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Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

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301–310 of 388 posts

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

#301
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually Diesel engines are the most efficient ICE in mass production, modern engines respecting the latest emission standards (ex: EURO 6) are some of the least dirty vehicles on the road. If you compare fuel efficiency per ton per kilometer and what is the pollution caused, they become quite clean. Yes, older Diesel trucks are dirty and also the ones with improper maintenance, but hitting at all trucks because of s…

In the real world, diesels should be taken off the road as quickly as possible due to the impracticality of controlling particulate emissions and the damage to human health caused by those emissions. Also, euro 6 emission standards are for diesel passenger cars. Diesel cars, even with strict emission controls, still emit too much dangerous particulates.

It'll take generations to get rid of all current diesel engines. We need stuff like e-diesel as a stop-gap solution, because things like farming machinery are rarely replaced.

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

#302

These moves always come out of some sense of unfairness about electric vehicles not paying gasoline tax. However, we want people to stop using gasoline, and it makes no sense to punish people for doing a net good thing for society by abandoning ICE vehicles. To truly make a fair system, the payments for road maintenance should be proportional to the damage done to the road by the vehicle. Thus, fees should scale expo…

Not merely that, but it disproportionately punishes EV drivers. The fuel excise currently stands at $0.423 so a non-EV driver getting 10 km/l would be paying $0.0423 per a km to drive their car while a EV drive would be stuck paying $0.2 per a km.

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

#303
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weather alone does very little. Weather + road ware makes things dramatically worse much faster. You can see this effect with private driveways in the north vs public roads in the south assuming similar construction.

As someone who migrated to upstate new york from Florida, I disagree. People here are constantly repaving, repairing, and resurfacing their driveways and sidewalks. While you need an initialization crack, that can come from a host of issues other than heavy vehicles including thermal cycling and initial defects. I will note that the asphalt and concrete construction may be different in the south vs. the north, but th…

Copper? I thought batteries were primarily lead.

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

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'll keep my car thanks

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

#305

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…

Except we need trucks. We don’t need private cars.

Maybe you don't, don't assume to know my needs

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

#306

These moves always come out of some sense of unfairness about electric vehicles not paying gasoline tax. However, we want people to stop using gasoline, and it makes no sense to punish people for doing a net good thing for society by abandoning ICE vehicles. To truly make a fair system, the payments for road maintenance should be proportional to the damage done to the road by the vehicle. Thus, fees should scale expo…

I believe road wear is calculated as the 4th power of axle weight. Trucks have many axles to distribute the load, and are forced to stop at weigh stations to verify that they are within weight requirements. As far as road tax, the current system works pretty fairly for ICE engines, in my opinion. The larger the vehicle, the more powerful the engine, and thus the lower the efficiency. So semis are paying higher road t…

> As far as road tax, the current system works pretty fairly for ICE engines, in my opinion. The larger the vehicle, the more powerful the engine, and thus the lower the efficiency.

I'm skeptical about that claim.

"Freight trucks cause 99% of wear-and-tear on US roads, but only pay for 35% of the maintenance. This $60B subsidy causes extra congestion and pollution, and taxpayers pay the bill."[1]

[1] https://truecostblog.com/2009/06/02/the-hidden-trucking-indu...

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

#307

These moves always come out of some sense of unfairness about electric vehicles not paying gasoline tax. However, we want people to stop using gasoline, and it makes no sense to punish people for doing a net good thing for society by abandoning ICE vehicles. To truly make a fair system, the payments for road maintenance should be proportional to the damage done to the road by the vehicle. Thus, fees should scale expo…

Not merely that, but it disproportionately punishes EV drivers. The fuel excise currently stands at $0.423 so a non-EV driver getting 10 km/l would be paying $0.0423 per a km to drive their car while a EV drive would be stuck paying $0.2 per a km.

Per the piece, it's actually "2.5c a kilometre", or $0.025, so the EV driver is still paying quite a bit less.

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

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just to add another data point, I had a 2005 Mazda 6 V6 Wagon and I tracked the fuel usage for an entire year. Ended up a 10.2L/100km. Something I found was horrendous compared to my friends' Corollas and Civics.

Mazda Cx7 here. 10l/100km highway, 12l city. Pretty in efficient older Mazdas. That said much larger cx9 with 3.7l engine uses same.

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

#309
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not merely that, but it disproportionately punishes EV drivers. The fuel excise currently stands at $0.423 so a non-EV driver getting 10 km/l would be paying $0.0423 per a km to drive their car while a EV drive would be stuck paying $0.2 per a km.

Per the piece, it's actually "2.5c a kilometre", or $0.025, so the EV driver is still paying quite a bit less.

Oops! Should read more carefully!

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmn. Brief research seems to show that you're more correct than I would have expected, but also that it's less true than I think you imply. For example, https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10310 gives motorcycles as almost 2x as efficient as cars, almost 3x as efficient as "light truck / van". Given that enormous amount of metal that's not being hauled around, I would have expected a bigger difference. Nonetheless, for sing…

>Before any new car hits the showroom, the EPA runs an emissions evaluation and calculates a “CO2 equivalent” – a single number that represents GHGs CO2, NO X , HC, and CO. The CO2 equivalent units are in grams/mile, so a higher number means more GHGs and more climate damage. For a 2WD 2020 Ram 1500 HFE on the highway, that number is 340 g/mile. Unfortunately, motorcycle emissions data isn’t documented by the EPA. Th…

Yesterday morning just before 6AM we had some sort of maniac coming around entire suburb and reving their bike, just having a joy ride.

I was about to maim him. I hate loud vehicles.

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