A year of full EV road user charges: what it actually costs

The RUC exemption for light EVs ended 1 April 2024. Twelve months on, we look at what that means for Leaf and BYD Atto 3 owners in Canterbury and whether the used-EV price case still holds.

The free ride is over. Since 1 April 2024, light electric vehicles in New Zealand have paid road user charges at the same rate as diesel vehicles in equivalent weight classes. For most Nissan Leaf variants, that is $76 per 1,000 km. For the BYD Atto 3, which tips the scales above 2,000 kg, the rate is lower per kilometre but the heavier mass classification puts it at around $53 per 1,000 km. Neither number is catastrophic on its own. Together with what has happened to used EV prices and the removal of the Clean Car Discount, the full picture is worth sitting with.

The exemption existed to encourage EV uptake. It worked, at least partly. Leaf prices spiked, Atto 3 orders stretched out, and the used market for anything with a plug tightened considerably through 2022 and 2023. What the exemption also did was mask the true cost of ownership for buyers who were running the numbers on a fuel-versus-electricity comparison and not including RUCs in the EV column.

What the annual bill actually looks like

Take a Canterbury family doing 15,000 km a year, which is close to the national average. On a Nissan Leaf, RUCs run to $1,140 per year. Add electricity. Charging mostly at home at roughly 30 cents per kWh, and the Leaf's real-world efficiency of around 6 to 7 km per kWh in mixed Canterbury driving, including winter heating load, puts energy costs at somewhere between $640 and $750 annually. Total running cost on the energy and road funding side: around $1,800 to $1,900 per year.

A Toyota Aqua covering the same distance at petrol around $2.75 per litre and averaging 4.5 litres per 100 km is spending about $1,856 on fuel. No RUCs. The gap between the Leaf and the Aqua on annual running costs is, in real driving conditions, nearly nothing.

The Atto 3 case is a little different. It is a larger, heavier vehicle competing against things like the Mazda CX-5 or petrol X-Trail rather than a city hybrid. At 15,000 km, RUCs cost around $795. Charging costs on its 60 kWh-plus battery, again factoring in real-world efficiency rather than the optimistic WLTP figure, add another $900 to $1,000. A CX-5 in petrol form doing the same distance at 8 litres per 100 km and $2.75 per litre spends around $3,300 on fuel. The Atto 3 still wins that comparison comfortably, but the margin has narrowed from where it stood when RUCs were zero and the Clean Car Discount was trimming the purchase price.

Have used EV prices adjusted?

They have moved, but the direction has not been clean. Clean Car Discount removal in late 2023 knocked used EV values, and 2024 saw further softening as buyers recalibrated. A tidy 40 kWh Leaf that was fetching $19,000 to $21,000 in early 2023 can now be found in the $14,000 to $17,000 range depending on condition and battery health. That is a meaningful drop and, for a cash buyer, it changes the ownership equation in the EV's favour again.

The problem is battery degradation transparency. A 2018 Leaf with 80,000 km on it might show a nine-bar or ten-bar battery on the instrument display, but real-world range in a Canterbury winter, with heating running and the battery cold-soaked overnight, can be 30 to 40 percent below the rated figure. Buyers need to check SOH with a diagnostic tool before committing, not rely on the dashboard bars. A Leaf with genuine 85 percent SOH at $15,500 is a reasonable deal. One at $14,000 with 72 percent SOH is a trap.

BYD Atto 3 values have held better because supply was constrained and the vehicles are newer. Expect to pay $38,000 to $44,000 for a used example with reasonable kilometres. At those prices, the running cost advantage over a comparable petrol SUV is real, but the payback period has stretched.

Is electric still worth it in Canterbury?

For city driving and the daily Christchurch commute, a late-model Leaf with a healthy battery still makes sense. You feel the cost difference at the end of the month when you are not stopping for petrol. RUCs are an annual or periodic purchase, so the out-of-pocket rhythm is different from fuelling up, which can make the true cost easier to ignore in either direction.

For anyone doing higher mileage, say 20,000 km or more, the maths tilts more firmly toward electric because the running cost gap widens faster than the RUC bill grows. The person the EV argument has genuinely weakened for is the moderate-mileage buyer who was relying on zero RUCs to tip the calculation. That subsidy is gone, and the numbers need to be run honestly with the $76 per 1,000 km figure sitting in the spreadsheet where it belongs.

The hybrid is no longer the automatically inferior choice. On pure cost grounds, for a buyer doing 12,000 to 15,000 km a year, a well-priced Aqua or Note e-Power is a legitimate alternative to an older Leaf. That is a sentence you would not have written two years ago.