About EV Running Cost

This is one of four sites covering New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. New Zealand is the market most often folded into an Australian page and then quietly got wrong, which is the reason this one exists.

The cars are closer to Australia than to anywhere else, and that is exactly the trap. Of the 78 models on our New Zealand list, 34 also sell in Australia, which means well over half do not. Assuming the two markets are interchangeable gets the other half wrong.

The costs are not interchangeable either. Prices are in New Zealand dollars against New Zealand retail electricity, and the charging networks are ChargeNet, Z Energy and bp charge rather than the Australian operators. Distances are in kilometres and petrol comparisons in litres, as in Australia, but almost nothing else carries across.

And some costs exist only here. The road user charges calculator is on this site alone, because electric vehicles in New Zealand pay road user charges by distance rather than through fuel duty. The other sites carry their own such tools for the same reason.

This site is built and maintained by one person, working on it outside a full-time job. I am based in Australia, which matters more here than it would elsewhere, because New Zealand is the market most often folded into an Australian page and quietly got wrong.

It started with my own switch to an electric car, and with the discovery that the information needed to make that decision was scattered across a dozen sources that rarely agreed. Most of it could not be applied to your own circumstances without a lot of digging.

So this site is maintained separately rather than derived from the Australian one. The vehicle list is the New Zealand list, and well over half of it does not overlap with Australia. The charging networks are ChargeNet, Z Energy and bp charge, and they are what the charging cost calculator and the comparison against petrol are priced against. Prices are in New Zealand dollars, and the road user charges calculator exists because electric vehicles here pay by distance rather than through fuel duty.

There is no commercial relationship with any manufacturer, electricity retailer or charging network to disclose, and no sponsored content. If a figure here is wrong, tell me and it gets corrected at the source, so every page that uses it updates at once.

EV Running Cost is an independent New Zealand site. It is not owned by, funded by, or affiliated with any vehicle manufacturer, electricity retailer or charging network.

It is independently run and self-funded, not produced by a content agency or a commercial partner, and it carries no sponsored content.

The case for trusting what is here rests on the working being shown rather than on who wrote it. Every default figure the calculators use is listed on the methodology page with its basis and the date it was last checked, and figures that are assumptions are labelled as assumptions rather than presented as sourced fact. Where a number is an estimate, the site says so, and where a range is more honest than a single figure, it gives a range. If something here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed.

Advertising, served by Google AdSense. There are no affiliate relationships and no sponsored content. The full position is on the disclosure page.

Nothing about how the site is funded affects the numbers in the calculators. Every default value is listed, with its basis, on the methodology page.

Almost every number you see on this site is calculated at the moment the page loads, not typed into the prose. Electricity price tiers, charger power levels, vehicle specifications, typical efficiency and the petrol price all live in a small set of central data files, and the calculators, the guides and the reference tables all read from those same files.

That has a practical consequence worth knowing about as a reader: the site cannot quietly contradict itself. A cost per 100 km quoted in a guide is produced by the same code and the same defaults as the equivalent figure in the calculator beside it. When a default changes, every page that depends on it changes at the same time. There is no separate set of hand-written numbers drifting out of date in the background.

Each page carries a last-reviewed date, and that date is updated when the figures underneath it are checked or changed. Where a default is an assumption rather than something sourced from a published figure, the methodology page says so explicitly instead of presenting all the inputs as equally solid.

What these numbers are, and what they are not

They are estimates good enough to plan and compare with. They are not a quote, and they are not advice. Electricity pricing in New Zealand varies by retailer, state, tariff and time of day; public charging varies between networks and between individual sites; and real-world efficiency varies with terrain, climate, load and driving style. Any tool that gave you a single confident figure for all of that would be easier to read and less honest.

This is why the calculators show every price tier at once rather than one answer, and why you are encouraged to replace the defaults with your own figures. The site is at its most accurate when it is using your car, your tariff and your measured consumption — which is the entire reason the My EV settings exist.

This site does not give financial, tax or purchasing advice, and it cannot tell you whether a particular car or electricity plan is right for you. For that, your retailer holds your actual tariff and your dealer holds the actual price.

Setting your vehicle and your electricity rates does not create an account and does not send anything to a server. Those settings are written to your own browser's local storage, which is why they survive between visits on the same device, why they sync between tabs, and why they disappear if you clear your browsing data. Nobody running this site can see what car you drive or what you pay for power. You can clear the settings yourself at any time from the My EV panel. The full detail, including what the advertising provider does independently of this, is on the privacy policy.

If a figure here is wrong, or a calculator gives a result that does not match your own bill, please say so. Corrections are made promptly and the review date on each page is updated when the underlying figures change.