Paying for our roads

A survey in Canada found that when people buy an electric car they don’t go back to petrol, and this does not come as a surprise to me. I have both types, and much prefer the electric car to drive. This means many of the worries of petrol car drivers are unfounded and can be overcome.

The electric car industry is still in its infancy, with many of the performance claims not in production yet. The biggest sector of the vehicle market is pickup trucks, and to date there are no electric versions in production, although several are planned. So clearly a long way to go.

To pay for our roads there are currently several types of taxes, those that are built into the price of fuel, plus road taxes and our local council rates. Roads consume a lot of money, and it has to come from somewhere. Mostly it’s user pays. In New Zealand, on every litre of fuel we pay $0.66 fuel tax, $0.07 ACC tax and $0.06 local authority tax, amounting to $0.74. The fuel itself is around $1, and it is all rounded off with 15 per cent GST. A $2 litre of fuel includes about 50 per cent tax to build and maintain the roads. There is also the road user tax, which is $113 a year, and of course commercial users pay heavily.

An electric car will pay around $0.25 per KWH, which will take you 7.5km, depending on the car and speed. Or about $0.50 compared to a litre of fuel, and there is no tax to pay. I get my electricity from my roof solar panels, and instead of selling the electricity for $0.08 I put it in the car battery.

To support growing numbers, electric car owners like me are not paying our share for the roads, but this will only last until electric cars make up 64,000, or 2 per cent of New Zealand’s car fleet, which should be reached by the end of 2021, or two more years.

In the bigger picture, the advantage of electric transport for New Zealand is that we currently import $6 billion worth of oil, while we have an abundance of renewable energy. If we utilised our renewable energy for transport it could result in a big reduction in our oil import bill.

Diesel drivers pay the road user tax at about $0.07 per kilometre, and that would be a reasonable amount for electric cars. They would still be cheaper to run, as electricity is cheaper energy than oil, and, in my case, I generate it myself.

There is an additional saving in maintenance, because electric cars have very few moving parts and need minimal servicing, no oil changes or engine and transmission repairs.

My electricity bill for the year is $500, and this pays for the house and my transport. The best part is that the 10-year-old Leaf is a joy to drive.

"Diesel drivers pay the road user tax at about $0.07 per kilometre, and that would be a reasonable amount for electric cars. "