Is this the ultimate example of "Special New Zealand Pricing"?!

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#1718875 12-Feb-2017 11:39

Linuxluver:
tdgeek:

Linuxluver:

Opinion: NZ should change to LHD. We pay a high price for being one of the handful of countries that aren't LHD. It would be a pain for a year or two.....but once done......it's done.

A pain alright. In me arm in me leg, and so on due to accidents. Get Japan to do the same, and anyone else.

Sweden did it. No big deal.

They did it in 1967 and it was very unpopular and expensive.
You can read all about it here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H it's very interesting.

If we did it in 1967 then we might have got away with it too. Not now and what an unnecessary cost it would be.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

Journeyman

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#1719033 12-Feb-2017 18:05

So... change the side of the road we drive on at huge expense, in order to save money on cars made in LHD markets even though we have access to plenty of vehicles made for RHD market. That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. Who will pay for the expense of the road swap? All of us. Drivers and non-drivers alike. All that just to save some money on a vehicle upgrade which most of us only do infrequently. Hmmm.

Self driving vehicles are on the horizon. No need to worry about where your steering wheel is.

Scott3

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#1719137 12-Feb-2017 23:30

I think it is fair that the dodge ram is really expensive in NZ.

It is a LHD truck that has had a high end low volume conversion to RHD (something that is really hard to do in the days of crash tests, airbags etc), look at the video on www.ramtrucks.co.nz

The car is fully built as LHD, shipped, then taken apart, with un-needed parts scrapped, and low volume parts swapped in when required. Also it has no really comparable competitors in NZ (The IVENCO daily 4x4 is a better off roader, and has better payload, but is a lot less comfortable, and has a lot lower tow rating).

Regarding switching to driving on the right, I think we should only consider this if Japan or the UK swaps first (seriously if it is not worth it in the UK with its proximity and ease of vehicle access to europe, it is not going to be worth it for us).

I think that we will have a driverless road network (with vehicle paths optimised in real time, not bound by by a fixed road side to drive on) before we swap.

If we did swap to LHD, expect NZ to be swamped with old & new Ford F150,F250, F450's, Dodge rams, Chevy silverado's etc... that won't fit in our car parking spaces here...

Major issue of swap is to do with motorway interchanges etc. These aren't engineered to be symmetric.

mattwnz

20155 posts

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#1719143 13-Feb-2017 00:10

Journeyman:

So... change the side of the road we drive on at huge expense, in order to save money on cars made in LHD markets even though we have access to plenty of vehicles made for RHD market. That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. Who will pay for the expense of the road swap? All of us. Drivers and non-drivers alike. All that just to save some money on a vehicle upgrade which most of us only do infrequently. Hmmm.

Self driving vehicles are on the horizon. No need to worry about where your steering wheel is.

Will they ever be totally self diving? We already have a form of self driving cars today. Many brands now have models where you literally don't need to using the steering wheel or control speed or breaking. But who has the liability if there is a crash? The person behind the wheel?

Journeyman

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#1719887 14-Feb-2017 11:19

mattwnz:

Journeyman:

So... change the side of the road we drive on at huge expense, in order to save money on cars made in LHD markets even though we have access to plenty of vehicles made for RHD market. That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. Who will pay for the expense of the road swap? All of us. Drivers and non-drivers alike. All that just to save some money on a vehicle upgrade which most of us only do infrequently. Hmmm.

Self driving vehicles are on the horizon. No need to worry about where your steering wheel is.

Will they ever be totally self diving? We already have a form of self driving cars today. Many brands now have models where you literally don't need to using the steering wheel or control speed or breaking. But who has the liability if there is a crash? The person behind the wheel?

All of that is academic when it comes to the question of whether we should drive on the left or the right side of the road.

MikeAqua

7779 posts

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#1719952 14-Feb-2017 12:36

Changing the side of the road we drive on? ROFLMAO

It's the sort of thing you can do on small island with minimal complex roading infrastructure.

Or in 1960s Sweden where pretty much everyone already drove LHD and all the adjoining countries were right-lane. Road infrastructure has changed a lot since the 1960s.

Bus doors would be interesting to negotiate. Do we stop traffic for passengers to get on and off or have them dice with death dodging traffic? Or do we just reconfigure/replace all buses in very short period of time.

The day the UK do it successfully ... we should consider. When they last considered it (1969) they estimated a cost of 3 Billion pounds.

