Older vehicles = increased ACC levy?

[Dodgyiti]

Half the reason I keep my old utes is the cheap rego on one because it is 40+ years old, and the other is the full chassis. No seatbelts though
I would happily plough into a new airbagged car and see what the end result is. 2000kg of metal against 1200kg of plastic and tin foil, yeah much safer.
Back in olden days cars had metal dashboards so when you crashed you got a good smack in the head to remind you to be more careful.

[Paul in NZ]

Half the reason I keep my old utes is the cheap rego on one because it is 40+ years old, and the other is the full chassis. No seatbelts though
I would happily plough into a new airbagged car and see what the end result is. 2000kg of metal against 1200kg of plastic and tin foil, yeah much safer.
Back in olden days cars had metal dashboards so when you crashed you got a good smack in the head to remind you to be more careful.

I hear ya man... Nothing like a steering column embedded in ya sturnum to keep ya focussed ;-)

However - fuck acc... How can this be a fair go for less well off Kiwis. I'm OK but far from rich and drive an old 1993 corolla wagon because it is economical, cheap as chips to run and fix myself (no power steering, no air con, no power windows but a shit hot stereo, well OK ish) and it cost $1300. I do 500 km a week minimum and it's up to 270,000km and still going strong. It's never had a decent whack (straight as) and even if the motor blew up then $700 would replace it. I know people that have new company cars, they have a decent accident once every couple of years cos they drive like muppets and don't car cos it aint their car... Why should they get a cheap rego....

[Beemer]

...I'm OK but far from rich and drive an old 1993 corolla wagon because it is economical, cheap as chips to run and fix myself (no power steering, no air con, no power windows but a shit hot stereo, well OK ish) and it cost $1300. I do 500 km a week minimum and it's up to 270,000km and still going strong. It's never had a decent whack (straight as) and even if the motor blew up then $700 would replace it. I know people that have new company cars, they have a decent accident once every couple of years cos they drive like muppets and don't car cos it aint their car... Why should they get a cheap rego....

Same here - the other half drives a 1984 Ford Laser to work that cost him $1000 about 11 years ago. He's had rust cut out and a little work done on it but it doesn't owe him anything. He is happy to leave it out in the weather when he's at work and the only problems he's had with it are an idiot in a 4WD backing into it while the driver was talking on his mobile (yelling and thumping on the vehicle didn't alert him to the fact he was about to hit the Laser, it was only when he hit it and the other half appeared next to his window that he stopped) and two attempts to steal it as it's easy to get into.

He drives it carefully (not because it's old but because he gives a shit and is alert to other drivers) and has had to avoid many an accident after people pull out in front of him or overtake coming towards him and don't pull in fast enough. The thing is, if you're a safe driver, you're likely to avoid accidents no matter what you are driving, whereas if you're a fuckwit, all the safety features in the world won't help you.

[gwigs]

It will be totally unfair on the financially challenged of this country,one off which I am at this period off time..and what will the poor do?They will just drive without rego...fuck it people will only take so much...even the poor need to drive

[scumdog]

It will be totally unfair on the financially challenged of this country,one off which I am at this period off time..and what will the poor do?They will just drive without rego...fuck it people will only take so much...even the poor need to drive

'want' and 'need' are not the same..

[Renegade]

explain this to me, two identical mitsi pajero's, same year, same shape, one has a 2.8 diesel and the other 3.0 petrol, to look at the vehicle side by side they are the same.

Now why does the diesel have to pay more $80 a year more rego than the petrol??

I will have to check the rego break down, but still??

[Swoop]

This will open an interesting scenario.
If a car has been designated as "older" and has to pay more to be on the roads because it is less-safe, this surely means that newer/safer vehicles should be able to travel faster on the same roads.

Older vehicles = must keep to speed limit.
Newer vehicles = higher speed limit.

It only seems fair...

[rocketman1]

I am pissed taht if you have several bikes that you have to pay $300 bucks each to reg them all.
When u consider that you may ride each bike only once month thats about $28 a ride, just for registration.
The govt need to sort this out.
Yes registering the owner would have merits, I dont know how the govt would administer it though?

[MaxB]

I heard a great party piece that an engineering lecturer from the uni tells his first year students. It is both safer and better for the environment for him to drive his '74 Trumpy 2500TC than to buy a new Prius at the recommended intervals.

It is to do with those NiMH batteries. Only a few countries in the world can process the nickel hydrides in enough quantities to satisfy demand. By the time the battery pack goes into the car, parts of it have been shipped round the world. Another thing mentioned was the average owner in the US has the car for up to 6 years. The first generation units were mostly scrapped due to the cost of the battery pack. You can still buy cheap spare parts for Triumphs today.

But the unexpected fact was that per capita Prius owners had more accidents and more injury claims than the Triumph crowd. The accepted wisdom was that if you crashed an old car you would be badly hurt. However Triumph owners make less claims and Prius owners are a drain on the system.

So then what justification do they have for nailing older cars for more ACC? Another con job I reckon.

[jono035]

I heard a great party piece that an engineering lecturer from the uni tells his first year students. It is both safer and better for the environment for him to drive his '74 Trumpy 2500TC than to buy a new Prius at the recommended intervals.

