * algorithm. The heuristic estimated energy cost function was proved to be admissible and consistent, which can ensure the optimality of the improved A * algorithm. According to the range anxiety problem, a feasible energy optimal path planning method was proposed with consideration of the state of charge battery, the positions and altitudes of the charging stations and destination. Simulation experiments showed that the proposed method can find the energy optimal path between the origin and the destination. When the battery energy was low, the proposed path planning method can find the feasible energy optimal path with a charging station to reduce range anxiety, which verified the rationality and feasibility of the proposed method.