How Much Does It Cost to Charge an Electric Car in Australia?

Charging a typical electric car with a 60kWh battery costs about $18 at home on a standard electricity rate of around 30c/kWh, as little as $5 on an off-peak EV plan, and about $3 off your own rooftop solar. At a public DC fast charger, the same charge costs roughly $30 to $48. Per 100 kilometres, that works out to between $0.80 and $12.80, compared with about $13.30 for a petrol car using 7L/100km at $1.90 a litre.

How much does it cost to charge at home?

Home charging is priced at whatever you pay for electricity. As of mid-2026, Australian residential rates mostly sit between 25c and 45c per kWh. Victoria and Tasmania tend to have the cheapest power, often in the high 20s, while South Australia is the most expensive state, with rates above 40c/kWh on many plans. Your exact rate depends on your retailer and tariff, so check your bill.

The maths is straightforward. Multiply your battery size by your rate:

• 60kWh battery x 30c/kWh = $18 for a full charge, which buys roughly 375 to 400km of driving in a typical mid-size EV.
• Per 100km, a typical EV uses about 16kWh. At 30c/kWh, that’s $4.80 per 100km.

Use the calculator below to work out the cost for your own car, tariff and charge range.

In practice you’ll rarely charge from empty. Plugging in each night to replace a 40km daily commute costs around $2 a day at a flat rate, and well under a dollar on the EV plans below. Our home charging guide covers the hardware side, from a standard powerpoint to a 7kW wallbox.

How much do EV electricity plans save?

Several retailers now sell plans built for EV owners, with a cheap overnight window, usually midnight to 6am, priced from around 8c/kWh as of mid-2026. Some go lower; OVO has advertised overnight EV rates under 5c/kWh, and AGL’s Night Saver EV plan discounts the midnight-to-6am window. Plans change often, so verify current rates with the retailer before switching.

On an 8c/kWh overnight rate, a full 60kWh charge costs about $4.80, and your cost per 100km drops to about $1.30. That’s the cheapest motoring most Australians will ever do.

The catch: you need to actually charge in the window. Most EVs and wallbox chargers let you schedule charging, so set it and forget it. Also check the plan’s daytime rates, which are sometimes higher than a standard plan to offset the cheap overnight power.

What does public charging cost?

Public charging is dearer than home because you’re paying for the hardware, the site and the speed. Who sets that price varies more than you’d expect: some networks publish a rate, some price site by site, and a couple set no prices at all. Here’s where the major names sit, and when each figure was published:

Chargefox is the name most drivers know, and it’s the one that catches them out: it’s a platform rather than an operator, so there is no such thing as a Chargefox price. A council post listed in the app might be free, while a motoring-club ultra-rapid alongside it is priced by the club. Tesla prices by time of day at many sites, so the same stall can be much cheaper before 8am than at dinner time: the lowest reported Australian Supercharger price, 27c/kWh, was an early-morning one. For how sessions are started and billed across networks, see our guide to paying for public charging.

What does that look like per 100 kilometres?

Using a typical consumption of 16kWh per 100km:

Over a year of average driving, say 12,000km, that’s roughly $95 from solar surplus, $155 on an off-peak plan, $575 at a home flat rate, $1,340 if you only ever fast-charged, and about $1,600 in the petrol car.

Is charging always cheaper than petrol?

At home, yes, by a wide margin. On public DC fast charging, usually, but the margin narrows to almost nothing at the top of the market. Superchargers span 27 to 74c/kWh depending on the site, the hour and the badge on the car, and the NRMA prices per location at 69 to 99c/kWh, the top of that range being remote outback sites.

At 80c/kWh a typical EV costs about $12.80 per 100km, against roughly $13.30 for a petrol car using 7L/100km at $1.90 a litre. The economics of EV ownership rest on doing most of your charging at home or at cheap AC destination chargers, and saving DC fast charging for road trips. Our guide to public charging in Australia covers where to find chargers and how the networks compare.

How do you keep charging costs down?

• Charge at home overnight on an EV plan if your retailer offers one. This is the single biggest saving.
• Use free charging when it’s genuinely convenient. JOLT offers 7kWh free per day, and some shopping centres still host free AC chargers.
• Avoid peak pricing. Tesla and some BP Pulse sites are cheaper off-peak, often before 8am or late at night.
• Soak up solar. If you have rooftop solar, midday charging costs you only the feed-in tariff you give up, around 5c/kWh on most plans in 2026.
• Don’t pay ultra-rapid prices for slow charging. If your car’s maximum DC rate is 50kW, a cheaper 50kW site fills it just as fast as a 350kW one.

Every network price on this page was checked against its source on 16 August 2026. Several of these networks no longer publish a rate card at all, and the ones that do change it without much ceremony, so check the relevant app before you plug in.