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

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

#181

Post by Aerroon » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

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.

In a sense, every company externalizes some costs to society. At the same time, society tends to benefit from their existence more than just the service they provide. It would be very difficult to try to balance out those numbers.

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

#182

Post by URSpider94 » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #123

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…

yeah, once we get to 25% adoption (or something) we can talk about how badly EVs are hurting fuel tax revenue. in the meantime, jack up the fuel tax in a planned, regular way, and let the market decide :)

That might be rational, but it’s highly unpopular with the 99% of people who don’t drive electric cars. This is virtue signaling,

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

#183

Post by kortilla » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:17 PM UTC

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)

A fuel truck that refuels most gas stations in the US is something like 40 tonnes so it’s not rare at all.

As long as the roads are built to sustain those trucks the cars are negligible. So until cars are the big wear item, moving people to bikes is pointless from a road wear perspective.

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

#184

Post by Someone » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

davidivadavid wrote: post #28

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…

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

13.1 includes buses and trucks. Actual for passenger vehicles is 10.6.

https://www.bitre.gov.au/sites/default/files/is_091.pdf:

“The average rate of fuel consumption across all Australian vehicles in 2016 was 13.1 l/100km. However, this includes buses and trucks which are overwhelmingly used for business purposes. Given that this study is focused on the vehicle costs of Australian households (and not businesses), Figure 1 presents the average rate of fuel consumption for the three types of vehicles which have significant private use, namely passenger vehicles, motorcycles and light commercial vehicles. Motorcycles are relatively fuel efficient using 5.6 litres of fuel per 100 km travelled in 2016, compared to 10.6 l/100km for passenger vehicles and 12.0 l/100 km for light commercial vehicles.”

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

#185

Post by a1369209993 » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #150

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…

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 i…

FWIW, if we assume it's based on tire weight, a 50-tonne 18-wheeler actually does (50/9)^4 ≈ 952.6 times as much damage, not 625.

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

That seems likely, yes.

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

#186

Post by TulliusCicero » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:22 PM UTC

marta_morena_28 wrote: post #179

Someone wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Nowhere did they suggest that they want to get rid of all cars ever.

The principle that shifting traffic from cars to bikes saves money for the government is a sound one. There'll always be a need for cars for some things -- probably not gonna have ambulance bikes, and of course deliveries for anything big needs a car/truck -- but you can certainly reduce the need. Especially with ebikes making biking more convenient and accessible.

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

#187

Post by refurb » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:23 PM UTC

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.

Externalizing the cost of using a national transportation network. I don’t think there is any citizen who doesn’t benefit from a national transportation network. How else do they get the food they buy, clothes they wear, etc?

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

#188

Post by matthewmacleod » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

xd wrote: post #51

adrianN wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas and diesel cars don't pay for the damage they cause to the climate, or for the local air pollution. How is that fair?

What's the cost of mining lithium for starters.. before talking about fair. edit: down voted for stating facts.. I've noticed this place is becoming very ideological.. or maybe I'm getting old.

You didn't state any facts though.

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

#189

Post by 0xB31B1B » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:26 PM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #178

Someone wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the vast majority of road degredation isn't due to weather, its due to weight wear. As heavy vehicles travel down the road, they create a "ripple" on the road surface in front of the axle. You can create a similar effect if you run your hand across a loose sheet on top of your bed (you will see the wrinkle in the sheet in front if your hand). This bending is the method of road wear that causes like 99% of the maintenance need.

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

#190

Post by reitzensteinm » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #185

reitzensteinm wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

FWIW, if we assume it's based on tire weight, a 50-tonne 18-wheeler actually does (50/9)^4 ≈ 952.6 times as much damage, not 625. > I suspect the reason nobody cares enough to test this is that it would still be a gap large enough to make cars insignificant. That seems likely, yes.

Right, because you don't double up the two front wheels which are used for steering. I suspect that more weight is put on the rear and trailer axles than the front as well, and that two tires in close proximity aren't as good as two tires separated by greater distance. So even 1000x is probably optimistic.

My main point though is just that the study happened to use truck axles as a measurement and that can't blindly be substituted for car axles. The back of the napkin math is just there to show the difference it can potentially make.