“Hundreds” of electric vehicle drivers are signing up daily for an app that tracks road user charges as their exemption from paying them expired earlier this month.
From April 1, drivers of light electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids must pay road-user charges, which Transport Minister Simeon Brown said was “about fairness and equity”.
“It will ensure that all road users are contributing to the upkeep and maintenance of our roads, irrespective of the type of vehicle they choose to drive,” Brown said in January.
Mount Maunganui entrepreneur Steph Kennard launched Bonnet just over a year ago and it has become the third-largest vehicle software platform in New Zealand. It has a mobile app and desktop version.
More than 60,000 vehicles were registered on the platform – or one in 100 vehicles in New Zealand, she said.
Users enter their licence plate number into the platform, which pulls data from the New Zealand Transport Agency such as their Warrant of Fitness and road-user charges (RUCs).
The platform tracks and sends reminders and payment prompts for warrants, registration, car services and digitises service notes.
“Forty per cent of people find out their WOF or rego is out of date as soon as they download the app, so we know we are helping to ease the mental load for Kiwis,” Kennard said.
Kennard told the Bay of Plenty Times that about 2500 electric vehicles were registered with Bonnet.
“And we’re seeing hundreds of new ones being added a day at the moment because it is very timely.”
People bought road-user charges on the NZTA website, usually in increments of 5000 kilometres to 10,000km “because they don’t want to forget or go over and get that fine”.
A feature was being developed that meant users could get Bonnet to buy their road-user charges for them automatically.
Kennard said Bonnet was also about to launch an insurance feature through which people could upload their policy details.
Her goal for the platform was to centralise vehicle administration for drivers.
Her family had built “a fair bit” of software and she had worked as a marketing manager in the automotive industry.
“Combining the knowledge between automotive and how to build tech, I saw a big opportunity,” she said.
She developed the platform for three years before launching it.
When it launched, it went to No 1 on the app store for “quite a few weeks”, she said.
The tool is free for users with one or two vehicles, with a subscription model for three-plus cars, allowing businesses to manage several vehicles from the office.
She said about 15 per cent of platform users were commercial.
The Bonnet app had a review score of 3.8 out of 5 on the Apple app store and 3/5 on Google Play, with recent reviews describing it as an “absolute saviour” and an “excellent tool”.
Other apps helping EV owners get to grips with the new charges included the What the RUC website, which calculates what you’ll pay per year in RUCs, and the Road Trip app for calculating the cost of individual jaunts (petrol or electric) using the cost of a drive from Auckland to Tauranga.
Asked about concerns from members about the RUC exemption ending for EV drivers, AA principal adviser Terry Collins said they had been “very minor”.
“Most of it was before the changes were made.
“They wanted to find out information or things about the fees ... but afterwards, it’s been nothing.”
Megan Wilson is a health and general news reporter for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post. She has been a journalist since 2021.