EV running costs vs petrol imports: has the gap closed in 2026?

RUC charges for light EVs have been in place for over a year. We run the numbers on a used Leaf and BYD Atto 3 against comparable petrol imports to see what Canterbury drivers actually save.

The RUC clock on light EVs has now been running for over a year, and the question that was always going to surface has surfaced: does the case for buying a used electric car still hold up when you factor in road user charges, real petrol prices, and the removal of purchase subsidies?

The honest answer is: yes, mostly, but with less margin than the EV faithful would like to admit.

What the numbers actually look like

Take a 2019 Nissan Leaf with the 40kWh battery. You can find clean, complied examples in Canterbury for $18,000 to $22,000. Against that, a 2019 Toyota Aqua in similar condition sits at $14,000 to $17,000. The Leaf costs more to buy. That gap has to be recovered through running costs, and this is where the arithmetic gets interesting.

At $76 per 1,000km, a Leaf owner driving 15,000km a year pays $1,140 in RUCs. Add home charging costs at roughly $0.28 per kWh on a standard Meridian or Contact plan, with the Leaf using around 18kWh per 100km in mixed Canterbury driving, and you are looking at about $756 in electricity. Total annual energy and road tax bill: roughly $1,900.

The Aqua, by comparison, returns around 4.5 litres per 100km in real-world use. At $2.75 per litre average for 2025, that is $1,856 in petrol for the same 15,000km. No RUC on petrol vehicles. So the Aqua's annual fuel bill is actually lower than the Leaf's combined energy and RUC spend, or near enough to make no meaningful difference at the household level.

The Leaf's advantage, such as it is, comes down to servicing. No oil changes, no transmission fluid, simpler brakes from regenerative charging. Budget $300 to $400 per year versus $700 to $900 for the Aqua. Over five years that adds up, but it does not transform the picture.

The BYD Atto 3 is a different conversation

The BYD Atto 3 is a larger car playing in a different segment, so the comparison shifts accordingly. New Atto 3 Standard Range models have come down to around $44,000 to $46,000, and used 2023 examples are appearing at $34,000 to $38,000 as the early adopter wave cycles through. Against that you might compare a 2022 Mazda CX-5 petrol, which sits at $32,000 to $36,000 used.

The Atto 3's 50kWh usable battery and real-world consumption of around 17 to 19kWh per 100km means annual charging costs of roughly $680 to $760, plus $1,140 in RUCs. So around $1,900 to $1,900 again. The CX-5 2.0-litre petrol returns about 8.5 litres per 100km in mixed driving. At $2.75 a litre, that is $3,516 per year for 15,000km.

Here the gap is real. The Atto 3 saves a genuine $1,500 to $1,600 per year in running costs against the petrol CX-5, before servicing. Over five years that is $7,500 to $8,000, which starts to bridge the purchase price difference.

The honest caveat is that the Atto 3 is a relatively new entrant with an uncertain long-term reliability and resale picture in New Zealand. That uncertainty has a cost you cannot put a precise number on.

What Canterbury winter actually does to the calculation

Range anxiety is not a generic concern. It is a specific concern when you are running a 40kWh Leaf in minus-five-degree temperatures and the heater is pulling 3 to 4kW continuously. Real-world winter range on an older Leaf in those conditions can drop to 140 to 160km. Christchurch to Tekapo is 225km. That trip requires a charge stop, which means planning, which means the Leaf is not the right car for that particular use case without a DC fast charger network you are prepared to rely on.

The Atto 3's larger battery softens this considerably. But for a driver doing regular mountain passes in winter, a late-model hybrid is frankly a more practical answer than any current used EV in the New Zealand market.

For the majority of Canterbury drivers doing 40 to 80km of daily urban and suburban travel, with occasional longer runs on warmer months, the winter range concern is largely academic. Most people never test it.

Where this leaves the buying decision

The RUC change did not kill the EV value case. It narrowed it, particularly in the city car segment where the Leaf competes against efficient Japanese hybrids. The gap between running a Leaf and an Aqua is now thin enough that purchase price, condition, and personal convenience should drive the decision more than fuel cost projections.

For anyone moving from a thirsty petrol SUV to something like the Atto 3, the numbers still work. The running cost saving is meaningful and accumulates over time.

For my money, the most interesting development is not EV versus petrol. It is the growing case for late-model hybrid imports as the rational middle ground: no RUC, no range anxiety, no charging infrastructure dependency, and fuel economy that has genuinely improved across the Japanese import pool. The 2022 and 2023 Note e-Power models showing up on the market right now might be the least glamorous but most sensible answer to this entire question.