Just under 12,000 electric vehicle owners failed to pre-pay for their first block of road user charges by the May 31 deadline.

They now face a $200 police fine and a 10 per cent penalty
on unpaid charges.

“As of this morning, we are at 88.75 per cent compliance, which is 93,261 vehicles out of a total of 105,105,” NZTA Waka Kotahi spokesman Andy Knackstedt told the Herald earlier today.

The fines are not an idle threat. Knackstedt said earlier that about 5000 road user charge (RUC) fines were issued to drivers of light diesel vehicles in 2023.

Police can tell immediately whether drivers are up to date with their RUCs by the licence displayed on their windscreens. It shows the mileage at the time a block of RUCs was bought and how many future kilometres were paid for. The first odometer reading is essentially done by an honour system but the numbers are subsequently checked each time a car goes for its warrant of fitness.

Anyone who tries to cheat the system by fiddling with an odometer faces a fine of up to $15,000.

RUCs for electric vehicles were introduced on April 1, but Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced a two-month grace period.

Although some 12,000 drivers failed to pre-pray for their first block (at $76 per 1000km for a full EV and $38 per 1000km for a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle or PHEV), the situation is better than a week out, when only 59,523 (or 56 per cent) were on board.

Even so, the holdouts represent about $15 million in lost revenue, on an annualised basis, based on the AA’s average mileage stats.

Where to head

If you’ve yet to get your act together, you can purchase RUCs via NZTA’s website (which will incur a $12.44 admin fee) or over-the-counter at agents including the AA and VTNZ (with a $13.71 admin fee).

EVs have previously been exempt from RUCs to encourage their uptake to a target of 2 per cent of New Zealand’s vehicle fleet. That target has now been hit.

Both Labour and National supported the end of the exemption, which would otherwise leave a $2 billion hole in the roading and road maintenance budget (fed by RUCs and fuel tax) as more cars electrify.

$1000 a year for the average driver

Electric vehicle owners will immediately notice the difference.

The AA says the average Kiwi driver clocks just under 12,000km a year, which works out at $912 a year in EV RUCs – or probably the best part of $1000 once admin fees are included (only one admin fee is paid when buying multiple blocks of 1000km).

The Roadtrip app provides an everyday example of how RUCs will impact EV running costs.

A return trip from Auckland to Tauranga in a Tesla Model 3 would cost about $26 in charging (assuming cheaper charging at home over faster but more expensive public chargers).

With RUCs of $32 added, the cost of that Auckland-Tauranga return jaunt would rise from $26 to $58.

(Roadtrip calculates that, in a roughly comparable petrol car, a BMW 330i, the same return trip would cost about $90 at a petrol price of $2.83 a litre. See some charts on lifetime EV versus petrol car ownership and running costs here.)

An unfair share?

EV owners say they’re happy to pay their share – but some, including the AA, the Motor Industry Association, the Motor Trade Association and others have said, in a submission to the Government, that an EV will pay 95 per cent more in RUCs than a fuel-efficient car pays in petrol tax.

And some PHEV owners say their cars’ small, often fast-degrading, batteries mean they run mostly on petrol (the Government acknowledged the double-tax criticism when it lowered the initial $58/1000km RUC rate for plug-in hybrids to $38).

The counter-argument is that EVs are heavier than equivalent petrol cars, so cause more wear and tear on roads (although EV proponents argue the difference is not meaningful), and will be one of several elements spurring the need for power generation and grid upgrades (which EV advocates argue will have the long-term benefit of boosting NZ’s balance of trade and energy security as petrol imports lower).

Hybrids that don’t need to plug in, such as the Toyota Prius, don’t need to pay RUCs. Neither does any electric vehicle under 1000kg or over 3000kg (heavy electric vehicles will maintain their exemption until December 31, 2025).

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.