Ownership Levies and Electric Vehicle Adoption: A Total Cost of Ownership and Legal Analysis of Ukraine’s Fiscal Reversal

Ukraine’s parliament is considering a monthly ownership levy on battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) of up to UAH 4000 as a road-fund replacement following the reinstatement of 20% value-added tax on BEV imports from January 2026, a fiscal reversal of the sustained incentive framework (zero customs duty since 2015; full VAT and excise relief from 2018) that has underpinned a fleet of approximately 246,000 registered BEVs in a wartime economy with acute petroleum import dependence. A five-year total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) model calibrated to Ukrainian market data (April 2026) computes the breakeven monthly levy across three charging scenarios and two energy-price assumptions; a structured comparative policy analysis maps the instrument against cross-jurisdictional adoption-suppression evidence; and a legal doctrinal analysis applies the fair-balance test under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights. The breakeven levy (L*) ranges from UAH 931 to UAH 1626 per month under baseline conditions and from UAH 63 to UAH 862 under adverse energy-price assumptions, placing the proposed UAH 4000 rate at 2.5 to 4.3 times the threshold. Cross-jurisdictional evidence positions Ukraine in the high adoption-suppression zone for flat ownership charges. The legal analysis indicates that the incentive programme satisfies ECHR legitimate-expectation criteria and that the proposed levy is likely to fail both the proportionality and transitional adequacy limbs of the fair-balance test. The preferred alternative combines a kWh surcharge on public charging with a phased per-kilometre road-user charge and three-year grandfathering for existing owners.