Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax • Hacker News Board

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#141

Post by hourislate » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

Follow the money.

This probably has little to do with maintaining roads, fairness , etc. It has more to do with finding a new revenue source to take advantage of. Sort of like Douce Bank saying that Work from Home people should pay a WFH Tax.

The most enthusiastic proponent of an EV tax has been the Infrastructure Partnerships Australia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_Partnerships_Au...

Infrastructure Partnerships Australia is an independent think tank that looks for ways to raise capital. To justify their existence, they look for ways to separate the masses from their money. Just another private group run by Corporate hacks and sleazy Gov.

ICE Vehicles pay registration fees and a gas tax that's suppose to go into the Road Infra but never entirely does. EV's pay registration fees and I'm sure there is already a tax on electricity that is used to charge them just like there is a gas tax for ICE Vehicles. So isn't this double taxation?

Perhaps the problem here is you could get a few Solar Panels and a Battery/Storage device and deny them their revenue/profit/tax. We can't have that, can we....

As soon as technology starts digging into the pockets of Tax Revenue, a new Tax comes along to negate any savings benefit for the consumer.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#142

Post by blisterpeanuts » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

ggreer wrote: post #97

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds fair except that trucks perform an essential service. Heavy taxation of the trucking industry just raises the price of food and other necessities.

Shipping is important but current trucks aren’t the only way to transport goods. Taxing vehicles based on their road wear would incentivize the industry to move to smaller trucks that don’t cause as much damage to roads.

But you'd need more trucks to move equivalent goods; seems like a wash to me.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#143

Post by 1123581321 » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #122

zozbot234 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but some portion of road maintenance costs is independent from vehicle-caused wear-and-tear on the actual road surface. You would want this portion to be paid also by standard, non-commercial vehicles since these users are clearly receiving some value from the existence of a well-maintained road.

This is true, but some portion of road maintenance costs is independent from vehicle-caused wear-and-tear on the actual road surface. A lot it is caused (around here anyway) by water permeating and expanding as it freezes.

Road wear creates the variations that ice exacerbates.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#144

Post by reitzensteinm » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

mikeklaas wrote: post #119

ip26 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the simplest arguments against it to me is basically to look at the landscape. For example, in the US, ballpark 1% of cars are electric. Meanwhile, the flat federal fuel tax is not indexed to inflation & hasn't been increased in almost thirty years. Yet everyone is in this panic about how EVs are going to cause a huge revenue shortfall!? I'm not opposed to EVs paying their share, but something is rotten in Den…

Good thought, but that might incentivize not replacing worn tires

This is exactly right. You're in a sense taxing safety!

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#145

Post by horsawlarway » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #131

horsawlarway wrote: post #6

I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those…

> tax all drivers based on (... kms driven This is just not realistic to apply, and especially in Australia. You'd need someone to actually record those numbers, which would be a massive overhead of salaries on its own. Then you have crazy distances... you'd either send the inspector to that single farm 300km from the nearest town, or force people running it to being the trucks in for a check monthly.

No reason to not just tie it to the rego.

Let the drivers report the odometer reading, and add the amount for the last period to the new cost.

You'd get some folks who lie, but there's already inspections in place for sales in some states. If the owner wants to sell the vehicle, require an odometer check and a final payment.

Basically - I don't really think there's a ton of extra admin cost here. Most folks will self report just fine.

Plus, we should be encouraging emissions inspections anyway. At least in the US many states require yearly or bi-yearly inspections to confirm nothing is wrong with the emissions systems in the vehicle. Good way to encourage basic maintenance and to vet manufacturer emission claims against real world data.

It's tied to yearly vehicle registration there too, and includes an odometer reading.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#146

Post by ggreer » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #142

ggreer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping is important but current trucks aren’t the only way to transport goods. Taxing vehicles based on their road wear would incentivize the industry to move to smaller trucks that don’t cause as much damage to roads.

But you'd need more trucks to move equivalent goods; seems like a wash to me.

The point is to tax externalities so that incentives are aligned. In this case you'd get much less road wear for the same cargo delivered.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#147

Post by anthonygd » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

chrismorgan wrote: post #138

ElKrist wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived both in France and Australia. Australians love 4 wheels drive and bigger cars. In some cases it's justified for obvious reasons: rough environments with less infrastructure (bush, outback..). In other cases it is for softer reasons: a big camping culture, having a big car being a social status, towing your boat/jet ski etc. Also a few other points to consider: _ Australia enjoyed economic growth for a long…

It’s funny: as an Australian that has visited the USA a couple of times (and never been to Europe), I’d repeat half of your points but for America rather than Australia. Some Australians certainly have large vehicles without good cause, but that number is nowhere near as big as in America. (Notwithstanding this, my Dad and I have discussed the concept of a ban or extreme tax on owning big vehicles unless you can just…

I don't see why a large family would be an excuse. You need a large vehicle because you chose to need a large vehicle?

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#148

Post by truculent » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

horsawlarway wrote: post #6

I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those…

> Perhaps it's time to ditch the fuel excise tax entirely, and tax all drivers based on (vehicle weight * kms driven * some constant).

How about means testing through progressive taxation of income or wealth?

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#149

Post by 0xfaded » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #99

0xfaded wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Ford Ranger 2. Toyota Hilux 3. Toyota Rav4 4. Hyundai i30 5. Mazda CX5 6. Toyota Land Cruiser 13.1L/100km seems pretty good in context.

Does it? In Europe you would only have something like the Hilux, RAV4 or the Land Cruiser with a diesel engine, and then maybe on a bad day they would average 8L/100km. More like 5-6L/100km in normal use. I imagine if those were fitted with a big petrol engine then those numbers would explode, but then the idea of a big work truck fitted with anything other than a diesel just seems wasteful.

Diesels are about 25% in Australia. In my extended family, several are mechanics, everyone has land cruisers. But second cars are also common. My parents have a Hyundai Ionic and a Prado (smaller land cruiser).

I live in Europe now, and you simply can't compare the driving to Australia. Some roads are genuinely scary with the occasional cow or roo to hit.

Electrification is much more feasible in Europe, and the sooner the better. Every little diesel engine sounds like a truck. Now if only they would stop piling the taxes on electrics ...

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#150

Post by reitzensteinm » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

chrismorgan wrote: post #133

adrianN wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia says damage is proportional to axle weight to the 4th power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_weight#cite_ref-13

I remember my dad telling me that when I was in my late teens. That it’s the fourth power startled me. To give an idea of what this means: For a 50 tonne semi-trailer with five axles, (⁵⁰⁄₅)⁴ = 10,000 units of damage. 2 tonne vehicle with two axles, 1 unit of damage. That one truck, only 25 times as heavy as a pretty heavy car, is doing 10,000 times as much damage to the road. Thus indeed if you have basically any he…

The last time this was posted I dug in to this and it appeared as though 2 vs 4 tires per axle was not tested, in the original or follow up paper usually referenced. They were testing trucks vs trucks with the same axle type, but different numbers of axles (hence axle weight instead of vehicle weight).

It could be that four tires on a truck axle are much more effective at spreading the weight than two car tires. Or it could be that it's not much better, as the forces are still placed on a relatively small area of asphalt.

How this makes cars and trucks compare is, as far as I could understand from the literature when I dug in to it, an untested open question.

There could be a 10,000 factor difference. Or if two tires at each end are spreading the weight over 2x the surface area and you assume that matters, then you have to divide that 10,000 by 2^4 and it's now only 625x as damaging.

I suspect the reason nobody cares enough to test this is that it would still be a gap large enough to make cars insignificant.