I spent an evening trying to work out the real EV running costs in Sydney for a mid-size electric SUV, and gave up on the internet fairly quickly. A lot of what’s still online was written while NSW was handing out EV incentives that ended more than two years ago, and a lot of the rest is published by people who sell chargers.

So I did it myself, with a spreadsheet and the NSW government’s own fee schedules. Here’s what came out.

The headline number people quote is the fuel saving, and it’s real. Charging at home overnight costs about a quarter of what petrol costs. But there are three other line items that move in the opposite direction, and nobody puts them in the brochure.

There’s a $45,000 line and almost everything sits above it

NSW charges $3 per $100 on a car up to $45,000. Above that it switches to $1,350 plus $5 per $100 on the amount over the line.

Almost every mid-size electric SUV on sale here is above it. The Geely EX5 is the notable exception at $41,990, and its own line-up shows what the change of rate does: the Inspire trim is $4,000 dearer and crosses the line, which adds $140 to the duty. Most of that is just the higher price, but $20 of it is the threshold itself. Every other car below pays the higher rate on everything above $45,000.

Model	List price	Stamp duty	Rego + green slip	On the road
Geely EX5 Complete	$41,990	$1,260	$1,330	$44,580
Geely EX5 Inspire	$45,990	$1,400	$1,330	$48,720
XPeng G6 RWD Standard	$51,800	$1,690	$1,330	$54,820
BYD Sealion 7 Premium	$54,990	$1,850	$1,330	$58,170
XPeng G6 Long Range	$56,800	$1,940	$1,330	$60,070
Zeekr 7X RWD	$57,900	$1,995	$1,330	$61,225
Tesla Model Y RWD	$58,900	$2,045	$1,330	$62,275
Zeekr 7X Long Range	$63,900	$2,295	$1,330	$67,525
Zeekr 7X Performance	$72,900	$2,745	$1,330	$76,975

The registration column is $84 registration, $596 motor vehicle tax for a car in the 1,501 to 2,500 kg band, and $650 for a green slip. That green slip figure is an estimate rather than a quote. The 2025 state average was $608, insurers filed increases in January, and Sydney sits above the state average, but yours will land somewhere between about $450 and $900 depending on your age, record and postcode.

The duty step also bites inside a single model. Going from a Zeekr 7X RWD to the Performance adds $15,000 to the list price and another $750 in duty on top of that. Nobody mentions the second number when you’re standing in the showroom deciding whether to go long range.

Up until the end of 2023, every number in that duty column would have been zero.

The incentives that ended while nobody was looking

From September 2021 to the end of 2023, NSW ran two schemes. Battery electric vehicles with a dutiable value under $78,000 were exempt from stamp duty, and there was a separate $3,000 rebate for cars under $68,750, capped at the first 25,000 vehicles. The two had different price caps, which catches people out: on the table above, a Zeekr 7X Performance would have got the exemption and not the rebate. Both schemes finished on 31 December 2023.

I mention this because a lot of the advice still floating around online was written while they were running and has never been updated. If you’ve read somewhere that EVs are stamp duty free in NSW, that was true, and it stopped being true more than two years ago.

Nothing has been announced to bring either of them back, so don’t hold off buying on the strength of a rumour. The 1 July 2027 date that gets quoted in EV discussions belongs to the road user charge further down this page, not to stamp duty, and the two get mixed up constantly.

Your rego bill depends on how heavy the car is

This is the part I didn’t know before I started, and it’s the one that changes between variants rather than between brands.

NSW registration isn’t one fee. It’s $84 for the registration, plus a motor vehicle tax based on your car’s tare weight, plus a compulsory third party green slip. The weight component is banded, and the bands are chunky:

Tare weight	Annual motor vehicle tax
Up to 970 kg	$278
971 to 1,150 kg	$322
1,151 to 1,500 kg	$391
1,501 to 2,500 kg	$596
2,501 to 2,790 kg	$860

Batteries weigh a lot, but where that hurts is narrower than you’d think. A mid-size petrol SUV is usually somewhere around 1,600 kg and a mid-size electric one around 2,300 kg, and both of those sit in the same 1,501 to 2,500 kg band. Same $596. In this class the extra 700 kg costs you nothing.

Go down a size and it does bite. A petrol small SUV at 1,400 kg pays $391, while its electric equivalent clears 1,600 kg and pays $596. That’s $205 a year for the life of the car, on a difference you can’t see.

