RUC Switch — will you pay more under road user charges?

Your car

Litres per 100 kmon the fuel label, or litres ÷ km × 100Kilometres a yeara WOF sheet has two odometer readings on it

Fuel

You would buy licences

Rate to test ($ per 1,000 km)$76 is what a diesel or an EV pays today; the petrol rate is not announced

Road tax, once every light vehicle pays by distance

+$161 a year

$750 now → $911 after, at $76.00 per 1,000 km

You would pay $161 a year more.

Road tax now: $750 a year. At $76.00 per 1,000 km: $911, licence fees included. The switch is neutral at 9.44 L/100km. Yours is 8.1, so you are on the side that pays more.

Where the two lines cross

Over 11,500 km a year. The rising line is what you pay at the pump, which depends on what your car drinks. The flat line is the distance charge, which does not. Everything left of the crossing pays more after the switch.

what you pay at the pump todaythe distance charge at $76.00 per 1,000 km, licences includedcars that pay more after the switch

The charge alone is neutral at 9.44 L/100km. Adding the licence fees pushes the crossing out to 9.84 — your car has to be that thirsty before the switch leaves you no worse off.

The switch charges by distance, not by thirst

Petrol tax is proportional to how much fuel you buy, so an economical car already pays less road tax over the same distance. A distance charge is the same for every light vehicle no matter what it burns. That is the whole change, and it means the money moves from efficient cars to thirsty ones. The line sits at 9.44 L/100km, and the average New Zealand petrol car does 8.1.

Licence fees add $37.32 of it

3 licences a year at $12.44 each — a fee per licence, not per kilometre, so it is the rate to buy in bulk. That is 4.3% on top of the charge itself. It is the only part of this bill you get to choose.

Your own break-even rate is $61.98 per 1,000 km

The rate petrol vehicles will actually pay has not been announced. So the useful number is not what today's rate would cost you — it is the rate at which you would pay exactly what you pay now. Yours is $61.98, which is below the $76.00 a diesel or an electric car pays today. Watch for the announced figure and compare it to that.

It changes what the next car is worth

Part of the case for a thriftier car has always been that it pays less road tax as well as less for fuel. Under a distance charge that half disappears: the fuel saving stays, the road-tax saving does not. If you are costing a replacement over five years, that is a line to take out of the spreadsheet.

A whole fleet

One vehicle a line: name, fuel, litres per 100 km, kilometres a year. The fuel word can go anywhere or be left out — petrol is assumed, since petrol is the only one this changes.

Nothing is written anywhere. What you paste lives for one request and is gone — there is no database and no log of it.

What this cannot tell you

What petrol vehicles will actually be charged. It has not been announced. Everything here tests a rate you choose, and the default is the $76.00 a diesel or an electric car pays today. The number worth remembering is your own break-even rate, not the default.
When. Legislation was expected in 2026 with the system open in 2027, and no date has been set for moving the whole light fleet. Officials have said the priority is getting it right rather than getting it done.
What else changes with it. Petrol also carries an ACC levy and a few smaller charges that are not road funding. Only the 70.02c a litre of excise is modelled here, because that is the part road user charges replace. How the rest is collected afterwards is a separate decision.
Your real fuel consumption. It uses the figure you typed. The number on the label is optimistic for most people, and a car that really drinks more than its label is better off under the switch than this will say.
Anything about whether it is fair. A car whose bill falls is not getting away with anything and one whose bill rises is not being punished. This is arithmetic on published rates.

Petrol excise duty is 70.02c a litre before GST, unchanged since 1 July 2020, and is the part of the pump price that funds the National Land Transport Fund. Road user charges for a light vehicle under 3,500 kg are $76.00 per 1,000 km including GST, with a $12.44 fee to issue each licence online. GST is on both sides, so it cancels out of the break-even and not out of the bill.