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Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

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

#171

Post by rbg246 »

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…

You need to go to Europe to see the little cars then.

Australia has half price petrol to Europe and you see this in both car size and engine size.

Also I have read (newspaper so who knows) that Australia allows far more fuel inefficient cars than Europe.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-11/australians-car-not-a...

But equally we have a lower percentage of diesel cars which is great for not dying

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170918093337.h...

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

#172

Post by dschuler »

detaro wrote: post #102
Scoundreller wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, are there 2 meters? (I think we do it smarter for electricity: the first x kWh at one rate, then up from there, among other billing complexities).

AFAIK: If you want to claim cheaper rate for part of it, you need to install a second certified meter for that part. If you are willing to go by default rate (which at least in some places assumes some ratio) you don't.

Can confirm, I’ve seen a dual-meter setup for garden water in Germany.

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

#173

Post by noizejoy »

adrianN wrote: post #71
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.

Everybody is receiving benefits from well maintained roads, just like everyone is receiving benefits from schools. Why special taxes for users unless you want to discourage use? Just pay for maintenance from the general budget.

Paying for things in more detail has many advantages, including penalizing waste and rewarding better ideas. An exception is insurance, where you try to generalize the costs of “bad luck”.

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

#174

Post by cam_l »

chrismorgan wrote: post #137
tgb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of road damage in some parts of the world is caused by nature itself, though. Even roads without any freight traffic get frost heaves.

But for Australia specifically (this article being about Australia), frost damage to roads is typically either non-existent or negligible. There aren’t many roads that are exposed to substantially freezing conditions often.

I have had bitumen melt onto my shoes in summer though.

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

#175

Post by oh_sigh »

bigbubba wrote: post #104
oh_sigh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that's already happening right? For example, SunPass in FL will bill you by your license plate as you go through automatic readers, and mail you a bill to California if that is where your car is registered.

The 'mass' in 'mass surveillance' is a matter of degree. Most roads are not presently toll roads. Most are not presently tracking all cars that drive on them. I don't find 'some surveillance happens already, so we may as well go all in' a compelling argument.

Mass surveillance is about indiscriminate surveillance(recording everyone that comes through in case a bad guy comes through), as opposed to specific surveillance(trailing a mobster to see where he goes). You can have mass surveillance on some roadways without most roads being surveilled.

You can have mass surveillance at a stadium and no surveillance outside the stadium. Likewise, you can have mass surveillance on a toll road and not on county roads.

Part of your point was the difficulty of inter-state cooperation in this regard, which is incorrect, or at least the difficulty has already been overcome, because this data has been shared with SunPass for ~20 years.

And no one made an argument that because we have a little we should have a lot. My point was that what you find intolerable of is already happening.

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

#176

Post by dschuler »

oh_sigh wrote: post #96
Lammy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a lot of Tesla owners on here upset at the thought of losing any of the privilege it brings. Full EVs do more damage to the road than ICE vehicles since they’re a lot heavier. I’m totally pro-EV, but we should definitely pay some part of the tax necessary to maintain the roads we drive on. Some quick searches show: Mazda MX-5 Miata MY2020 base curb weight: 2403lbs Toyota Prius MY2020 base curb weight: 3010lb…

A 4 door luxury sedan would be a better comparison. For example, an Audi A4 has a 3700 lbs curb weight. Also, since road damage scales at something like axle weight ^ 4th, balance issues could completely override the 300 lbs difference in mass. For example, if the Tesla 3 can have 2 axles each with 2036 lbs/axle (because there is no ICE weighing down the front), it could theoretically be less damaging to roads than a…

ICE vehicles aren’t front-heavy like that, it would be terrible for braking performance.

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

#177

Post by rbg246 »

chrismorgan wrote: post #139
davidivadavid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European, 13.1 l/100 km seems... insane. What's happening here?

It seems insane to me as well. My 2010 Mazda 3, used almost entirely on country driving with an average speed of 81km/h since I got it, sits at an average of 5.2L/100km. I recall figures from a couple of family members with similar or slightly larger cars on mostly Melbourne suburban driving, and they’re something like 8–9L/100km. My parents’ Nissan Elgrand (2007 I think?) hit something like 13–15L/100km before it go…

Can confirm I do 8-9l per 100km in Melbourne with my Toyota Corolla.

But when Im in traffic in the morning the number of 'consumer' (non work purpose) SUV / 4WDs is fairly significant and they would all be doing at least the average.

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

#178

Post by Aerroon »

Someone wrote: post #170
chrismorgan wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

100 kg bicycle (including rider), 0.00000625 units of damage. So, getting people out of their cars onto bicycles cuts road maintenance cost. Because of that, building bike lanes/paths can be cheaper than not building them. (And 50 tonne trucks are very rare on most city roads, I hope)

There is one issue though. Bike lanes tend to require better road conditions for people to want to use them. Roads do degrade over time due to weather. This means that the difference between a vehicle at x weight vs no vehicle at all will be negligible. I don't know what the x is though.

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

#179

Post by marta_morena_28 »

Someone wrote: post #170
chrismorgan wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

100 kg bicycle (including rider), 0.00000625 units of damage. So, getting people out of their cars onto bicycles cuts road maintenance cost. Because of that, building bike lanes/paths can be cheaper than not building them. (And 50 tonne trucks are very rare on most city roads, I hope)

Confirmation bias to the fourth power. A person just told you that an average truck of which you see plenty on the roads, does a couple thousand times the damage of a car and your response is: "Let's get all the cars of the road because a bicycle does no damage at all compared to cars"

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

#180

Post by URSpider94 »

perlgeek wrote: post #124
adrianN wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is receiving benefits from well maintained roads, just like everyone is receiving benefits from schools. Why special taxes for users unless you want to discourage use? Just pay for maintenance from the general budget.

If you pay for maintenance from the general budget, you are allowing shipping companies (for example) to externalize cost that they incur on society. This is generally a bad thing, but very concretely it led to road traffic growing much faster than rail traffic (or canal ship traffic) even in countries with a very dense rail network.

This, and it also subsidizes people’s decisions to live far away from where they work and commute by car every day. There was a time when I think that would have been seen as a public good, and thus people were ok with that. Now is not that time.

Comparing this with free public education, by not charging user fees to attend school, we are subsidizing (a) having children, and (b) educating them at the expense of the childless and I guess people who don’t want to educate their kids. We subsidize those because we believe they are truly public goods that are better for everyone in the long run. Encouraging people to drive more and ship more things by truck is not necessarily better for everyone.

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