The other place it bites is at the top. Cross 2,500 kg and you go from $596 to $860, which is $264 a year or $1,320 across five years of ownership.

The heaviest cars in this class are getting close to that line. Published kerb weights for the larger all-wheel-drive variants run into the mid 2,400s, and tare is measured differently and sits a little lower, so most of them clear the band comfortably. Most is not all, and tare weight is printed on the compliance plate rather than the price list. Ask for it on the exact variant before you commit, because $264 a year is worth a thirty second phone call. If it’s the 7X you’re looking at, Zeekr Chatswood can pull the figure for a specific build.

The green slip is the part of your rego bill that moves most. Run your own details through the government’s price comparison tool rather than trusting any single figure, including mine.

Charging, and the one question that decides everything

A mid-size electric SUV uses somewhere around 17.8 kWh per 100 km. Drive 15,000 km in a year and you’ll get through roughly 2,670 kWh.

What that costs you depends entirely on where you plug in.

How you charge	Rate	Per year
Home, off-peak time-of-use	18 to 22c/kWh	$481 to $587
Home, flat rate	33 to 35c/kWh	$881 to $935
Public fast charging only	59 to 79c/kWh	$1,575 to $2,109

Public networks in Sydney sat at roughly 59 to 72c on Chargefox, 70 to 75c on Evie, 75 to 79c on NRMA and 79c at Tesla Superchargers when I checked in mid-2026. Destination chargers at shopping centres are often free, though you’re relying on one being available.

Two things that table doesn’t capture. The home rows are worked from energy at the wheels, and your meter will read 8 to 15 per cent higher because AC charging loses some on the way in, so add roughly $40 to $90 to the home figures. Public DC pricing is already charged at the plug, so that row needs no adjustment.

The petrol equivalent at 8 L/100 km runs $2,280 a year at $1.90 a litre, or $2,424 at the 202 cents Sydney was averaging in early August 2026. Pump prices move on a cycle of several weeks, so treat that as a band rather than a forecast.

So charging at home on an off-peak plan saves you roughly $1,690 to $1,940 a year against petrol. That’s the figure the fuel comparison rests on.

Now look at the bottom row. Charge only at public rapid chargers and the annual saving collapses to somewhere between $171 and $849. Most of the advantage was in the tariff, not the car. If you live in an apartment without a dedicated space, that’s your number.

This is the single most important thing to work out before you buy, and it has nothing to do with which car you pick. It’s about where you park.

Insurance is the one everybody leaves out

Electric cars cost more to insure in Australia. CHOICE collected quotes in January 2026 and put the average annual premium for a new EV at $2,440 against $1,865 for a new petrol car. That’s $575 a year, and I’ve used the new-car figures throughout because this article is about buying one.

The reasons are structural rather than temporary. Parts networks here are still thin, a lot of components come from overseas, and repairs need technicians with high voltage training. CHOICE also points at the price tier of the brand and at theft rates and safety equipment. The offsetting argument is that electric drivetrains have fewer moving parts and go wrong less often, which is true, but the repairs cost more when they do happen.

What surprised me more was the spread between brands. In the same new-car data, Geely comes in among the cheapest to insure at around $1,622 while Tesla sits near the top at about $2,985. That’s $1,363 a year, or $6,815 over five years, between two cars in the same segment.

Some of that gap is just price, since the Tesla costs more to start with. Not all of it: Kia sits at $1,774 and BYD at $2,220 on cars that are only a few thousand dollars apart. Get quotes on your shortlist before you sign anything, not after.

Servicing is cheaper, not free

There’s a widespread belief that electric cars don’t need servicing. They need less servicing.

Zeekr’s capped price servicing on the 7X comes to $2,385 over five years, which is $477 a year. Intervals are 24 months or 40,000 km, with the first service free at 12 months. Other models in the class will differ.

An electric car has no engine oil and no spark plugs, but it isn’t maintenance free either. Cabin filters, coolant, brake fluid and reduction gear oil are all still on the schedule. I haven’t put a petrol servicing figure against the $2,385, because I couldn’t find one for a directly comparable car that I trusted enough to publish. The saving is real. I just can’t size it, so it stays out of the ledger below rather than going in as a guess.

