Peter MacDonald
The New Zealand Government’s new electronic Road User Charges (eRUC) system has been sold to the public as a fairer way to fund roading. The pitch is simple: instead of relying on petrol tax, all vehicles, whether petrol, diesel, hybrid, or electric will pay according to distance travelled and vehicle weight. On the surface, that seems reasonable.
But scratch beneath the marketing, and you find a technological Trojan horse: a platform that could evolve into an all-encompassing AI surveillance and control system linking your vehicle, your identity, your shopping and your private life into one data stream.
From Tax Collection to Total Compliance
By 2027, the plan is for every light vehicle in New Zealand to be tied into the eRUC system. No more separate rego stickers, no more paper licences and, likely, no more separate warrant of fitness process either. An AI ‘single vehicle record’ will track your car in real time, cross referencing it with your driving history, odometer readings, insurance status and government databases.
Scaling up the Technology
This is where the scope creeps. Once every vehicle is a connected data node, there is no technical barrier to linking it to police, immigration, Inland Revenue, MSD, customs and even health. Your legal, financial and medical status could be verified in milliseconds. If something is amiss – an unpaid fine, an expired licence, a flagged medical condition – the system could automatically issue penalties, revoke your clearance to drive or even immobilise your vehicle.
Predictive Policing by Algorithm
The eRUC AI would not just react to violations, it could predict them. It could identify “patterns of concern” such as a car repeatedly visiting known gang addresses, or a driver’s route matching known contraband transport corridors. Behavioural profiling, already common in cybersecurity, would become standard for drivers, with your car as the primary sensor.
And that’s where retail data enters the picture.
Your Shopping Is a Security Feed
Under the coming AI regime, your retail and supermarket purchases could be monitored alongside your vehicle movements. Why? Because certain spending patterns are seen as intelligence markers for contraband trade. Bulk cigarette or alcohol buys, large cash transactions, or purchasing certain chemicals could trigger alerts especially if your vehicle is later detected in a high-risk area.
Once retail data is piped into the vehicle AI, the cross matching is automatic.
You buy large quantities of restricted goods. Your car appears in a crime area hotspot. The AI builds a ‘risk profile’ and flags it for police review.
What starts as contraband monitoring quickly morphs into lifestyle surveillance, as health and social services get their own ‘policy-use cases’ for the same data. Excessive alcohol purchases? Expect health-authority notifications. High spending on sugary drinks or tobacco? Health insurance penalties could be next.
The Profit Angle: Dynamic Pricing in the Aisles
Surveillance isn’t just for government. Retailers stand to make a fortune from the same personalised AI. Physical supermarkets are already experimenting with dynamic pricing, the kind that online stores and airlines have used for years.
Here’s how it works: a particular customer always buys a certain brand of crackers – five packets when they’re on special at $4 but only one packet when they’re $5.60. The AI knows this. When the customer enters the store, facial recognition or phone signal tracking identifies them. The shelf price for that brand instantly drops to $4, prompting the expected purchase of five packets. When they leave, the price jumps back to $5.60 for everyone else.
It’s price discrimination without transparency, the shopper thinks they ‘won’, but the store maximised its profit by making the sale without cutting prices for others. Once this model is linked to government collected identity data, retailers will have even more granular real time control over individualised pricing. Individual behaviours tracked and analysed to adjust costs, incentives and interventions on a person by person basis.
From Roads to the Real World
The public is being told this is about fairness in road funding. But the reality is that eRUC is the first brick in a wall of continuous monitoring, with your vehicle as the anchor point. From there, it’s just software upgrades to link your driving habits, purchases, health records and financial status into one real-time behavioural profile.
Once such a system is in place, dismantling it will be near impossible. The infrastructure, cameras, sensors, databases will already be embedded. The temptation for both government and corporations to extend its reach will be overwhelming.
The question isn’t whether this could happen. The question is whether New Zealanders will notice before it does.
