Yep.

evilengineer:

 

I've only sat in the passenger seat of a Tesla but got to say, it seems too clever by half.

 

Whereas I have driven an electric Kona and the only learning curve is figuring out if the thing is actually on when you press the start button.

 

EVs certainly don't need to be any more complicated than an ICE.

 

I had no problems driving a Kona electric. It was a far more seamless experience than Build Your Dreams. 

sen8or:

 

frankv:

 

They have the same options they had before utes were available. Plus quadbikes and ATVs. Plus a wider variety of tractors.

 

I suspect that the chief attraction of utes is that they are automatically accepted by IRD as a work vehicle, and consequently all costs are tax-deductable, ironically including the "ute tax".

 

 

On your 2nd point, not entirely correct. Yes, costs can be claimed as a business expense, but they are still subject to the same FBT rules as any other perk.

 

They can qualify as a "work vehicle" (and therefore exempt from FBT) as they are built equally to transport passengers as cargo (50/50 split is maximum allowable), however, for them to be exempt from FBT, there are a few more qualifiers - 

 

 - There has to be a clear policy in place regarding no personal use of vehicles except to/from work. 

 

- There has to be a letter on file to the employee confirming that it is a work vehicle and only to be used to travel to/from work (or stops incidental to that - along the way).

 

 - The vehicle has to be sign written in the company's normal signage. Stick on / magnetic signs are not acceptable.

 

 - There has to be checks done at least quarterly on the KMs travelled ensuring no personal use / adherence to the guidelines.

 

I'll quite happily admit that the odds of all these things happening on a builders ute is similar to winning powerball, but the IRD can enforce them and issue notices for tax breaches if the above conditions are found not to be met.

 

So, for a farmer or a brickie or whatever that uses the vehicle himself, he's the one who checks on behalf of IRD to ensure usage is legit. So long as IRD isn't actually at the boat ramp or the school gate or the skifield, he can do whatever he wants.

Clear policy? "No-one is to use a vehicle for personal use. If IRD is watching." File with vision & values statements. Check.

Letter on file: Print out the above. Explain to any employee what to tell IRD if they turn up at the boat ramp or skifield. Check.

Signwritten vehicle: Check.

Quarterly checks: Every 3 months, write 0 in the spreadsheet column for personal use. Check.

It's a joke that just confirms my suspicions.

shk292: There seems to be a huge number of people who stop at the supermarket on the way to work on Saturday mornings if the above is adhered to. And a lot of them take their kids to work with them.
Must be annoying having all your frozen shopping defrosting in the back of the ute while you're at work

Sometimes you just gotta make sacrifices for your job. *shrug*

alasta: It's a shame that electric vehicles have become another culture war, and this thread has gone way off topic, but here are my hopefully pragmatic thoughts:

 

 

1. People shouldn't be using cars unless absolutely necessary, regardless of the powertrain. Walking and public transport should be the first option where possible. 
2. Local councils need to be more pro-active with parking enforcement to improve experiences for pedestrians. 
3. People shouldn't own a bigger car than they need, but large vehicles still have valid use cases. 
4. Electric vehicles are excellent for people who do a lot of short trips but still have enough downtime for charging - e.g. florists and property managers. 
5. Mainstream electric vehicles cost upwards of $70k even with the subsidy and for most people it is extremely difficult to get an economic payback from that additional capex. This is particularly true for people who can't charge at home either because they don't have the facilities, or because most of their driving is over longer distances. 
6. Computer nerds wrongly assume that the average person has the technology proficiency to operate cheaper electric vehicles such as Tesla or Build Your Dreams. I tried driving one recently and there was a lot of foul language coming from the driver's seat. 

 

I have just ordered a new Mazda CX-30 and I am not going to apologise to electric vehicle fanatics for my decision to purchase the vehicle that best suits my needs, but I will certainly be using the car sparingly to minimise its CO2 impact. For the record, I travel about 4000km per year on foot and about 2500km per year on public transport.

