Hybrid vs petrol, which one actually costs less over five years

On this page

• Does a hybrid really cost less to own than a petrol car?
• What do five years of hybrid and petrol ownership actually cost?
• Why does the hybrid premium come back in some cars and not others?
• Do hybrids actually use less fuel in real driving?
• What about servicing, tyres and registration?
• So which should you buy, the hybrid or the petrol?

Does a hybrid really cost less to own than a petrol car?

Sometimes. The hybrid vs petrol gap turns on how big the car is, not on how carefully you drive it. RACQ’s 2025 running cost research, which prices five years of ownership at 15,000km a year based on Australian Bureau of Statistics vehicle use surveys, found hybrids at the top of the light and small classes and petrol models at the top of the medium and large ones.

The standout is the Suzuki Swift mild hybrid. At about $28,000 to buy, RACQ calculated $874 a month to own and operate and named it the most affordable car in Australia to run in 2025. Over the full five years that comes to $52,467.86.

Go up two size classes and the picture inverts. The Toyota Kluger hybrid cost $104,331.61 over five years in the same RACQ study, while the cheapest large SUV, the petrol Subaru Outback, came in at $83,917.39. Same methodology, same distance, a gap of more than $20,000 the wrong way.

That split is the whole story, and it is not really a story about hybrid technology. It is a story about what you paid at the dealer and how much of that money you lose again when you sell. Fuel is the smaller variable.

Affordable and fuel-efficient hybrids are now hugely popular in Australia as buyers look for good deals with a new car that will help them save money by keeping their running costs down.

Terry Martin, Motoring Editor, RACV

Popularity and payback are different things. Here is what each side actually costs.

What do five years of hybrid and petrol ownership actually cost?

Across five years and 75,000km, the cheapest hybrid beat the cheapest petrol car in the two smallest classes and lost in the two largest, on the figures RACQ published in November 2025. Those totals cover fuel, servicing, tyres, registration, insurance and depreciation, so they are the whole cost of keeping the car, not just what you spend at the pump.

One caveat before you read the table. These pair the cheapest hybrid in a class against the cheapest petrol car in the same class, which are different cars with different equipment and different price tags. They tell you what the market offers at each size, not what happens when a single model is sold in two forms.

The gaps below are calculated from RACQ’s published five-year totals, which run from $52,467.86 at the cheapest end to $104,331.61 at the most expensive.

Class	Cheapest hybrid	5-year cost	Cheapest petrol	5-year cost	Difference
Light passenger	Suzuki Swift Hybrid	$52,467.86	Hyundai Venue	$55,768.94	Hybrid $3,301.08 cheaper
Small passenger and SUV	Chery Tiggo 4 Hybrid	$56,314.91	Hyundai i30	$59,757.72	Hybrid $3,442.81 cheaper
Medium passenger and SUV	Toyota Camry Hybrid	$74,548.61	Mazda CX-5	$69,659.25	Petrol $4,889.36 cheaper
Large SUV	Toyota Kluger Hybrid	$104,331.61	Subaru Outback	$83,917.39	Petrol $20,414.22 cheaper

Put plainly, a Suzuki Swift hybrid costs about $3,301 less to own over five years than the Hyundai Venue, the cheapest petrol light car in the same RACQ study. That is real money, and it is roughly the size of the win in the small class too. It is also nowhere near the size of the loss further up.

Notice how fast the totals climb with size. Moving from the cheapest light car to the cheapest large SUV roughly doubles what you spend across five years, on RACQ’s numbers. Choosing a smaller car saves you far more than choosing a hybrid does, which is worth knowing before you spend an evening comparing drivetrains.

Electric cars sit in this data too, and they are competitive at the small end. RACQ found the BYD Dolphin was the cheapest small passenger car to own in 2025 at $53,384 over five years, or $889 a month. If home charging is available to you, the hybrid vs petrol question may not be the only one worth asking.

Why does the hybrid premium come back in some cars and not others?

Because the fuel saving is smaller than most buyers assume and the price difference is larger. Fuel is the only line item a hybrid reliably improves, and there is a ceiling on how much it can be worth.

Here is the ceiling in dollars. At the 178.98 cents a litre RACQ used, a weighted average of Queensland metropolitan and regional prices for the June 2025 quarter, and 15,000km a year, every litre per 100km you shave off your fuel use is worth about $268 a year, or $1,342 over five years, on RACQ’s assumptions. A hybrid that genuinely drinks 2.0L/100km less than the petrol version of the same car saves you roughly $2,700 in petrol across those five years.

That is the entire prize, and it has to cover the extra you handed over at the dealer. It also has to cover the flow-on effect, because RACQ’s totals include depreciation calculated on residual values current as at August 2025, and a higher purchase price means a bigger dollar drop even when the percentage retained is identical.

Depreciation is the quiet one. It is the difference between what you pay and what the car is worth when you sell, and on a five-year hold it is usually the biggest single line in the whole calculation. Pay more for the hybrid up front and you are not only trying to earn that back at the pump, you are also carrying a share of it into your resale loss.

Run that against the large SUV result. Closing the $20,414.22 gap between the Kluger hybrid and the Outback on fuel alone would need a saving of about 15 litres per 100km, which no hybrid system delivers, on RACQ’s own price and distance assumptions. The gap is a purchase price gap wearing a running cost disguise.

