Letters to the editor: How will electric vehicles pay for road upkeep?

How will electric vehicles contribute to road maintenance, asks a reader. Photo / File

You know how the government is trying to get people into electric vehicles by offering rebates to encourage the replacement of petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles, it omits to tell the general populous where it is going to get the funds from to maintain the roads these electrics vehicles will be using.

At present we pay for it with tax the Government collects from every litre of petrol we buy, and the road-user charges it collects from diesel vehicles.

So, it would appear that the Government is going to go without the funds from the tax take and using these electric vehicles will be a saving for the people keen enough to be sucked into the dream.

Yeah, right. You wait until they announce a 12c per km charge managed the same way as diesel vehicles are now.

Twelve cents per km. Imagine that.

Seems to me that the carrot has turned into horseradish.

Just wait and see. You get nothing for nothing, so be warned.

Rod Petterson
Rotorua

Get serious on plastic

The biggest problem we have today is plastic because it is almost impossible to get rid of and yet we still use and import millions of tonnes of it daily.

Supermarkets, proud that they did away with plastic bags, still wrap a lot of products in plastic.

If we are to be serious about this scourge then the answer, surely, is just stop using it.

I spent most of my youth without plastic because it had not been invented. We managed - we had paper bags and we used carriers and baskets.

Why doesn't the Government just stop using it?

It really is that simple.

Jim Adams
Rotorua

Thanks to distributors

Re Jim Adams's letter on supermarkets binning perishable items, (Letters, August 8).
Supermarkets indeed donate food to organisations which help needy families.

I would like to applaud those who give their time selflessly to collecting and
distributing these donations to the many families in need in Rotorua.

Jackie Evans
Pukehangi

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