Every EV sales site loves the same trick: quote you the cheapest possible home-charging number, ignore everything else, and call it “running costs”. So let’s do the real sum instead. This is the real breakdown of EV running costs vs petrol in Australia, covering fuel, servicing, tyres, insurance and depreciation, all in, so you can work out whether switching actually saves you money or just moves the cost around.
Short version: an EV genuinely undercuts petrol on the day-to-day stuff, but two line items (insurance and depreciation) quietly claw a big chunk of that saving back. Here’s the number that matters, item by item.
Fuel vs charging: where the EV actually wins
This is the headline saving, and it’s real. According to ActewAGL’s EV-versus-petrol comparison, charging an EV at home works out to roughly 4c per kilometre, about $600 a year over 15,000km, against about 14c per kilometre, or roughly $2,160 a year, for a comparable petrol car.
Petrol’s number moves with the pump. As of the NRMA’s weekly fuel report, the national average for Unleaded 91 was sitting in the mid-160s in cents per litre. A car sipping 8L/100km at that price is spending roughly $13.30 per 100km. So the per-kilometre gap holds up: petrol costs you around three times more per kilometre than home charging.
Put it over a year at the typical 15,000km:
- Petrol at about 14c/km: about $2,160 a year in fuel.
- Home charging at about 4 to 7c/km: about $600 to $1,050 a year, depending on your tariff.
- The saving: roughly $1,100 to $1,560 a year, and more if you’ve got solar and charge off your own roof for close to nothing.
Here’s the catch the sales sites skip: those cheap numbers assume you charge at home on a decent tariff. Public fast charging is a completely different animal. Gridly’s charging-cost guide puts the big DC networks at roughly 40c to 75c per kWh depending on speed, which works out to about 10 to 15c per kilometre, two to three times the cost of charging at home. (kWh = kilowatt-hour, the unit your electricity is billed in.) Charge exclusively on ultra-rapid DC and your “fuel” cost lands right back in petrol territory.
The truth: the fuel saving is genuine, but it lives and dies on home charging. No driveway, no cheap tariff, and the maths gets a lot tighter. If you’re weighing that up, our home charging setup guide walks through what you actually need.
Servicing and maintenance: fewer things to break
An EV has no oil, no spark plugs, no timing belt, no exhaust and a fraction of the moving parts. That shows up on the invoice. WhichCar’s servicing breakdown notes EV services focus on inspections and consumables (brake fluid, cabin filters, tyre rotation, cooling-system checks) rather than engine work, which keeps the bills down.
In practice, EV owners tend to budget a few hundred dollars a year against the $600 to $900 a typical petrol car racks up. Even Zecar’s Australian servicing comparison puts an EV like a BYD Atto 3 well under a petrol Kona over five years. Regenerative braking also means brake pads last far longer, because the motor does most of the slowing.
Call it another $300 to $500 a year in the EV’s favour. Not life-changing, but it’s real and it’s every year.
Tyres: the downside nobody advertises
Here’s one the EV cheerleaders go quiet on. EVs are heavier and deliver full torque instantly, and both of those chew through tyres faster. The RACV’s guide to EV tyres explains that the extra weight and instant torque mean EV rubber wears quicker, with the widely cited figure from tyre makers sitting at up to around 20% faster than an equivalent petrol car.
EV-specific tyres also cost more than the garden-variety set you’d throw on a Corolla. So budget for a fresh set sooner, and factor a slightly higher per-tyre price. It won’t wipe out your fuel savings, but if you’ve been told EVs are “basically free to run”, this is the asterisk.
Insurance: the saving-killer, part one
This is where the total-cost story turns. Insuring an EV in Australia costs meaningfully more than insuring a petrol car. Based on a market-representative sample collected in January 2026, CHOICE found the average EV premium was $2,545 a year versus $1,702 for petrol, about $843 more, every year.
The reasons are structural: fewer trained EV repairers, more imported parts, and battery packs that can account for a huge slice of the car’s value, so even a moderate prang can total the vehicle. That $843 gap alone eats more than half of a typical fuel saving. It’s the single biggest reason “EVs are cheaper to run” needs an asterisk, and it deserves its own deep-dive, which is why we cover it separately.
Depreciation: the saving-killer, part two
The quietest cost of all, and often the largest. Used EVs have been losing value faster than petrol cars. Citing the AADA/AutoGrab automotive insights data, Cars24 reports a one-year-old EV in Australia shed about 25% of its value versus 11.5% for petrol, with the average EV retaining roughly 60% after three years.
Now, this is exactly why buying used flips the script. Someone else already ate that brutal first-year hit. Buy a two or three-year-old EV and you dodge the steepest part of the depreciation curve entirely, which is the whole reason the used market is where the value is. We break the numbers down in our EV depreciation explainer, and if you want to see where prices actually sit right now, start with used EV prices in 2026.
What the yearly saving really adds up to
Add it up and the picture is clear, not magic. On fuel and servicing, an EV saves a suburban driver roughly $1,400 to $2,000 a year. Insurance hands about $843 of that straight back, tyres nibble a bit more, and depreciation is the wildcard that depends entirely on what you paid.
An EV genuinely saves you money when: you can charge at home on a decent tariff (ideally with solar), you drive enough kilometres for the fuel gap to matter, and, critically, you buy used so someone else copped the first-year depreciation. That combination is a clear win.
An EV probably won’t save you money when: you’re relying on public fast charging, you drive low kilometres, you’re buying new, or you land a high insurance quote on a pricier model. In those cases the running-cost advantage shrinks to almost nothing.
The play, then, is the one this whole site is built around: a well-bought used EV, charged at home. Get that right and the maths works. Get it wrong and you’ve just swapped a fuel bill for an insurance-and-depreciation bill. If you’re shopping to a budget, our picks for the best used EVs under $30k and best used EVs under $40k are the place to start.
Is it actually cheaper to run an EV than a petrol car in Australia?
Yes, on fuel and servicing: home charging costs roughly a third of petrol per kilometre, and EVs need less routine maintenance. But higher insurance and steeper depreciation can claw back most of that saving, so it depends on whether you charge at home and buy used.
How much does it cost to charge an EV at home vs filling up with petrol?
Home charging works out to about 4c per kilometre, roughly $600 a year over 15,000km, against about 14c per kilometre (around $2,160 a year) for petrol. That’s a fuel saving of roughly $1,100 to $1,560, but only if you’re charging at home rather than on public fast chargers.
Do EVs really cost more to insure?
On average, yes. CHOICE’s January 2026 data put the average EV premium about $843 a year higher than an equivalent petrol car, driven by costly battery packs and a thinner EV repair network. Always get a quote for the specific model before you buy.