I've converted your bullets points to number for the sake of convenience :-)

1. Completely, fully, 100% agree. I'd love to use use public transport but as a shift worker travelling between Tawa (Wellington) and the airport there's no option for me to do this, no matter the time of day.
2. Not sure what you mean here. Are people parking across footpaths somewhere?
3. Agree.
4. Downtime is a use case problem and not the way you characterise it. For instance, some couriers might have an isssue with the down times of the particular vehicle they have but charge times for needed distances (as opposed to imagined ones) are probably a lot better than you imagine them to be.
5. My brand new MG ZS EV cost far less than this.
6. Driving is driving is driving. There are a few minor differences with how you drive an EV compared to an ICE but these are pretty small. My personal driving progression has been from various Ford Falcons to a Ford Focus to a Nissan March to an EV. During that time work vehicles have been mostly Holden Commodores. These days I'm pretty far from being a computer nerd but I found the switch to EV's to be very easy.

FWIW, I'm not at all fussed by the impending RUC implementation. It's been kicked down the road for a few years and for the almost 1 year I've owned and EV I'm highly appreciative of that. I've already started adjusting the family budget for RUC implementation and am well aware of the privilege I have to be able to do this. I do have high concerns around the ability of people in the low soci-economic spectrum to not only pay for RUC's but to be able to budget for them in the first place. It's easy for a lot of people to try and assume some sort of [what they believe to be] moral high ground and say "oh, they won't be paying for petrol" etc., but that's an extremely narrow view which completely ignores the struggle, both in educational and/or financial terms, many such people face day in, day out.

Dratsab:

 

2. Not sure what you mean here. Are people parking across footpaths somewhere?

I'm often seeing vehicles parking on footpaths in Auckland, quite often a large SUV or ute. 
Perhaps they felt justified, because no one had provided an extra large car parking space for their extra large vehicle.

Regarding the fuel excise tax and road user changes for EVs, this is great news for the fossil fuel industry and imported petrol (don't think we refine locally any more). 

Meanwhile we have consented wind farms that haven't been built yet.
https://www.windenergy.org.nz/consented-wind-farms

alexx:

 

Regarding the fuel excise tax and road user changes for EVs, this is great news for the fossil fuel industry and imported petrol (don't think we refine locally any more). 

 

Meanwhile we have consented wind farms that haven't been built yet.
https://www.windenergy.org.nz/consented-wind-farms

 

So far as FET is concerned a move to universal RUC charged by distance would logically result in the roading portion of FET being removed but this would likely be more than offset by an increase in ETS/carbon taxation of fossil fuels which I don't see as something that the FF industry will be celebrating. The nature of fuel and roading taxation landscape will depend on who will be governing NZ after next weekend but the framework of the RUC system is/has largely been decided in parliament's back rooms already so just a matter of implementing those changes with whatever spin TPTB put on them

Also worth noting that yesterday's events in Israel is likely to be reflected in oil prices this coming week as is always the case when destabilising activity occurs in the Middle East.

alexx:

 

Regarding the fuel excise tax and road user changes for EVs, this is great news for the fossil fuel industry and imported petrol (don't think we refine locally any more). 

 

We don't refine locally anymore, but we never refined our own oil into fuel. It has too much sulfur (I think?) for that. We were always at the mercy of imported oil as far as fuel goes.

 

Meanwhile we have consented wind farms that haven't been built yet.
https://www.windenergy.org.nz/consented-wind-farms

 

Yeah not sure why Labour and/or Greens aren't hammering National on that. They say they want to double the amount of renewable energy by making it easier to consent. Well, there are already hundreds of MW that are consented but not built. So easier consents are a great idea, but they won't help if you don't then make sure they build. 

Also it's great to say you want to double the amount of renewable electricity, but over what time scale? Next three years? Nobody's going to build that much - it would be completely idle. I'm sure I won't be the only one wondering whether they put any real thought into all the big numbers they throw around to sound impressive.

alasta:

 

evilengineer:

 

I've only sat in the passenger seat of a Tesla but got to say, it seems too clever by half.

 

Whereas I have driven an electric Kona and the only learning curve is figuring out if the thing is actually on when you press the start button.

 

EVs certainly don't need to be any more complicated than an ICE.

 

 

I had no problems driving a Kona electric. It was a far more seamless experience than Build Your Dreams. 

 

Not sure what you are on about honestly, we were away in the US this past month, my elderly sister in law who struggles to operate a smart phone and has never used a PC or modern IT gear of any type and was left in charge of the house and BnB, and for various reasons had to drive our ZS EV for shopping trips etc, before we left I gave her a soldiers 5 and a 2min trip around the block.

