Two EVs, both '$31,990'. One costs you thousands more. Here is why.

The MG4 Urban Essence is advertised at $31,990 drive-away. The GAC Aion UT Premium is advertised at $31,990 too. Same headline number, and if you compared them side by side on price you would call it a tie. It is not a tie. One of those figures already includes the cost of getting the car on the road and the other, at times this year, has not. The gap between the two bases is real money, and nobody at the point of sale is obliged to make it obvious.

This is the single most common way an Australian EV shopper gets the price wrong. Not by missing a discount. By comparing two numbers that are not the same kind of number.

The two numbers, and why they are not comparable

Every new car in Australia has two prices.

The first is the list price, quoted “before on-road costs” or “plus on-road costs”, sometimes written MSRP or RRP. It is the price of the car and nothing else. On-road costs, which the trade calls ORC, are registration, compulsory third-party insurance, stamp duty and dealer delivery. They are not optional and they are not small. Depending on the state and the value of the car they add roughly two to four thousand dollars.

The second is the drive-away price. That is the list price with the on-road costs already folded in. It is what actually leaves your account.

So a “$29,990 before on-road costs” car and a “$31,990 drive-away” car can cost you almost exactly the same, even though the first headline looks two thousand dollars cheaper. The cheaper-looking sticker is the more expensive car once it is registered. The headline you remember is the one designed to be remembered, and it is usually the smaller one.

The BYD Atto 1 shows the gap inside one car

You do not need two cars to see this. Take the BYD Atto 1, currently the cheapest EV on sale in the country.

CarExpert reported it, on 5 June 2026, at $23,990 before on-road costs. TheBeep lists the same Essential variant at $27,163 drive-away. Same car, same variant, two Australian sites, and a gap of about $3,173 that is not a discount, a promotion or a spec difference. It is entirely on-road costs. One site quoted the naked car, the other quoted the car you can actually drive.

A buyer who saw $23,990 in one place and $27,163 in another could be forgiven for thinking one of them was wrong, or that prices had jumped. Neither. They are two honest numbers on two different bases, and the only error available to you is to compare them as if they were the same.

The GAC Aion UT shows it across time

The Aion UT is the cleanest example of how unstable the headline is, because the same car has worn three different numbers this year, each true when it was published.

Its list price is $31,990 plus on-road costs for the Premium. But GAC ran a launch offer from 13 March to 9 April 2026, per CarExpert, of $30,990 drive-away for the first 600 cars. Then a national drive-away campaign opened for orders placed between 1 July and 30 September 2026. So across a single year, depending on the week you looked and the offer running, the Aion UT Premium’s headline was $31,990 before on-road costs, or $30,990 drive-away, or a later drive-away figure again.

None of those is a lie. But if you wrote down the number you saw in March and compared it to a rival you priced in June, you compared a time-limited launch drive-away deal against somebody else’s list price, and the comparison told you nothing.

How to not get caught

The fix is one habit. Before you compare any two EV prices, make both of them the same kind of number.

Convert everything to drive-away, because that is the figure you actually pay. If a car is quoted “before on-road costs”, it is not yet comparable to a drive-away rival. Use the manufacturer’s own drive-away calculator, which almost all of them now publish, and put in your own postcode, because stamp duty and registration differ by state. A drive-away price quoted for Sydney is not the drive-away price in Perth.

Then, and only then, are the two numbers on your shortlist measuring the same thing.

Two more small rules that save money. A drive-away offer usually has an expiry and often a delivery deadline, so a deal you saw is not necessarily a deal you can still get. And a list price with no date attached is worth very little, because it may have moved. Ours all carry the date we saw them, for exactly this reason.

What to watch

Drive-away pricing is becoming the norm for the newer brands, especially the Chinese entrants, because a single all-in number is easier to advertise and easier to undercut a rival with. That is good for clarity when everyone does it. It is bad for clarity in the meantime, while some brands quote drive-away and others still quote list, and the ads do not always say which. Until the whole market lands on one basis, the number on the billboard is not a price you can compare. It is a number you have to convert first.

---

Sources and method. Pricing bases cited: BYD Atto 1 at $23,990 before on-road costs per CarExpert (5 June 2026) and $27,163 drive-away per TheBeep, both for the Essential variant, read 24 July 2026. GAC Aion UT Premium list price $31,990 plus on-road costs, launch offer $30,990 drive-away for the first 600 cars (13 March to 9 April 2026) and a national drive-away campaign for orders 1 July to 30 September 2026, per CarExpert, read 24 July 2026. MG4 Urban Essence 43 at $31,990 drive-away per MG Australia reporting, read 24 July 2026. On-road-cost ranges are indicative and vary by state; use a manufacturer drive-away calculator with your own postcode for an exact figure. Every price here is a headline figure recorded on the date shown and can move without notice, which is the entire point of the article.