Latest / Best of Business / Mark Heine: Eroad co-CEO reveals how electronic RUCs could work

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Mark Heine: Eroad co-CEO reveals how electronic RUCs could work · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from news Talk zed B.
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  Speaker 2: One of the lingering questions after yesterday's announcement on the
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  Speaker 2: road user charges v petrol tax shakeup is how this
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  Speaker 2: is going to work. Well, there's a key we company
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  Speaker 2: called E Road based in Auckland. It's already delivering exactly
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  Speaker 2: this for our trucking industry. Mark Heine is the co
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  Speaker 2: CEO of E Road.
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  Speaker 3: Hey, Mark, good afternoon.
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  Speaker 2: Mark explains me how you guys do this.
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  Speaker 3: So, look, eerotechnology has been around for a number of
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  Speaker 3: years and it's very prominent in the hippy vehicle space.
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  Speaker 3: So to have eruck, you need three things. One, you
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  Speaker 3: need to know the distance travel by a vehicle. Seeking,
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  Speaker 3: you need a platform to collects that data and enables
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  Speaker 3: payment for use of the roads. And finding need that
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  Speaker 3: data connection. So those three elements create this eruck system
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  Speaker 3: to enable pain for use of the roads.
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  Speaker 2: Right, So, if I have a new car, I imagine
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  Speaker 2: this reasonably. No, Actually, let me imagine assume nothing. If
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  Speaker 2: I have a new car bought it last year, Let's
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  Speaker 2: just say, what do I need to install?
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  Speaker 3: Look, many new cars already are connected. They already have
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  Speaker 3: a SIM card in them, so it's simply a matter
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  Speaker 3: of an API. I've been switched on. Data flows through
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  Speaker 3: and you can make your payment straight away now as
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  Speaker 3: the minute to mention. They want it to be as
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  Speaker 3: easy as paying for Netflix. The technology is already there
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  Speaker 3: to enable that.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, old car Old.
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  Speaker 3: You need probably some aftermarket hardware. So if you've got
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  Speaker 3: to Sydney you see this, All toll tags and vehicles
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  Speaker 3: just need something like that, something really unobtrusive, easy to install,
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  Speaker 3: collect stata and then transmit it back to the platform
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  Speaker 3: and you get gained paid in credit easily, just like Netflix.
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  Speaker 2: How much does that cost?
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  Speaker 3: So we're still working through with the government the pricing
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  Speaker 3: for that, but our target is to get it as
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  Speaker 3: cheap as possible. That toll tag and Sydney costs around
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  Speaker 3: forty dollars to buy. We'd like to see something around
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  Speaker 3: that price, if not lower than that.
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  Speaker 2: Can it be gained?
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  Speaker 3: Can it can be gamed? Look for all these things,
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  Speaker 3: you have robust technology and tamper proof protections in them.
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  Speaker 3: We've got one hundreds twenty thousand pieces of are hardware
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  Speaker 3: out there. People aren't gaving them it's pretty robust and reliable.
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  Speaker 2: You can't wind the odometer back, cut a cable, do
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  Speaker 2: something like.
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  Speaker 3: That, not for this sort of technology. No you can't.
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  Speaker 2: How sure are you of that? Because you know we
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  Speaker 2: find ways, don't we.
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  Speaker 3: Mark a look? Kerries are very creative and have a
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  Speaker 3: lot of ingenuity. But a good thing is this relies
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  Speaker 3: on GPS technology. It's fairly robust and really reliable. We
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  Speaker 3: last you create the closest billion dollars on half the
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  Speaker 3: government without costing assent. And it's off the back of
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  Speaker 3: really robust, reliable technology you can't really tample with.
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  Speaker 2: How do authorities know if that white car driving down
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  Speaker 2: the road hasn't paid their rucks?
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  Speaker 3: So there's good technology you can start using now, whether
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  Speaker 3: it's around Boluetooth connectivity, doing number play readers in the
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  Speaker 3: light to actually understand what vehicles have connected technology for
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  Speaker 3: e erut and you can pick it up pretty it's
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  Speaker 3: simply if you if they don't have the connection India,
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  Speaker 3: you can go right this white vehicle down the road
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  Speaker 3: doesn't have it. It can pull them over and have
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  Speaker 3: to catch up. There may be some other file safe
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  Speaker 3: mechanism back in there. When you check your waft make
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  Speaker 3: sure the ODO is no consistent of what the eeruch
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  Speaker 3: reader is saying. So's other file safe mechanism you can
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  Speaker 3: put in there to make sure people are being honest
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  Speaker 3: with the use of the road.
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  Speaker 2: Market reckons, you're going to get one of the contracts.
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  Speaker 2: You're going to get one of the contracts.
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  Speaker 3: Look, you know E Road was the market leader here.
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  Speaker 3: We developed the technology over ten years ago, so we're
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  Speaker 3: confident that our technology will be great for all kiwis
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  Speaker 3: and so yeah, we're definitely pitching in here and playing
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  Speaker 3: our part.
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  Speaker 2: How quickly do you reckon? Realistically the government can get
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  Speaker 2: a system like this setup for the entire country.
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  Speaker 3: Well, the system's already there, so the question is going
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  Speaker 3: to be about how do you best rolled out. Already
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  Speaker 3: a million vehicles have to pay some form of rodeo
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  Speaker 3: to charging. E Road has one hundred and fifty thousand
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  Speaker 3: using our technology already. So the technology is there around
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  Speaker 3: how do you want to stage their roll out? Whether
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  Speaker 3: you want to start with heavy vehicles and then work
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  Speaker 3: your way down to light passenger vehicles. So I think
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  Speaker 3: the government inspectation on timeline is probably fare. Now let
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  Speaker 3: the technology get into the market between now and twenty
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  Speaker 3: twenty seven, and then start phasing this technology into people's vehicles.
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  Speaker 2: Mark, thank you so much. Mike Heine, co CEO of
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  Speaker 2: E Road.
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