Every listing on CarSpy carries an estimate of what it costs to own for a year, on top of what the dealer is asking. That figure is what the default ranking sorts on. Here is exactly how it is built.
asking price + fuel & RUC + servicing + repairs + insurance + rego & WOF (+ finance interest, if you turn it on)
Running costs are annual, and that is deliberate. A yearly figure is one you can check against your own bank statements, and it is the unit the AA publishes its New Zealand per-model running costs in — so these numbers can be compared against theirs directly rather than divided first. You can change the period, your annual distance and your finance assumptions in settings; every estimate on the site then re-prices against your figures.
Default assumption is 12,000 km a year, the New Zealand light-vehicle average.
Petrol at $3.16/L and diesel at $2.69/L (national averages), home charging at $0.30/kWh and public DC fast charging at $0.70/kWh.
RUC is charged at $76 per 1,000 km for diesel and EVs, $38 for plug-in hybrids, and nothing for petrol and conventional hybrids — they pay for the roads through fuel excise at the pump instead.
Scheduled visits priced at $110/hour (independent workshop average) plus parts, with oil and filter, tyres and brakes estimated separately and spread across the year rather than charged in whichever year they happen to fall due.
EVs are cheaper here and are priced that way: no oil, no filters, and brakes that last longer because regenerative braking does most of the work.
An annual allowance that rises with the car’s age and varies by manufacturer, adjusted up or down when the odometer is above or below average for that age.
Based on the New Zealand average comprehensive premium of $1,311 a year, adjusted for the car’s value and age, and increased for models with a known high theft rate in New Zealand. Third Party, Fire & Theft is offered as an alternative and baselines at $721.
A premium is personal — your age, history, address and excess move it far more than the car does. Treat this as a placeholder until you have a real quote.
$181.45 a year for petrol, hybrid and plug-in hybrid; $248.83 for diesel and EVs, whose ACC levy is collected through the licence fee rather than at the pump. Plus a WOF at $65 once a year.
Turned off unless you ask for it. When on, we use a representative used-car rate of 13.5% APR and count only the interest, not the repayments — the principal is the purchase price, which is already in the total.
Real rates run roughly 8.5% to 19.9% depending on the lender and your credit profile, so this is a midpoint, not a quote.
It is an estimate, and it is shown as a single number when the truth is a range. Fuel is the term we are most confident in where we have a real economy figure for the variant. Insurance and repairs are the least certain, and both can be out by a wide margin for an individual car and driver.
What the figure is good for is comparing two listings. The same assumptions are applied to every car on the site, so the gap between two estimates is far more reliable than either estimate on its own — a thirstier car really does cost more to run than a frugal one by roughly the amount shown, even if both absolute figures drift.
Every rate above is a documented, dated figure, refreshed by re-checking its source — MBIE for fuel, NZTA for RUC, rego and WOF, Quashed for insurance averages.