RUCs to apply to all vehicles (incl EVs), replacing road user tax on petrol

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › RUCs to apply to all vehicles (incl EVs), replacing road user tax on petrol

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2119 posts

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#3174174 21-Dec-2023 21:30

RUKI: @dolsen re:PHEV - IMO it has to be the same as Petrol and Hybrid - charged at the pump.
Here is yesterday' case: Lady purchased imported ZVW35 2012 Prius PHEV. 11 year old PHEV which, in her case runs only 8kms on a full charge, but their daily usage is much much higher. So her EV portion is negligible and she'd be running on petrol 99% of the time

Seems ridiculous to actually buy a PHEV with that little range. I mean, buy virtually any other car.

itxtme

2102 posts

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#3174176 21-Dec-2023 21:55

mudguard:

Well landlines were perfectly adequate once upon a time too.
Using the odometer is essentially a manual process. My partner had a diesel van for a couple of years and RUCS were honestly a PIA. She spent most of her Kms paying to catch up.

I do about 40,000kms a year. I guess I could buy them once a year. Doing it more often would be a PIA. It's just such a manual process and I've mentioned it before, the whole reason the thread is so long is that there isn't an easy solution.

GPS would be the easiest, but privacy.
Manual, there's no way you'd get 100% compliance

To be honest, I've often thought GPS would awesome for traffic planning and infrastructure. But I assume agencies can probably purchase this data from Google etc.

GPS as a concept would be the easiest if the numbers could magically fly to the database, but add in the necessary components that make that GPS signal transfer its data, correctly every time, against the correct plate for 4.5 million vehicles and the cost involved... Madness.

johno1234

2807 posts

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#3174263 22-Dec-2023 08:37

Ge0rge: As someone who has a diesel vehicle, I get online twice a year, enter my rego and the system pops up all my details, including the amount of km I purchased last time. I click "buy", enter my CC from BitWarden, and a week later the ticket turns up in the post. Less than two minutes effort on my behalf.

Are there easier ways? Sure, but they all have pros and cons. Is the world going to end if everyone with a road-going vehicle has to do this? Not at all.

I feel the same. It is no more bother than getting your rego and much less bother than getting your WOF. Non issue.

johno1234

2807 posts

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#3174265 22-Dec-2023 08:39

MikeAqua:

Ge0rge: As someone who has a diesel vehicle, I get online twice a year, enter my rego and the system pops up all my details, including the amount of km I purchased last time. I click "buy", enter my CC from BitWarden, and a week later the ticket turns up in the post. Less than two minutes effort on my behalf.

Are there easier ways? Sure, but they all have pros and cons. Is the world going to end if everyone with a road-going vehicle has to do this? Not at all.

I do the same, although I'm often behind, as I drive a lot of kms. But, it's continual licence so the govt will eventually get their pound of flesh.

One bugbear with the current RUC system, is that it keeps ticking over when you are offroad. So, the govt is collecting tax for roads it doesn't maintain. A GPS base system could address this (although the govt probably wouldn't want to).

Just like you pay road tax on petrol used in your boat and lawn mower. And some people put a huge amount of petrol through their boat in a year. I expect that would vastly outweigh the off-road issue.

SaltyNZ

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#3174443 22-Dec-2023 10:13

mudguard:

Well landlines were perfectly adequate once upon a time too.
Using the odometer is essentially a manual process. My partner had a diesel van for a couple of years and RUCS were honestly a PIA. She spent most of her Kms paying to catch up.

I do about 40,000kms a year. I guess I could buy them once a year.

I don't even know how to find the odometer reading on my wife's MG ZS EV... And yeah we do ~35,000km a year so tracking that manually it would be much easier to make a couple of big purchases.

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dolsen

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#3174470 22-Dec-2023 11:10

I feel that the admin fee for buying the distance labels needs to come down before this is pushed out to all vehicles. As have been mentioned, there will be a lot of people buying smaller amounts of distance at a time and the fee component is too much of a proportion of the cost for these smaller purchases. With the volume increase, fixed costs should be spread over a larger number of transactions so should be able to be reduced significantly.

Personally, i have two vehicles. One is a V8 that averages 17l/100KM and my fuel efficient one is a 3.5l V6 that is around 12l / 100km. I can't wait until this is rolled out to all cars, but, it won't really incentivise more fuel efficient options.

alasta

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#3174483 22-Dec-2023 11:24

PolicyGuy:

Maybe @mudguard can just pop an extra $3k on their credit card without any limit issues, and perhaps @Ge0rge can manage $400 without worrying how they'll pay for the groceries this week, but life's not like that for hundreds of thousands of people who live hand to mouth, payday to payday.

