The only benefit EV owners currently enjoy in New Zealand is not having to pay road tax until Jan 2022. That's worth a not-insignificant $0.072 per km, but that's all I've got to help pay off the extra $40k I spent on the Kona over the ICE version. Let's see ... 40000/0.072 = 555,555 kms.
We've already have govt infrastructure to apply this tax because diesel fuel is already not taxed at the pump like gasoline. You purchase distance units (at the rate above assuming the vehicle is under 3.5 tonne GW) and place a small card on the windscreen (next to the reg card) that must always indicate an odometer number over the current odometer. Big diesel trucks pay way more, BTW.
The problem I see is that this same road tax on an EV combined with typical public charging costs of about $0.60/kWh equate to a total running cost that matches that of running an equivalent gasoline car, around $0.13/km. Charging at home costs me $0.20/kWh but many people here pay slightly less. The reason I use public charging as a cost basis is that it is the apples-to-apples comparison with ICE. As an example, no gasoline station has ever asked me to sign up to use them exclusively (as per a domestic electricity supplier) and then only fill up at night.
I find that the majority of EV owners here have an EV for the running cost savings, not environmental reasons such as myself. I think there are going to be problems worldwide when authorities decide to tax EVs to cover road expenses. I do realise that the 7 cents a km is massively high compared with countries that have much larger populations, but that is the reality here.
