To EV or not to EV, that is the question
Sunday, 22 March 2026
Kevin Norquay is a senior writer for The Post and Sunday Star-Times. This is his weekly explainer.
EXPLAINER: How high must petrol soar before an electric vehicle (EV) makes economic sense?
Simply put: it depends on how much money you have to spend, how far you drive, how much petrol costs, and how much electricity is.
One certainty is the higher the price of petrol goes, the more attractive energy alternatives looks. TradeMe this week pointed to a 142% uptick in EV interest on its website.
At today’s prices, an EV saves about $1000 a year for the average Kiwi driver so it takes well over a decade to claw back the higher EV purchase price.
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But if petrol prices go even higher, should you drive more kilometres than most, or cheaper EVs turn up on the market - new or second-hand - then payback time falls.
And the sticky one for politicians: road user charges (RUCs) almost double the time it takes the average EV owner to break even, and that’s nothing to do with Iran.
Based on Ministry of Transport household travel survey data, the average Kiwi drives roughly 10,000-12,000km a year.
Assuming it’s in a petrol car burning 7 litres/100km and petrol is at $3.19 a litre, that takes $2367 out of the annual household budget.
Right, now get out of your petrol car, reader, and try this 18kwh EV: do the same amount of driving, charge it at home at an average of $0.30/kwh, and cough up road user charges of $76 per 1000 km.
Now, you’re saving about $1000 a year - so every $1000 extra you pay to buy an EV takes one year to claw back in energy savings. At $15,000 extra, it’s 15 years.
If petrol rises to $3.30, the payback time drops to around 12 years, if you drive 15,000km annually savings jump by around $1500 a year. Now your EV is paid off in a decade.
If road user charges (RUC) didn’t exist ($806 for 12,000km) the EV would be paid off a year sooner. So, the crucial numbers are: petrol price, electricity price, EV price (and that’s the big one).
A slump in EV sales (from one in four sales, to one in 10) followed the removal of the Clean Car Discount at the end of 2023 and the introduction of RUC for EVs in April 2024.
EVs have fewer moving parts so are cheaper to maintain and there are no oil costs, but resale value and depreciation are uncertain, and drivers get range anxiety (how far will it go?), which can hold them back psychologically.
Data released from Evnex, an NZ smart EV charger manufacturer, says its calculations of annual savings adds up to $34,987.20 over the average age of a New Zealand vehicle, which is 14.8 years.
Evnex’s data is drawn from its network of 9,000 chargers throughout New Zealand. It shows that charging an EV at home costs just $380 per year on average, compared to approximately $2,744 for petrol.*
Put another way, a full year of EV charging costs less than eight weeks of filling up at the pump.
“Most people know EVs are cheaper to run, but very few realise quite how dramatic the gap is,” says Ed Harvey, CEO of Evnex, of his figures.
Now to purchase price: TradeMe is full of sub $10,000 Nissan Leaf EVs, a popular short trip shopping basket, many of them with a range between charges of below 200km.
Brand new, the lowest-priced options found was the Chinese-made Dongfeng Box from about $26,990, and the BYD Atto Essential at $29,990. Among petrol cars, the most basic MG3 undercuts the Box by about $3,000.
Auto Trader raised concerns about the safety of the Box, and preferred the slightly more expensive Suzuki Swift GLZ (petrol).
A better comparison might be the MG ZS, which comes in petrol, hybrid and EV versions at relatively affordable prices. Which one should you choose, given their similarities?
Petrol if: purchase price is the issue and you drive very little.
Hybrid if: you do a mix of open road and city driving, and wish to avoid road user charges, and the hassle they present.
Electric if: you can charge at home. In some cases it can be cheaper than the hybrid, by there is the RUC to contend with.
A flush of new people have been interacting with the EVDB.nz database, says operator James Foster. Mostly, they’re looking at the lowest priced EVs.
“There are people now tentatively considering an EV … and that’s scary for them. But a trusted brand like Toyota is not scary,” he says.
So crunch the numbers, and you could soon be cruising along the straights of State Highway 1, unconcerned about the Straits of Hormuz.