EV running costs in 2026: do the numbers still work?

The RUC exemption is gone and per-kilometre charges are now a real line item. We run the actual numbers for Leaf, Ioniq 5 and MG4 owners against petrol and hybrid alternatives.

The Clean Car Discount is gone, the RUC exemption is gone, and the used import premiums that made an early Leaf feel like a bargain have largely normalised. What is left is the raw arithmetic of ownership. Let's do it properly.

The three EVs that dominate the Canterbury used market right now are the Nissan Leaf, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, and the MG4. They represent three different price points, three different range brackets, and three very different ownership profiles. Putting them against a Toyota Aqua hybrid and a 2.0-litre petrol SUV covers most of what real buyers are choosing between.

What RUCs actually cost you

From 1 January 2026, light EVs pay $76 per 1,000 km in road user charges. A driver covering 20,000 km a year pays $1,520. At 25,000 km, that is $1,900. At 30,000 km, which is not unusual for a tradesperson or rural commuter, it is $2,280, paid upfront in licence blocks.

For comparison, a petrol vehicle pays nothing in RUCs. It pays at the pump, with fuel excise duty baked into the price. At current petrol prices of roughly $2.60 to $2.80 per litre for 91, a petrol car doing 20,000 km at 8 litres per 100 km is spending around $4,160 to $4,480 on fuel annually. A hybrid like the Aqua, doing 4.5 litres per 100 km in real-world mixed driving, lands at about $2,340 to $2,520.

Now add electricity. A Leaf doing 20,000 km at roughly 16 kWh per 100 km consumes around 3,200 kWh. At a blended home charging rate of 28 to 32 cents per kWh in Canterbury, that is $896 to $1,024 in power. Add the $1,520 in RUCs and your total energy-plus-road-tax bill is approximately $2,416 to $2,544. That is still cheaper than the petrol equivalent, but it is now in the same suburb as the Aqua hybrid, and the Aqua does not require you to think about charging infrastructure, range anxiety on the road to Queenstown, or a $12,000 battery replacement at 150,000 km.

The Ioniq 5 is more efficient per kilometre than the Leaf but costs significantly more to buy. A tidy 2022 Ioniq 5 is sitting around $42,000 to $48,000 at most Christchurch dealers. A comparable-year RAV4 Hybrid is in the same bracket. The Ioniq 5 wins on fuel costs by a meaningful margin over a straight petrol RAV4, but against the hybrid it is closer than it looks, and the hybrid has a longer proven service history in the New Zealand fleet.

The MG4 makes the most interesting case. It is the cheapest entry point, sitting around $28,000 to $33,000 for a decent used example, and its efficiency is genuinely good. The real objection to the MG4 has always been resale uncertainty, and that has not gone away. If you are buying it to own for eight years and 180,000 km, the running cost numbers are convincing. If you are buying it as a four-year hold, you are taking a view on residual values that the market has not yet settled.

The high-mileage question

Here is where it gets interesting, and where the Canterbury context matters. High-mileage drivers were always the most obvious EV beneficiaries. The more kilometres you cover, the more the per-kilometre fuel saving compounds. That logic still holds, but the RUC now scales with every kilometre you drive.

At 30,000 km a year, a Leaf owner pays $2,280 in RUCs plus roughly $1,344 in electricity. Total: $3,624. A petrol hatchback doing 7 litres per 100 km at $2.70 a litre spends $5,670 on fuel. The Leaf is still $2,000 a year cheaper to run. That is real money.

But the Aqua hybrid at 30,000 km and 4.5 litres per 100 km spends $3,645. Functionally identical to the Leaf, with no RUC admin, no charging infrastructure requirement, and a parts and service network that covers every town in the South Island.

For my money, that is the honest story the numbers are telling in 2026. The Leaf is not uneconomical. It is just no longer obviously superior to a well-chosen hybrid for the typical Canterbury high-mileage driver.

What changes the calculation

Three things can tilt it back toward the EV. Cheap overnight power rates, particularly if you are on a controlled load or EV-specific tariff, can push electricity costs down meaningfully. Ownership duration matters enormously: the longer you hold it, the more the lower per-kilometre cost accumulates against the purchase premium. And driving pattern counts: motorway-heavy, predictable-distance commuting is where EVs are most efficient and where range anxiety is least relevant.

The driver who charges at home every night, commutes 80 km a day on sealed roads, and plans to own for a decade is still making a sensible financial choice with a Leaf or MG4. The driver who does variable distances, occasionally needs to cross the Lindis Pass, and tends to change cars every three years is looking at a hybrid and finding it harder to argue against.

Frankly, the exemption was always doing a lot of heavy lifting in the EV value proposition. Now it is gone, buyers deserve a clear-eyed look at what the numbers actually say, rather than what the 2022 brochures promised.