Mike

Journeyman

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#1720108 14-Feb-2017 16:26

Think of the drive-thrus that would have to be knocked down and reconfigured!

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

Asmodeus

1015 posts

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#1720120 14-Feb-2017 16:48

Weber BBQs have some pretty special NZ pricing!

22inch Smokey Mountain is US $399 with free shipping in the States

Here, a deal at NZ $1,149 plus shipping.....

Rikkitic

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#1720142 14-Feb-2017 17:14

I accept that there is a reason things are more expensive here, and in some cases, at least, that is justified to an extent. But in my experience, anything I can buy in this country that I can also find overseas (identical model), is invariably significantly cheaper overseas, and shipping is often free or inexpensive, especially from China. It is almost never included here, with just a few rare exceptions.

I have bought a lot of small, mainly electronic items from China. A few years ago they were often shoddy and soon failed. More recently, the quality has been good and Aliexpress sellers tend to back up their guarantees (under strong pressure from Aliexpress). I can no longer find any reason to buy anything locally that I can't find overseas, except speed of delivery (I have actually had a couple of items get here faster from China than from Auckland) and CGA (and how useful is that when sellers do everything possible to avoid responsibility, or are located in another city?). I don't know the relative costs involved, or how many children in sweatshops are manufacturing the items I buy, but from a purely consumer point of view, I see very little point in buying anything locally any more.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

Aredwood

3885 posts

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#1720357 15-Feb-2017 01:40

Samoa switched from driving on the right to driving on the left relatively recently. Main justification - cheaper cars available from NZ and Japan. Since they are a small Pacific Island country - no motorways, so no on or offramps to reconfigure. The local buses are wood and sheetmetal bodies built on truck chassis. So local workers were easily able to change which side the steps were on. Not many sets of traffic lights to change. And only 1 or 2 drive thrus.

As far as I can tell - it worked. Cars on average seem newer in Samoa now. But it also helps that there are Chinese cars available there that you can't get in NZ. Sure they probably wont pass any decent crash tests. But are still an upgrade on some of the older cars there. They also have a rule that says that cars older than 5 years cant be imported.

old3eyes

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#1720419 15-Feb-2017 09:31

Aredwood:

Samoa switched from driving on the right to driving on the left relatively recently. Main justification - cheaper cars available from NZ and Japan. Since they are a small Pacific Island country - no motorways, so no on or offramps to reconfigure. The local buses are wood and sheetmetal bodies built on truck chassis. So local workers were easily able to change which side the steps were on. Not many sets of traffic lights to change. And only 1 or 2 drive thrus.

As far as I can tell - it worked. Cars on average seem newer in Samoa now. But it also helps that there are Chinese cars available there that you can't get in NZ. Sure they probably wont pass any decent crash tests. But are still an upgrade on some of the older cars there. They also have a rule that says that cars older than 5 years cant be imported.

Don't forget the Samoan Gov rubbing it's hands together with the prospect of gathering 30% + import duty for all these so called cheap cars. Most of the X NZ so called cheap cars were NZ trade ins from the like of Enterprise cars which are usually past their use by date here...

Regards,

Old3eyes

tdgeek

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#1720424 15-Feb-2017 09:46

With 53 cities in the world having a higher population than NZ, there is no economy of scale. Who cares if stuff costs more here? That is one portion of the lifestyle, there are many positives

alliao

321 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1720846 15-Feb-2017 20:56

just bought some genuine brake pads from one of the BMW dealers in the US, $80 retail, they cut me a deal for $67(USD).

Shipped here via YouShop $26NZD for extra fast delivery

Grand total comes to about $120 NZD. If you add GST onto it comes to $138.

NZ BMW wants just under $300+GST for these...

Apart from the weber bbq mentioned above...

classic weber $499 here vs $99 USD

Lodge griller $399 here vs $109 USD

now that YouShop's doing bulk and heavy item shipping, perhaps things will shake up a little?

Batman

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#1720847 15-Feb-2017 20:57

meh. just see what houses cost here and there. and just about every car has a special price :)

cadman

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#1720869 15-Feb-2017 21:29

Rikkitic: I don't know the relative costs involved, or how many children in sweatshops are manufacturing the items I buy, but from a purely consumer point of view, I see very little point in buying anything locally any more.

Just as many as when you buy the same product locally...

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