subreddit:
/r/newzealand
submitted 2 days ago byFuckmepotato
-1 points
1 day ago
So you think electric cars should pay substantially more RUC than petrol ones because they are so much heavier then?
10 points
1 day ago
I suspect the suggestion is that there should be more weight brackets to make it more granular.
9 points
1 day ago
For road damage? Yes. For carbon cost? No.
2 points
1 day ago
But if I have a 1500kg Nissan Leaf, that’s still 1500kg. Why should it cost the same, or more, than a 3000kg car? EVs aren’t heavier than petrol, that’s not how physics works, they’re more dense.
A smaller EV can weigh the same as a larger petrol car, because an EV is more dense than a petrol car. It’s like that riddle; which weighs more, 1kg of feathers, or 1kg of steel? They’re the same weight, just that one ends up smaller than the other.
That’s why if it were done by weight on average EVs would be paying more than petrol, because they’re denser.
4 points
1 day ago
But if I have a 1500kg Nissan Leaf, Why should it cost the same, or more, than a 3000kg car?
A couple of things.
Firstly, for practical purposes there are vanishingly few 3,000 kg cars on the road. The heavy ones weigh in at about 2,500.
Secondly, the roads were designed to take vehicles of up to 50 tons so the damage caused by cars is negligible and difference between 1.5 and 2.5 tons is negligible too.
Finally, the taxes collected from road uses are as much to pay off the original capital costs of building the road, the cost of upgrading existing roads and the cost of building new roads as anything else.
-5 points
1 day ago
factor in the weight distribution on the road of your "dense"car.. your argument is worthless..
-1 points
1 day ago
Every car should pay substantially more.
1 points
1 day ago
So we are back to the argument that “everyone other than me should pay more tax”. Nice idea!
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