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Prepare to be tracked

Cars provide us with an amazing amount of freedom.

Jump in a modern car, SUV, ute or other vehicle and you can travel long distances in comfort at your own convenience and pace.

As an individual driving your own vehicle you are not limited to the timetables of busses, trains or airlines.

Of course all the infrastructure (roads) you need to support your driving activities have to paid for and that's why, in New Zealand, there's a very hefty amount of tax included in the pump price for petrol, while diesel vehicles are required to pay road user charges (RUC) on the basis of Kms travelled.

Now, along come EVs to make things more difficult, at least from the perspective of collecting the essential taxes associated with infrastructure expansion and maintenance.

Right now, EVs pay no tax or RUC and that contributes significantly to their economy when compared to ICE equivalents.

According to government policy, this will change in the pretty near future.

The plan is to introduce RUCs for EVs, the real problem is just how this will be administered.

Drivers of diesel vehicles are already used to "buying Kms" and attaching a RUC label to their windscreen. Given the relatively small number of non-commercial diesel vehicles on the road this system is "efficient enough".

However, once the majority of the vehicles on our roads become EVs it's pretty obvious that something better will have to be invented.

The problem with the current small vehicle RUC system is that drivers must pay in advance for those charges and keep a track of how many Kms they have left, remembering to buy more before they run out. There are significant penalties associated with driving such a vehicle without having already paid the RUCs required.

So what's likely to happen?

Well if the USA is any indicator, odds are that this whole RUC thing will be completely automated by way of technology.

A couple of states in the USA have announced that EV drivers will have to fit a GPS tracker to their vehicles and that this tracker will keep a tally of the number of miles they've travelled with that data being used to automatically bill the owner for the fees involved. The exact details of how that billing will take place are not yet clear but I suspect it'll be by way of a pre-paid credit or a linked credit card.

Such a system will obviously introduce significant efficiencies when compared to the system currently being used here in NZ. No labels need be printed and drivers won't have to keep a constant eye on the numbers to make sure they've used up all the pre-paid Kms of RUC they've bought.

However, some people are already complaining that these GPS-based trackers, which report their data to "the powers that be" on a regular basis, may constitute an unreasonable breach of privacy and perhaps even be a form of state-run surveilance. They're demanding guarantees that no actual location data be available, only the distance travelled.

I have no doubt that most EVs made today already have sufficient tech onboard to manage this data-logging and reporting requirement without the need for additional hardware. The onboard computer is obviously logging the total distance driven and these EVs are permanently "connected" for the purposes of software updates. It would seem trivial therefore to simply have them forward this data to a central billing authority that would then debit the registered owner's account based on Kms driven.

More worrying might be a mandate that vehicles with unpaid RUC would not be able to be driven. Effectively, if you run out of RUC credit or your payment is declined you could find yourself stuck on the side of the road with a "bricked" EV, perhaps a long way from home -- or even the nearest payment option.

Given that EVs are often significantly heavier than the ICE-vehicles they replace, I wonder if we'll see a hike in RUC to compensate for the extra wear and tear on our highways. Could be that the economic benefits of running an EV will be eroded gradually over time in a way that is analogous to "death by a thousand cuts".

I also wonder if at least a few governments around the world (perhaps including ours) will ram through legislation that mandates the logging and reporting of *all* movements of all EVs. After all, surely this would help prevent and solve crimes -- and besides, these days nobody even remembers that privacy was once an inalienable right.

Interesting times ahead!

Carpe Diem folks!

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