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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961 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3173970 21-Dec-2023 09:46

PolicyGuy:

If the government went for a GPS-based solution, I would expect that a certain proportion of the population would import (completely illegal) GPS jammers to 'blind' the GPS tracker in their vehicle. This has proved to be the case in some parts of the USA, where some truckies are keen to avoid "gummint snooping", according to a report I read some time ago.

The problem with this (apart from the general criminality) is that where a road with any decent amount of such traffic passes close to an airport, it can interrupt GPS coverage for aircraft landing at the airport, and disrupt air traffic.

Presumably just the same as when putting a magnet near a smart meter can be detected as tampering. Your GPS odometer could work out that it had no signal for 30% of the time when the usual user is maybe 1-2%, for example in tunnels and whatnot.

boosacnoodle

961 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3173971 21-Dec-2023 09:46

wired:

The government already collects the odometer from every vehicle as part of the WOF process so it doesn’t need to do much more to check compliance.

Here is a link to an api that already tells you if your car is subject to RUC charges and whether the RUC has expired. https://checka.co.nz/report/sample

Excep WoF is only performed three years after purchase and then every one year thereafter for quite some time.

mudguard

2102 posts

Uber Geek

#3174050 21-Dec-2023 13:48

itxtme:
I can think of basically no good reasons for this idea, when there is a perfectly adequate way to measure distance, the odometer.

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.

Ge0rge

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#3174057 21-Dec-2023 13:57

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.

MikeAqua

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#3174068 21-Dec-2023 14:38

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).

Mike

CYaBro

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#3174070 21-Dec-2023 14:43

eRoad has a system, for fleets but could work for anyone, that plugs into the vehicle and tracks all sorts of things.

It can also automatically purchase more RUCs when needed.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

Sidestep

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#3174074 21-Dec-2023 14:47

MikeAqua:

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).

Off road use can be reclaimed, large companies do this (one of my friends worked on Higgin's system)

https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/road-user-charges/ruc-refunds/

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dolsen

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#3174077 21-Dec-2023 14:55

Not sure if I have missed that they seem to know how they are going to treat PHEVs

"From 1 April 2024, owners of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) can apply for excise duty refunds on petrol they purchase."

So, looks like paying RUC and then refunds for any petrol. Seems a good way to do it.

From page https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/road-user-charges/ruc-refunds/.

There is also a link for how they are going to do ruc that goes nowhere.

https://www.nzta.govt.nz/ruc-for-electric-vehicles/

RUKI

1402 posts

Uber Geek

#3174097 21-Dec-2023 16:11

@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. Same would apply to all those thousands of MMC PHEV which can only do <16kms on the full charge and less and less with age. People drive 120 round trip to work daily and may only drive 8kms of that in EV mode and you want to charge them RUC?
Remember that in many PHEV, whenever it is cold (e.g. South Island, winter), or you want to use AIrcon, or you accelerate going uphill - the petrol motor kicks in and you are no longer drive in EV mode. Also if you bough PHEV, but have nowhere to charge it - it is de-facto a hybrid, which doesn't run even 2kms in EV mode.

Imposing RUC on PHEV will create a huge inconvenience and possibly unincentivise dealers to import PHEVs into the country and people will stop buying them because of that.

HarmLessSolutions

956 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#3174115 21-Dec-2023 16:48

dolsen:

Not sure if I have missed that they seem to know how they are going to treat PHEVs

"From 1 April 2024, owners of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) can apply for excise duty refunds on petrol they purchase."

So, looks like paying RUC and then refunds for any petrol. Seems a good way to do it.

From page https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/road-user-charges/ruc-refunds/.

There is also a link for how they are going to do ruc that goes nowhere.

https://www.nzta.govt.nz/ruc-for-electric-vehicles/

It looks as though NZTA are putting links in place in readiness for EVs and PHEVs to be paying RUCs as of April 1st 2024. I suspect though that this is likely to be just an interim measure until such time all road vehicles start paying distance based RUCs as implied in the National-ACT coalition agreement (p6).

Transitioning over to a distance based RUC system for the entire NZ light vehicle fleet will be a huge undertaking and doing it in a staged manner (EVs & PHEVs first) is entirely understandable.

https://www.harmlesssolutions.co.nz/

PolicyGuy

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#3174120 21-Dec-2023 17:00

mudguard:
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.

That's a $3,052.44 charge if your vehicle is less than 3.5 tonnes

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.

If you drive the 'average' distance of about 10,000 km/year and you drive a 'light' <3.5tonne vehicle, that would be two payments of $392.44 a year.

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.

At the moment, these 'average' people are paying on about $15 a week through their petrol taxes, and have no visible transaction fee and no paperwork. When universal RUCs come in, if the existing RUC system continues they'll have a bit less to spend on their regular petrol fill-up, but they'll have to remember ten times a year to go online to buy 1,000km RUCs at $76.00 each and pay a transaction fees of $12.44 each time - the fees will be 16.4% of the total $88.44. It would be much more economical to buy 3,000km RUCs at a time, but that would cost $240.44, which would be an impossible lump sum.
Not to mention that they'll have to remember to check their letterbox and get the RUC card, and stick it in their windscreen pocket.
The whole process is hopelessly high maintenance for a substantial chunk of the population.

Shadowfoot

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#3174137 21-Dec-2023 18:20

HarmLessSolutions:
Transitioning over to a distance based RUC system for the entire NZ light vehicle fleet will be a huge undertaking and doing it in a staged manner (EVs & PHEVs first) is entirely understandable.

Sounds like an expensive project.

Blue Sky: shadowfoot.bsky.social

PolicyGuy

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#3174138 21-Dec-2023 18:27

Shadowfoot:
HarmLessSolutions:

Transitioning over to a distance based RUC system for the entire NZ light vehicle fleet will be a huge undertaking and doing it in a staged manner (EVs & PHEVs first) is entirely understandable.

Sounds like an expensive project.

It's good thing that NZ government departments are so good at major IT projects, then 😰

HarmLessSolutions

956 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#3174140 21-Dec-2023 18:28

Shadowfoot:
HarmLessSolutions:

Transitioning over to a distance based RUC system for the entire NZ light vehicle fleet will be a huge undertaking and doing it in a staged manner (EVs & PHEVs first) is entirely understandable.

Sounds like an expensive project.

We'll just have to wait and see how sound Luxon & co's business savvy really is in regard to what is a very complex taxation system.

https://www.harmlesssolutions.co.nz/

RUKI

1402 posts

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#3174170 21-Dec-2023 20:54

When it comes to impose RUC on hybrid:

Toyota / Lexus Hybrid and EV Battery Expert Battery Test & Repair

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