About

This site works out what an electric car actually costs to run in South Australia — charging, electricity plans, home chargers, registration — and shows the arithmetic so you can disagree with it.

Why South Australia first

Electricity retailing in Australia is state-based. Tariffs, feed-in rates, network charges and rebates are set per state, and the distributor’s rules differ. A national guide has to average those away or hedge. This one does not: SA Power Networks, South Australian tariffs, South Australian rebates.

Where something is national — the federal FBT treatment of novated leases, for instance — it says so.

Where the numbers come from

Two rules, held to on every page:

1. Every figure carries a source. A price with no source is a rumour.
2. Anything that could not be verified is flagged as unverified rather than smoothed over. Where a manufacturer’s own dates contradict each other, both are shown and the contradiction is named.

Where I am giving judgement rather than data, I say which.

The calculator computes from your inputs. The presets it offers are labelled with whether their source has been checked, and an unverified preset says so on screen — if you want an answer you can rely on, use the rate off your own bill.

What this is not

Not financial or legal advice. Not a dealer, an installer, an energy retailer or a broker, and not affiliated with any of them. Links that earn this site money are disclosed on the page they appear on as well as in the Disclosure.

Corrections

If a number here is wrong, say so and it gets fixed with a note on the page saying what changed. A silently edited figure is worse than the original error.