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EV Novated Lease Check

Is leasing an electric car through your pay better than keeping the car you have?

Your situation

You
$a year
Home loan with an offset account?
% rate
Your current car
$
$a fortnight
$a year
The new car
$drive-away
More details (optional)

Rough is fine for all of these.

km a year
Only changes charging. If you change it, change your fuel spend too.
$
For the longer view, which assumes you'd replace your current car when the lease would have ended. Blank means the same price as the EV.
% a year
$a month
$a year
$a year
kWh/100km
$per kWh
$
% of price

Show the working, with your numbers

How it adds up over the lease

Each coloured band is something leasing saves you, building up month by month. The dashed line is what the lease costs before tax. Once the bands stack higher than the dashed line, you're ahead. The lower chart shows that gap.

The breakdown: what each band means, and its total
Year by year, in numbers
YearBetter off, running totalEV costsTax savedFuel and car costs savedCharging paybackInterestChange in car values

What-ifs

Pick one, or tap Your own to type a number.
What it sells for when the lease endsNobody knows yet. EV resale has been soft.
Petrol prices over the leaseChanges what your current car would cost to run.
EV insuranceGet a quote for the actual car.
Lease interest rateMost quotes don't show it, so ask.
When you'd sign the lease

When the lease ends

The breakdown: what each band means, and its total

Compare cars

CarMonthly cashOver 5 yearsIf resale is soft

NSW drive-away prices from manufacturer websites, October 2026, base colour. Kia, Mazda and Volvo prices are estimates. Prices change often, so use your own quote.

Before you sign

    Questions to ask the lease provider

    1. What interest rate is in the quote? Ask for the monthly finance payment, amount financed and residual, so you can compare providers.
    2. Is a wall charger included, and what does it cost installed?
    3. Do you pay home charging back at the tax office rate of 5.47c a kilometre, and how often?
    4. What happens, and what does it cost, if I change jobs or end the lease early?
    5. Does the manufacturer's discount or cashback still apply on a novated lease?
    How this is worked out
    The comparison
    Leasing the EV against keeping your current car. Better off means more money in your offset, plus what each car is worth, less anything still owing on a lease.
    Tax saved
    The lease comes out of pay before tax. We work out tax on your salary with and without it, using 2026-27 rates and the 2% Medicare levy.Source: ATO, tax rates for Australian residents
    EV tax exemption
    Fully electric cars under the luxury car tax threshold ($91,661) are exempt from fringe benefits tax for leases signed by 31 March 2027. From 1 April 2027 only cars at or under $75,000 keep the full exemption, until 31 March 2029. After that every EV gets a 25% discount, and we move the rest of that cost to after-tax pay. Leases already running keep their treatment. The wind-back was announced in May 2026 and isn't law yet, so the details could change.Source: ATO, electric cars exemptionSource: PwC, the announced wind-backSource: ATO, 2026-27 car thresholds
    Lease payments
    Drive-away price plus any wall charger, less the GST the financier claims back (capped at $6,353, a 2026-27 limit), at your lease rate. The amount left at the end is the tax office minimum residual: 65.63%, 56.25%, 46.88%, 37.5% or 28.13% for 1 to 5 years. Rego, insurance, servicing, tyres, charging and the provider fee are in the lease too. The first year's rego is already in the drive-away price.Source: ATO, minimum residual values (TD 93/142, 8-year column)
    Charging
    At home, the lease pays you back 5.47c a kilometre (the tax office rate) and you pay your own power. Solar costs you roughly the feed-in tariff you give up, about 5c a kWh. A home battery costs about the same, plus around 10% lost going in and out, so about 5.5c, but only if it has spare charge after the house's evening use. Without either, an EV power plan charges overnight for about 4.5c to 8c a kWh. On a normal plan, overnight power is about 18c to 24c off-peak or 28c to 38c on a flat rate, so we use 27c. A normal power point is slower and loses about 10% more power, but needs no charger. Public chargers cost about 60c a kWh, paid through the lease with no payback.Source: ATO, EV home charging rate
    Your share of the EV
    What the car is worth less what's still owing on the lease. It starts below zero, because stamp duty and first-year rego are spent and a new car loses value fastest early. Car value is the price less stamp duty and rego (NSW rates), falling smoothly to your resale estimate. Conservative, typical and optimistic are 35%, 45% and 55% of that price after 5 years.Source: Service NSW, motor vehicle stamp duty
    Interest
    Money in your offset saves home loan interest. Selling your car now adds to the offset, and spending more each month takes away from it. We count both.
    The 10-year view
    Keeping your car means replacing it when the first lease would have ended, with a car of the price in More details, run at the same cost as today. A second lease is signed at least five years from now, so it gets only the 25% discount.
    Estimating your car
    If you describe your car, Claude estimates its trade-in price (we use this, as the safer figure, and show what a private sale might get), fuel use, NSW rego and green slip, insurance, and servicing and tyres. Fuel is priced at $2.20 a litre over the distance in More details. These are rough figures from what Claude knows, not live prices, so check a real valuation on carsales or Redbook.
    Not included
    Big repair bills on an older car, price rises, and ending a lease early. The first favours the EV.