The reverse happens when the electrified car is the cheaper one to buy. In RACQ’s ute class the plug-in hybrid BYD Shark cost $1,578 a month against $1,803 a month for the petrol Mitsubishi Triton GSR, and the Shark was also $7,704 cheaper to buy. When the sticker favours the hybrid, the fuel saving is a bonus rather than a repayment.

Plug-in hybrids do not automatically win, though. RACQ put the petrol Mazda CX-5 at $1,161 a month against $1,210 a month for the plug-in BYD Sealion 6, a difference of $49 a month, or about $2,900 across five years in the petrol car’s favour. The drivetrain badge tells you nothing on its own.

Do hybrids actually use less fuel in real driving?

Yes, but usually by less than the brochure promises. The laboratory claim printed on the windscreen sticker comes from a standardised test cycle run indoors, and on-road results rarely match it exactly.

The Australian Automobile Association’s Real-World Testing Program has now put close to 200 vehicles through on-road testing over three years, 33 of them hybrids, and RACV reports most of those hybrids used more fuel on the road than their laboratory figure, by up to 33 per cent in the worst case. The 2026 model year results RACV lists show how small the typical gap is:

• Subaru Forester Hybrid: 5.5L/100km on the road against a 6.2L/100km claim, 12 per cent better than advertised.
• Chery Tiggo 4 Hybrid: 5.3L/100km against a 5.4L/100km claim.
• MG ZS Hybrid: 5.0L/100km against a 4.7L/100km claim, 6 per cent more.
• Kia Carnival Hybrid: 6.0L/100km against a 5.8L/100km claim, 4 per cent more.

Translate a miss of 0.3L/100km into money and it is about $400 across five years at RACQ’s fuel price and distance. Irritating, not decisive. The worst case matters far more, because a hybrid missing its claim by 33 per cent is giving back a meaningful slice of the saving you paid a premium to get.

Your own driving decides where in that range you land. A hybrid does its best work in stop-start traffic, where the electric motor covers the crawling and the petrol engine switches off at the lights. On a long run at highway speed the engine is doing nearly all of the work, and the advantage over a conventional petrol car narrows sharply.

That makes the mix of driving you do more important than the badge. If most of your kilometres are motorway commuting between towns, a hybrid earns its premium back slowly. If they are school runs and suburban errands, it earns it back faster than the official figures suggest.

The practical lesson is to budget on tested numbers rather than advertised ones wherever a tested number exists for the model you want. If it has not been tested, assume it lands slightly worse than its claim rather than slightly better.

What about servicing, tyres and registration?

They are already inside the totals above, which is what makes those totals worth using. RACQ’s calculations include dealer servicing to the manufacturer’s schedule, tyre replacement, the 12-volt battery, registration, insurance, fuel and depreciation, so nobody is quietly leaving out the expensive parts.

The published monthly figures also account for loan repayments where the vehicle is financed through RACQ Bank, according to RACQ. If you are paying cash, your own total will be lower than the number quoted, and the ranking between cars is the part that carries across rather than the exact dollars.

Two adjustments are yours to make. The fuel price is a Queensland weighted average from the June 2025 quarter, as RACQ states in its methodology, so a Sydney or Perth buyer should re-run the fuel line at their own pump price. Registration and insurance differ by state and by postcode as well. Treat the totals as a well-built starting point, not a quote.

The one worry that comes up most, the drive battery, is not the ownership risk it once was. Manufacturers cover hybrid battery packs under their own warranty terms, typically longer than the general vehicle warranty, so ask for the exact term and conditions in writing rather than relying on what the salesperson remembers.

If servicing is the line that decides it for you, ask the dealer for the capped-price schedule of both the hybrid and the petrol version before you sign. That is one cost you can compare exactly, for the specific car you want, on the day you are buying it, and it takes one phone call.

So which should you buy, the hybrid or the petrol?

Buy the hybrid in a light or small car, and do the arithmetic before you buy one in anything larger. The pattern in RACQ’s data is consistent enough to act on, because the classes where hybrids win are the classes where the price gap between the two versions is narrow.

The check takes about ten minutes. Look up both versions of the car you want on the Australian Government’s Green Vehicle Guide, which as at August 2026 covers model years 2004 to 2026 and works out annual fuel cost from a vehicle’s consumption figure, your yearly distance and the pump price you pay. Take the difference in litres per 100km, multiply it by $1,342 for five years at 15,000km a year on RACQ’s fuel price, and compare the result with the drive-away price gap between the two.

If you drive further than average, scale the number up before you decide. At 30,000km a year the same litre per 100km is worth about $2,684 over five years rather than $1,342, using RACQ’s petrol price, and a premium that looked unrecoverable starts to look reasonable. High-distance drivers are the buyers hybrids were built for.

Best for: buyers of light, small and medium cars who cover at least the 15,000km a year RACQ assumes, keep a car five years or more, and face a hybrid premium under about $3,000.

Not for: large SUV buyers, where the cheapest petrol model in RACQ’s 2025 study came in $20,414.22 under the cheapest hybrid across five years, a gap fuel savings cannot close.

If the sums land close together, buy the one you would rather drive and stop worrying about the difference. A few hundred dollars over five years is noise next to a car you dislike sitting in every morning. If the sums are not close, the number tells you which way to go, and it is the same number whichever brand is doing the talking.