Warranties in this segment are worth a separate look. Zeekr covers the vehicle for five years with unlimited kilometres and the battery for eight years or 160,000 km. On a car from a brand that’s only been here a couple of years, that battery number is doing a lot of reassuring.

The road user charge that may or may not arrive

One more thing to know about before you sign a five year finance contract.

NSW has legislated a distance-based charge for electric vehicles, due to start on 1 July 2027 or when EVs reach 30 per cent of new car sales, whichever comes first. The published rate for 2026-27 is 3.095 cents per kilometre for battery electric cars, which is about $464 at 15,000 km. The rate is indexed annually and the charge starts in a later financial year, so $464 is a floor rather than a forecast.

It may never arrive in this form. The High Court struck Victoria’s version down in 2023 as an unconstitutional excise, and NSW has been saying it is assessing the implications ever since. Treat it as a risk to budget for rather than a cost you have already incurred.

So is it actually cheaper?

Yes, if you can charge at home. If you can’t, the running cost case mostly disappears.

Here’s the annual picture on a mid-size electric SUV against its petrol equivalent, at 15,000 km a year.

In your favour: $1,690 to $1,940 saved on fuel if you charge at home off-peak, plus a servicing saving I haven’t sized. Registration is a wash at this size, since the petrol car sits in the same weight band.

Against you: about $575 more on insurance.

Net that out and the electric car is ahead by roughly $1,100 to $1,370 a year. That’s real money and worth having. It just isn’t the $1,900 the fuel line implies on its own.

Now run it for someone charging only at public rapid chargers. The fuel saving falls to between $171 and $849, and $575 of insurance takes most or all of it. On the worse end of that range the electric car costs about $400 a year more to run than the petrol one.

There’s one more comparison worth making, which is against yourself two years ago. A pre-2024 buyer of a Model Y RWD would have avoided $2,045 in stamp duty and collected a $3,000 rebate. At today’s running cost advantage it takes roughly four years to earn that $5,045 back. The car got no cheaper to run; the deal got worse.

That isn’t an argument against buying one. These cars are quicker, quieter and better equipped than the petrol cars they’re replacing, and for a lot of buyers that matters more than the running cost. Just go in with the real numbers instead of the brochure ones, and work out where you’re going to plug it in first.

Common questions

Do you pay stamp duty on an EV in NSW?

Yes. The exemption for electric vehicles under $78,000 ended on 31 December 2023. EVs now pay the normal passenger vehicle rate, which is $3 per $100 up to $45,000 and then $1,350 plus $5 per $100 above that. Nothing has been announced to bring the exemption back. The 1 July 2027 date people quote in connection with EVs is the start of the road user charge, which is a cost rather than a concession.

How much is registration for an electric car in NSW?

It’s $84 registration plus a motor vehicle tax set by your car’s tare weight plus a green slip. Most electric SUVs land in the 1,501 to 2,500 kg band, which is $596 a year. Anything over 2,500 kg pays $860. Green slips ranged from about $450 to $900 in 2025 against a state average of $608, and Sydney sits above that average, so $1,330 a year all up is a reasonable planning figure.

What does it cost to charge an EV at home in Sydney?

For a mid-size electric SUV doing 15,000 km a year, roughly $481 to $587 on an off-peak time-of-use plan, or $881 to $935 on a flat rate, plus 8 to 15 per cent for charging losses. Charging only at public fast chargers costs $1,575 to $2,109.

Is an EV cheaper to run than a petrol car?

On fuel, clearly, provided you charge at home. Off-peak home charging costs $481 to $587 a year against $2,280 to $2,424 for petrol at 8 L/100 km, depending on whether you use $1.90 a litre or the 202 cents Sydney was averaging in early August 2026. New EVs cost around $575 more a year to insure, which brings the net saving to roughly $1,100 to $1,370. Charge only at public rapid chargers and the fuel saving falls to between $171 and $849, and the insurance gap takes most or all of that.

When does the NSW road user charge start?

It’s scheduled for 1 July 2027, or when electric vehicles hit 30 per cent of new car sales. The published rate for 2026-27 is 3.095 cents per kilometre for battery electric vehicles, about $464 a year at 15,000 km, and it is indexed annually so the figure at commencement will be higher. Treat it as a risk rather than a certainty: the High Court struck down Victoria’s equivalent scheme in 2023 as an unconstitutional excise, and NSW has been saying it is assessing the implications ever since.