Diesel cars?

[john & becky]

Can anybody tell me what the situation is with diesel cars in NZ please.

We have a diesel car which we would like to bring with us, i understand that the diesel is cheap to buy but there is another charge which must be paid on top?

[dawn]

You have to pay tax, roughly $24 per 1000 kilometrs, I don't have the exact figures. Apparently, you can buy a certain amount of kilometres in increments of 1000. Sorry, not much help but that's all hubby knows.

He found this which might help: http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/factsheets/38.html

[DB]

Thats about the size of it.

In the UK there are two "sorts" of diesel available, road diesel which is taxed, and agricultural diesel which is not taxed. The agricultural diesel has a red dye, so sometimes called red diesel, the dye stains the engine, so a C&E inspector can take your engine apart to check for staining (which they have rights to do), and oif so found you will be charged with a duty evasion offense.

Here in NZ we just have one sort of diesel, which is untaxed.

If you have a motor vehicle which runs on any fuel not taxed at source (so anything other than petrol and LPG) then you need to pay "road user charges". The rest of the story you'll find in the LTSA factsheet Dawn referenced above.

[StevieD]

How is it policed so to speak? Do you have the mileage taken when the car is tested? I can see lots of electric drills being pressed into service to "clock" the cars if not!

[DB]

The Road User Charge is a ticket like thing, like a rectangular version of a UK tax disc, which has printed on it your reg number plus the range of KMs its good for. Its the same size and shape as the registration docket, which every car also has. Also stuck on your windscreen in the opposite top corner is your Warrant of Fitness sticker, so Mr Policeman can check everything about your car in about 10 seconds. He checks you out (in practice its obligatory to carry one's licence whilst driving) including a breath test in about another 10 seconds. So a random check is all over in less than a minute, with some cheery humour and a goodbye wave.

Folks in NZ are by and large honest, so there isnt a cottage industry of winder-backers, leastways not hereabouts.

Topping up RUCs is easy-ish, go to post office, fill out form, hand over old RUCs and EFTPOS card, get new RUCs, off you go. I say "ish" 'cos the form is an example of how not to design forms, its really easy if you can only work out which boxes you need to fill out, and for a top-up of the same KMs as last time theres only about four things including signature...

[Charlosparky]

So is it still cheaper to run diesel than a petrol car as it is (assuming you do a hundred plus miles a week)as it is here in the UK ?

[DB]

Today, petrol is $1.479/L, diesel is $0.999/L.

Road user charges for a 3 tonne vehicle are $31.41 / 10,000 KM.

So, to make diesel more expensive than petrol, and if my sums are right, your vehicle would need to consume about 152L per KM, and not even a hummer does that So yeah, diesel is cheaper than petrol, even before you consider that generally diesel vehicles do KMs per litre than petrol.

[Charlosparky]

Cool! I shall still get a diesel then Thanks for that info.

[Paul & Rach]

Diesel tax is paid by pre-purchase of distance licences. For a normal car this costs $31.41 per 1000 km (One thousand not ten thousand).

I did a few calculations :


Based on comparing a 30mpg petrol car to a similar 45mpg diesel over 10,000km per year....

The diesel costs just 67% of the petrol car (which is actually better than the UK cost of 70%)

Still doesn't explain why there are so few diesels on the road in NZ... they're every where here !!!

[Ant&Eve]

I did these calcs recently when deliberating over a seemingly cheap petrol 4x4 compared to more expensive diesels. Petrol cars have bigger service intervals than turbo diesels, whereas diesels have of course the road user charge. Based on my annual travel distance, diesel was quite a lot cheaper, so that’s what I went for.

Incidentally (or rather anecdotally) there seems to me to be heaps of diesels down here in Christchurch. One nice touch at garages here is that it’s very common for forecourt attendants to come out and re-fuel your diesel car for you, whereas they don’t seem to bother with petrol.

21350 klm per annum

Diesel Petrol
$10.00 $15.00 ltr / 100 klm
$1.09 $1.50 $ / ltr
$2,135.00 $3,202.50 lts per annum
$2,327.15 $4,803.75 Cost of fuel per annum
$512.40 $384.30 Servicing costs (7,500klm for diesel; 10,000klm for petrol)
$670.39 $0.00 Road user charge

$3,509.94 $5,188.05 Total & diff $1,678.11