After we left she reported that she loved how easy it was to drive and wants to get one, so sorry cant be that hard, and yes I have driven the BYD, a Tesla and Polestar, all pretty similar and easy, any car your not farmilar with ICE or EV is going to take a few minutes to adjust.

Cyril

shk292: There seems to be a huge number of people who stop at the supermarket on the way to work on Saturday mornings if the above is adhered to. And a lot of them take their kids to work with them. 
Must be annoying having all your frozen shopping defrosting in the back of the ute while you're at work

A common arrangement is to pay fringe benefit tax for Saturday & Sunday (& any holidays). While enjoying the FBT benefit Monday to Friday.

SaltyNZ:

 

MikeAqua:

 

Their complaint is that they are paying taxed for purchasing suitable vehicles when EVs suitable for their use-case aren't available. 

 

 

 

 

Well, sorry, but that's how taxes work. I paid taxes that went towards UFB, but there will never be any fibre in my area. I pay taxes towards the health system, but I have private insurance. I pay taxes toward the justice system, but I will never qualify for legal aid. I pay taxes that go towards subsidies for farms, but I'm not a farmer.

 

I do not give a **** whether farmers think they're hard done by because there are subsidies on EVs but they can't buy an EV. Get over it.

 

You have misunderstood.  The objection (not mine) is primarily not about the subsidy it's about the tax.  A punitive, targeted tax policy, that they cannot avoid.  The tax policy is intended to encourage people to avoid high emitting vehicles, but .if people don't have a choice, that is unfair and they should be exempted.  The subsidy is probably just salt in the wounds

Personally, I don't have a dog in this fight.  I bought my SUV before the ute tax.  By the time I need to replace it in 10 years/250,000km from now, I'm sure EVs will have developed much more and will be reasonably priced.

Dratsab:

 

MikeAqua: Then that tax is being used to subsidise people buying luxury EVs.

 

You need to get over this complete BS trope, and the 'rich buyers' one. The subsidy applies to vehicles < $80k, luxury EV's cost far more than this. I think you'll find that [probably] most people are taking out loans or are financing buying their EV's. 

 

I believe the most popular vehicle in NZ last month was the Tesla Y which costs $72k.  That also makes it by definition the most popular EV that month.  I'd personally call that a luxury vehicle.  But, perhaps my threshold for luxury is lower than yours, lol.

MikeAqua:

 

A punitive, targeted tax policy, that they cannot avoid. 

 

Personally, I don't have a dog in this fight.  I bought my SUV before the ute tax.  By the time I need to replace it in 10 years/250,000km from now, I'm sure EVs will have developed much more and will be reasonably priced.

 

Plenty have already avoided it in exactly the way you did. There was a massive uptick in fee-attracting vehicle registrations in the month before it came into effect.

There are already 4WD utes available in other markets; they will be here in a year or so. 

If you replace your ute with a brand new $80K one so often that you bought one before just before the tax came in and want to replace it with another one before those EVs get here, then I don't feel like an extra $3K on the price for the second one is a problem for you. You could just wait another year. In which case, the tax has worked - you didn't buy a polluting vehicle you didn't need, and instead waited for the clean one.

SaltyNZ:

 

Plenty have already avoided it in exactly the way you did. There was a massive uptick in fee-attracting vehicle registrations in the month before it came into effect.

 

There are already 4WD utes available in other markets; they will be here in a year or so. 

 

If you replace your ute with a brand new $80K one so often that you bought one before just before the tax came in and want to replace it with another one before those EVs get here, then I don't feel like an extra $3K on the price for the second one is a problem for you. You could just wait another year. In which case, the tax has worked - you didn't buy a polluting vehicle you didn't need, and instead waited for the clean one.

 

That's true.  We replaced all the utes at work prematurely too, to avoid the ute-tax.  Of course all the vehicles those replaced are still operating in NZ.

I'm not sure if by "you" you mean me or a hypothetical vehicle owner.  However, I tend to keep cars for 10 - 15 years.  Absent the ute-tax, I wouldn't have bought a new Pajero when I did.  I'd just have the old one which was lighter and used a little less fuel.

The pipeline of BEV-utes in development currently looks either expensive or underwhelming.  But give another ten years or so and we'll see.