From the editor
Greetings CAR readers. We start this month with a rant. It’s good to get these off your chest every once in a while. We’ve crunched the numbers and the figure is R6,11. Yes, this is what you pay towards taxes and fuel levies for every litre of fuel when you fill up your car.
If you drive one of SA’S top-selling LCVS – say, a Toyota Hilux or Ford Ranger and a lot of South Africans do – every time you chuck in 75 litres of diesel at a cost of ±R1 275 (using the fuel price at the time of writing), R458,25 of your outlay goes towards tax and fuel levies. The tax is the same regardless of the size of your tank or what you drive, of course. Even the numbers for a small car like SA’S top-selling passenger vehicle, the Volkswagen Polo, are sobering; 35 litres of petrol will see you pay R213,85 in taxes and fuel levies.
The Automobile Association of South Africa has broken this down for us: General Fuel Levy is R3,93 per litre, Road Accident Fund Levy, R2,18. And that’s on top of the R3,75 per litre for transport, storage, as well as wholesale and retail margins. A litre of fuel costs just ±R7,15 when it arrives at the harbour. Bottom line, taxes and fuel levies make up 36% of what we’re paying at the pumps.
The most disturbing aspect is that the General Fuel Levy isn’t specifically earmarked for road construction or anything related to motoring. It goes directly to the National Treasury’s coffers to be used for … well … any purpose deemed fit.
Imagine if the petrol price was a third of what we’re currently paying? CAR could’ve put an extra few hundred kilometres onto this month’s 10 road tests, headed by our cover star, the new BMW M4 Competition.
We round off this month’s tests with an excellent comparison between two low-cost sedans, the Toyota Corolla Quest and Honda Ballade, with a selection of power SUVS, compact crossovers and hatchbacks in-between.
And, if talk of the price of fuel has you hankering for a clean, green electric vehicle, our technical editor unpacks every electrified vehicle currently on sale in South Africa on page 88.
Enjoy the issue.