Charging cost calculator

Work out what charging costs you, from your own numbers. Nothing here is a quoted price: the calculator does arithmetic on the inputs you give it, and every preset it offers carries a label saying whether its source has been checked.

Coverage: South Australia is the only state sourced so far. The state selector exists because Australian tariffs are set per state, and it will say plainly when a state has no rates behind it yet. Everywhere else the calculator still works — it just uses the rate off your own bill, which is the figure that is right anyway.

This calculator does the arithmetic in your browser, so it needs JavaScript. Without it you can still work the numbers by hand: energy used per year is your annual kilometres ÷ 100 × your car's kWh/100 km, and the cost is that figure multiplied by your rate in cents per kWh.

State Tariffs in Australia are set per state, so the presets below change with this.

Kilometres a year The average Australian passenger car does roughly 12,000–14,000 km a year. Use your own odometer if you know it. Vehicle Segment figures are indicative, not model-specific, and do not change with the state. See the note under the calculator. Consumption (kWh / 100 km) Editable. Real-world use typically runs 10–20% above the WLTP number on the windscreen sticker. Home electricity rate Take the rate off your own bill — that is the only figure that is certainly right. Rate in cents / kWh Includes GST as billed. Add supply charges separately if you want the all-in figure. Share charged at home (%) Most owners do the large majority at home. Public charging is where a trip's cost balloons. Public charging rate cents/kWh. Public network pricing varies by site and speed — check the network's own list. Petrol price $/litre. Pre-filled at $2.00 so the comparison shows — put in the price at your local servo for an answer that means something. Clear the field to hide the comparison entirely.

Working…

How the arithmetic works

Four steps, and you can check each one:

Energy used a year = your annual kilometres ÷ 100 × your car’s consumption in kWh per 100 km.
Split it between charging at home and charging away from home, by the percentage you set.
Cost each part = its energy × its rate. Home energy at your electricity rate, away-from-home energy at the public rate.
Add them. The result is what a year of charging costs you at today’s prices.

The four things that decide the answer

Your consumption figure. This is the one people get wrong, because the number on the windscreen sticker is a WLTP figure taken under favourable conditions. Real-world use typically runs 10–20% higher in mixed driving, and more on a cold morning or at a steady highway speed. If you own the car, read the trip meter — that is the only figure that describes your actual driving.

Your electricity rate. Tariffs in Australia are state-based and time-based, and this is where the biggest single difference sits. A flat anytime rate and a dedicated overnight window are not the same number, and the gap between them runs to hundreds of dollars a year for a typical driver. The calculator presets are drawn from the table below, and most of them are not yet verified against the retailer’s own plan document — the label tells you which.

How much you charge at home. Most owners do the large majority of charging at home because it is both cheaper and more convenient. Every percentage point you move towards public charging raises the total, because public DC fast charging costs several times a home rate.

What you are comparing against. The petrol figure is pre-filled at $2.00/L so the comparison is visible rather than hidden behind a blank field — half the argument for an electric car is the petrol you are not buying, and it used to take typing a price to see it. That pre-fill is dated and sourced: the ACCC’s weekly monitoring put Adelaide at $2.06/L and the five largest cities at $2.10/L on 11 September 2026, so $2.00 is deliberately round and slightly conservative.

It is also the one number here that will go stale. Petrol moves weekly and this default does not, so put in the price at your local servo — and if you clear the field, the comparison disappears rather than the calculator inventing a figure.

What this calculator deliberately does not include

So that you know what the total is not:

Supply charges. Electricity plans carry a daily supply charge on top of usage. The calculator uses your usage rate only. If a cheap overnight window comes with a high daily charge, the calculator alone will flatter it.
Solar. If you charge from your own rooftop generation, the marginal cost is close to zero and the honest number is the feed-in tariff you gave up. That is a separate page, not a fudge factor in this one.
Depreciation, insurance, registration, servicing, tyres. All real, none of them about charging.
Network and time-of-use complexity. SA Power Networks’ tariff structures and any flexible-export arrangements are not modelled here.

The tariff data behind the presets

Every state, in full — including the ones with nothing behind them yet, because a coverage claim you can check is worth more than one you have to take on trust:

South Australia

Distributor: SA Power Networks

Tariff	Window	Rate	Source
Typical SA flat (anytime) tariff	anytime	31c/kWh	unverified link
EV overnight window (indicative best case)	midnight to 6am	4.5c/kWh	unverified link
Manual entry	your own rate	—	unverified
Public DC fast charging (indicative)	per session	65c/kWh	unverified link

Victoria — not covered yet

Not researched yet, so the calculator offers no rate presets for Victoria and works from the rate on the reader's own bill. Adding it means replacing the placeholder block in data/tariffs.yaml with sourced rates and setting covered: true.

New South Wales — not covered yet

Not researched yet, so the calculator offers no rate presets for New South Wales and works from the rate on the reader's own bill. Adding it means replacing the placeholder block in data/tariffs.yaml with sourced rates and setting covered: true.

Queensland — not covered yet

Not researched yet, so the calculator offers no rate presets for Queensland and works from the rate on the reader's own bill. Adding it means replacing the placeholder block in data/tariffs.yaml with sourced rates and setting covered: true.

Western Australia — not covered yet

Not researched yet, so the calculator offers no rate presets for Western Australia and works from the rate on the reader's own bill. Adding it means replacing the placeholder block in data/tariffs.yaml with sourced rates and setting covered: true.

Tasmania — not covered yet

Not researched yet, so the calculator offers no rate presets for Tasmania and works from the rate on the reader's own bill. Adding it means replacing the placeholder block in data/tariffs.yaml with sourced rates and setting covered: true.

Australian Capital Territory — not covered yet

Not researched yet, so the calculator offers no rate presets for Australian Capital Territory and works from the rate on the reader's own bill. Adding it means replacing the placeholder block in data/tariffs.yaml with sourced rates and setting covered: true.

Northern Territory — not covered yet

Not researched yet, so the calculator offers no rate presets for Northern Territory and works from the rate on the reader's own bill. Adding it means replacing the placeholder block in data/tariffs.yaml with sourced rates and setting covered: true.

If a rate above says “unverified”, do not act on it. It came from a secondary summary during planning. The correct process for promoting one is written at the top of data/tariffs.yaml: open the retailer’s own plan page or the AER’s Energy Made Easy comparison, read the actual rate for the window, set it, paste the URL, and flip the flag. A rate that is wrong by 5c/kWh moves the answer by hundreds of dollars a year.