If you take a step back, perhaps the solution is to support low income people to get out of car ownership entirely. We need better public transport, and some creative options for shift workers.

Walking and public transport are my main daily transport, so I'm not asking low income people to do anything that I don't do myself.

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SaltyNZ

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#3174493 22-Dec-2023 11:32

dolsen:

Personally, i have two vehicles. One is a V8 that averages 17l/100KM and my fuel efficient one is a 3.5l V6 that is around 12l / 100km. I can't wait until this is rolled out to all cars, but, it won't really incentivise more fuel efficient options.

It isn't intended to. RUCs (in theory) pay for your share of road construction and maintenance. That's why they should not be included in fuel prices, because fuel efficiency has little or nothing to do with road maintenance.

The Act party in particular loves to say they'll solve emissions through the use of the ETS. But in order for the ETS alone to make a significant dent in emissions it would need to be ruinously expensive. They know this; there are any number of experts who can and do say so. Thus the only reasonable conclusion to make is that they don't care about emissions, otherwise they would take their own advice.

Also - 12L/100km isn't really "fuel efficient" but I guess at least it's an improvement over the V8. :-)

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These comments are my own and do not represent the opinions of 2degrees.

johno1234

2807 posts

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#3174503 22-Dec-2023 12:09

dolsen:

I feel that the admin fee for buying the distance labels needs to come down before this is pushed out to all vehicles. As have been mentioned, there will be a lot of people buying smaller amounts of distance at a time and the fee component is too much of a proportion of the cost for these smaller purchases. With the volume increase, fixed costs should be spread over a larger number of transactions so should be able to be reduced significantly.

Personally, i have two vehicles. One is a V8 that averages 17l/100KM and my fuel efficient one is a 3.5l V6 that is around 12l / 100km. I can't wait until this is rolled out to all cars, but, it won't really incentivise more fuel efficient options.

The admin fee should be zero. There's no justification for it.

johno1234

2807 posts

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#3174589 22-Dec-2023 13:40

And there should be no reason to display RUC window cards at all. Any enforcement officer should be able to use a phone app or a mobile device that can scan or enter a plate and display the RUC licence. The only use of the window cards is to remind the owner.

mudguard

2119 posts

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#3174604 22-Dec-2023 14:03

PolicyGuy:

Maybe @mudguard can just pop an extra $3k on their credit card without any limit issues, and perhaps @Ge0rge can manage $400 without worrying how they'll pay for the groceries this week, but life's not like that for hundreds of thousands of people who live hand to mouth, payday to payday.

My car is essentially a work vehicle, it isn't so much the cost, it's more the admin of constantly having to update the windscreen ticket and waiting for it in the post so I would try do it as infrequently as possible.

PolicyGuy:

The whole process is hopelessly high maintenance for a substantial chunk of the population.

You've made my point much more eloquently. It's currently a high maintenance option that just won't work.

mudguard

2119 posts

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#3174612 22-Dec-2023 14:26

johno1234:

Ge0rge: As someone who has a diesel vehicle, I get online twice a year, enter my rego and the system pops up all my details, including the amount of km I purchased last time. I click "buy", enter my CC from BitWarden, and a week later the ticket turns up in the post. Less than two minutes effort on my behalf.

Are there easier ways? Sure, but they all have pros and cons. Is the world going to end if everyone with a road-going vehicle has to do this? Not at all.

I feel the same. It is no more bother than getting your rego and much less bother than getting your WOF. Non issue.

Rego is what once a year? People might be buying kms constantly depending on their budget. And waiting for it in the post.

Geektastic

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#3174616 22-Dec-2023 14:39

Hopefully we can move away from the stack of playing cards in the windscreen and just attach all these things to the number plate number via a computer database.

johno1234

2807 posts

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#3174630 22-Dec-2023 15:09

mudguard:

Rego is what once a year? People might be buying kms constantly depending on their budget. And waiting for it in the post.

Topping up RUC is less effort than driving to the gas station and filling up your car. I do it on my phone in about 2 minutes. The government can and should remove the requirement to display the window card for reasons pointed out already.

Driving a car on the roads is a privilege and it is up to the driver to meet the requirements to exercise it.

The big problems are the ludicrous admin fee and compliance. Many people simply won't do it just as many people don't register their cars or dogs or get WOFs.

jarledb

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#3174639 22-Dec-2023 16:31

Geektastic: Hopefully we can move away from the stack of playing cards in the windscreen and just attach all these things to the number plate number via a computer database.

There are even systems that allow Police (or other such authority) to automatically scan all license plates around them and pop up any problems so they can deal with people that don't have a valid registration, valid WOF or haven't paid RUC etc.

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