Rucs for electric cars nearly here

But what happens when your battery needs replacing. Do you just throw the car away and start again. I

This issue doesn't really apply to vehicles with good thermal management (Basically everything pure electric other than the Nissan leaf / Nv200). With the likes of a Tesla, Kona Electric, Porsche Taycan etc the battery pack is expected to last the life of the vehicle (with some decay).

The issue of rapid decay is focused largely on nissan leaf's, none of which have battery thermal management. Especially bad on 2013 and eairler (there was a battery chemistry change in 2014). The batteries don't just fail, but decline at a fairly predicable rate (some time a cell or two will fail, and they can be replaced with cells out of crashed cars at a reasonable fee). To date people pritty much use the car until the range no longer meets their needs, then sell it to somebody with lesser needs.

None of the many hundreds of Nissan leaf's tracked by flip the fleet have dipped below 60% health yet. 60% works out to about 70km of range, so still quite functional as town car or commuter for much of the population. If those cars degraded to say 30% health when they are 18 years old, that still is 35km, enough for a cheep commuter car (especially if the buyer can charge at both home and work).

Currently it is not economical to replace the leaf packs as the combination of residual value, and the price of longer range electric cars makes it better value to sell it and upgrade. Hopefully in 5 - 10 years there will be a cost effective upgrage pack that can be put in the early leaf's. Also hopefully the insurance companies will start recongnising that a 2011 leaf which has had it's battery pack swapped with one that has twice the capacity it did when the car was new, is worth a lot more, as that is a barrier to upgrade's.

But yeah, we need to keep EV's cheep to run to pay back the high capital cost of kona's or tesla's, and to cover the rapid depreciation (due to degrading packs) of the nissan leaf's.

Should note that the pack degrading is a lot less of an issue on the latest 62kWh leaf. When you start from 350km of range, loosing half of it in say 15 years still leaves a quite usable urban car

Two Australian States have already announced they are going to pass legislation to charge RUC,s on Electric Vehicles so no doubt more will follow.The thin end of the wedge.!

It's unfortunate that the Leaf is still the only affordable second hand EV in this market because as s_nz says it has some fairly unique issues.

As for RUC it will come in eventually (as it should) it's just a question of timing and how petrol and plugin hybrids are handled.

Personally I think it makes most sense to do weight based RUCs on all fuel types and make the fuel tax itself entirely based off the carbon impact of burning it.

I used to have a 1975 Toyota Corolla 2 door wagon, it only used to weight about 800 kg.

It is very likely that non-plug in hybrids will be handled in the same way as petrol cars. Not quite sure what will happen with plug in hybrids, as the current legal settings would see a mountain of paperwork claiming back petrol tax if no changes are made prior to the end of 2021.

Should not that the goverement has allready extended the RUC exemption for heavy electric vehicle's for an additional 5 years. I think they will decide the resolving the issues with putting back RUC's on Electric and plug in hybrid cars are too tough to sort immediately, plus that EV uptake is below targets, and kick the can down the road for another 5 years.

What you suggest where all vehicles pay RUC's is likely the fairest. It removes the current market distortion where larger vehicles (Larger vans, LC200's towing trailers etc) pay heaps less road tax in the diesel version, and likewise small diesel are priced off the road relative to small petrol hybrids.

That said the nice thing about our current system is that if shopping for a petrol car it forms a strong incentive to buy more efficient one.

Also would require the government give up a substantial amount of road tax paid on fuel used off road. (i.e. petrol generators, recreational boating, private lawnmowing etc.). I think doing so would be a lot more fair, but don't know if the corresponding increase to on road vehicle RUC's would be politically palatable.