It is to do with those NiMH batteries. Only a few countries in the world can process the nickel hydrides in enough quantities to satisfy demand. By the time the battery pack goes into the car, parts of it have been shipped round the world. Another thing mentioned was the average owner in the US has the car for up to 6 years. The first generation units were mostly scrapped due to the cost of the battery pack. You can still buy cheap spare parts for Triumphs today.

But the unexpected fact was that per capita Prius owners had more accidents and more injury claims than the Triumph crowd. The accepted wisdom was that if you crashed an old car you would be badly hurt. However Triumph owners make less claims and Prius owners are a drain on the system.

So then what justification do they have for nailing older cars for more ACC? Another con job I reckon.

Yeah, but new technology is always like that. It isn't economical for the masses in the first run, but give it a few iterations and it will get there.

Most of the newer EVs use Li-Ion batteries with a lot of development focus going into coming up with better and easier to manufacture/recycle electrode materials.

Personally I'm hoping they come up with some new and exciting ways for extracting hydrogen and some new fuel cell tech allowing them to make cheap cells, thats a more elegant solution by a long way...

[jono035]

Ignoring classic cars and looking at the situation with the average vehicle on the road it would appear that this is a form of Regressive Tax meaning that people with less money to spend on their vehicles will be charged more. I agree that it is a good thing to get older, less safe cars off the road, but doing so by charging more to people who can't afford newer, safer cars doesn't seem to be a fair way to do it.

[MaxB]

Yeah, but new technology is always like that. It isn't economical for the masses in the first run, but give it a few iterations and it will get there.

Most of the newer EVs use Li-Ion batteries with a lot of development focus going into coming up with better and easier to manufacture/recycle electrode materials.

Personally I'm hoping they come up with some new and exciting ways for extracting hydrogen and some new fuel cell tech allowing them to make cheap cells, thats a more elegant solution by a long way...

The Lithium battery packs are expected to push the new 2011 Prius to over $70k from the 40 or so it is now. Toyota will have to susidise this car heavily to sell any. The only good thing is that the pack is expected to last the life of the car or at least be repairable.

IMO the only practical solution to our dependance on fossil fuels is the fuel cell. That promises clean emissions without sacrificing power.

[jono035]

The Lithium battery packs are expected to push the new 2011 Prius to over $70k from the 40 or so it is now. Toyota will have to susidise this car heavily to sell any. The only good thing is that the pack is expected to last the life of the car or at least be repairable.

IMO the only practical solution to our dependance on fossil fuels is the fuel cell. That promises clean emissions without sacrificing power.

You missed the point I made before about how Li-Ion batteries in their current form are all that expensive. They will become cheaper with scale and with new technologies. This is what the expensive first-runs are effectively subsidising.

Fuel cells are great, but there are some pretty huge problems that need solving before they are ready for prime time. The first is the fact that the cells are expensive due to requiring platinum electrodes, the second being that while hydrogen has a wonderful energy density in terms of joules per kg, it has a terrible energy density in terms of joules per liter, requiring it to be either liquefied (whereupon it is cryogenic, which has its own major set of issues) or heavily compressed, which requires a lot of space. The cost of outfitting gas stations to provide hydrogen in liquid or high pressure (4k PSI) form isn't exactly small.

On the bright side there is research going on in all of these areas. New fuel cell tech to make the cells cheaper (they are currently something like $70 per watt!) and to last longer, new tech to allow hydrogen to be stored as a gas adsorbed into a carrier rather than as a plain tank, and conversion techniques to allow more hydrogen to be generated per input-watt (generating from urea or using biological processes rather than hydrolysis of water)...

[Ixion]

explain this to me, two identical mitsi pajero's, same year, same shape, one has a 2.8 diesel and the other 3.0 petrol, to look at the vehicle side by side they are the same.

Now why does the diesel have to pay more $80 a year more rego than the petrol??

I will have to check the rego break down, but still??

Simple. The petrol one pays an extra $80 per year in taxes on petrol . Have you not noticed that diesel is cheaper than petrol? Ever wondered why?

Always amazes me the number of diesel owners who bitch about this. Loud as when it comes to rego time, but they shut up when they're filling up. Can't have your cake and eat it too. Y' either pay your way at the punmp, or at the Post office counter

(The reason that they don't put the tax on the diesel fuel instead of on the rego is that so much diesel is used in non raod , and non-vehicle uses)

[jono035]

Simple. The petrol one pays an extra $80 per year in taxes on petrol . Have you not noticed that diesel is cheaper than petrol? Ever wondered why?

Always amazes me the number of diesel owners who bitch about this. Loud as when it comes to rego time, but they shut up when they're filling up. Can't have your cake and eat it too. Y' either pay your way at the punmp, or at the Post office counter

(The reason that they don't put the tax on the diesel fuel instead of on the rego is that so much diesel is used in non raod , and non-vehicle uses)

The fact that some people out there don't understand that is kind of odd... It is also an interesting one because it takes the vehicle type out of the equation. I prefer the idea of taxing by fuel use because it more closely resembles the usage characteristics of vehicles, but as you said, it is a proposition that is unreasonably hard to enforce.