Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

carwow.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 360 posts

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#191

Post by DrBazza »

matsemann wrote: post #2

There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car.. Norway have the same issues now. Almost all new cars are electric. You don't pay purchase tax / vat when buying it. Pay less on toll roads. Cheaper to use. Et…

> There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it?

Vehicle Excise Duty since 1920 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty

Road funding in the UK is just from the general pot of tax money.

There are a lot of anti-cyclist types in the UK that always incorrectly (or ironically, correctly) claim that cyclists don't pay road tax (no one does) and therefore shouldn't use the road, even though just about every cyclist is an adult that pays UK tax.

I certainly expect the UK, and every other country to tax EVs by mileage within a decade, and additionally toll charge on major routes, almost certainly via cameras (to also fine you for speeding), or require all cars to have a GPS blackbox (which let's face it, isn't expensive now).

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#192

Post by DrBazza »

neilwilson wrote: post #87

Oh dear. Somebody didn't pass the geometric sequence question on their GSCE maths paper. The £35B revenue replaces itself, because money doesn't stop at its first use. What you don't spend on fuel duty, you spend on something else, which is subject to VAT, causes wages to be paid subject to PAYE, and profits to be earned subject to corporation tax. They then spend their increased income cause more tax to be raised an…

UK fuel duty as a percentage: https://www.racfoundation.org/data/taxation-as-percentage-of... - currently about 45% down (amazingly) from more or less 60% since 2013.

I kind of understand your argument, but net-income in my pocket that's not spent on petrol will be spent on some sort of goods or services that has VAT on it, which is 20%. So, yes, I might spend more on goods and services, which might mean more computer shops, clothes shops or restaurants and take aways, and they in turn might grow the economy a bit, but would that convince the government to _not_ reintroduce some kind of road charging?

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#194

Post by frosted-flakes »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #129
analog31 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>> I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car. Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are paid for with property taxes. Income taxes cover a fair amount of road construction. The county bike paths have a fe…

> Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we use. This isn’t true where I live. Taxes on gasoline purchases pay for the roads.

Gas taxes are a small portion of road costs, and are only for state roads. Cities generally don't receive road subsidies from the state. Cyclists drive on city roads, and city roads are generally paid for with property taxes or local sales taxes (if your city has them). And cyclists cause zero damage to roads, unlike cars or trucks

Really, cyclists are getting shafted because they have to pay for so many roads they can't use.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#195

Post by bobthepanda »

timellis-smith wrote: post #183
ehnto wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take a rough separated cycle path over a shared car road any day.

Depending on what type of bike you have. On a mountain bike, anyday. On a road bike with paper thin tyres that easily puncture, maybe not so much.

Usually the concern is getting hit by car traffic.

At least in the US, drivers don’t drive well around cyclists, and sometimes that’s intentional to boot. Better to not share the road with people who are actively trying to hurt you with a metal object weighing several thousand pounds.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#196

Post by bobthepanda »

belorn wrote: post #21
matsemann wrote: post #2

There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car.. Norway have the same issues now. Almost all new cars are electric. You don't pay purchase tax / vat when buying it. Pay less on toll roads. Cheaper to use. Et…

bicycle and pedestrians could be exempted from a road tax based on fairly simple assumption: the wear and tear is minimal compared to a car. It wouldn't even surprise me if the wear and tear is so small that it can't even be measured. But I could be wrong. It would be interesting to hear if heavy bike/pedestrian roads have higher road maintenance than those that are used lightly. My guess would be that the major wear…

Having lived in New York with really high rates of pedestrians, sidewalks are never being replaced from normal wear and tear from use.

Usually it’s

* retrofitting for ADA compliance

* fixing heaving from freeze-thaw

* fixing heaving from the root systems of trees in street planters

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#197

Post by tzs »

kingaillas wrote: post #178
tzs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bicycle and pedestrians could be exempted from a road tax based on fairly simple assumption: the wear and tear is minimal compared to a car. It wouldn't even surprise me if the wear and tear is so small that it can't even be measured. That is the case, which came as a surprise to me. For things like the road bed, where the force from the surface is going to be spread out more, I'd expect the car to do more damage b…

>My car for example has four tires each at a pressure of 32 PSI. The air pressure of your car/bike tires doesn't matter - all tires could be flat. Try comparing (vehicle weight + your weight) / (vehicle contact surface area) where vehicle is either your car or your bike.

For tires that support the vehicle via air pressure in the tires, contact area is roughly weight supported by tire / air pressure in tire [1].

[1] http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211_fall2013.web.dir/connor_matt...

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#198

Post by bobthepanda »

Robotbeat wrote: post #165
xur17 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing the argument is that EV's cost more upfront (since they include a battery, etc), but have a lower cost of use. Since you get charged sales tax on the upfront cost, EV's get charged sales tax on a larger percentage of the overall "ownership cost" of the car.

Exactly. With gas cars, you pay for gasoline over time. With electric cars, you pay about 50/50 upfront on battery & over time on electricity. EV owners are being punished for paying for part of the “fuel” costs upfront. For whatever reason, capital costs for consumers are penalized with taxes more than incremental operating costs.

I mean, we don’t charge lower gas taxes to luxury cars because they pay more upfront, so I don’t know why this is now an expectation for EVs. And we’ve never had flat taxes for sales; gas is actually the only exception in the US I’m aware of, but that’s probably because of the price volatility of gas making a percentage tax hard to budget for.

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#199

Post by jacquesm »

timellis-smith wrote: post #183
ehnto wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take a rough separated cycle path over a shared car road any day.

Depending on what type of bike you have. On a mountain bike, anyday. On a road bike with paper thin tyres that easily puncture, maybe not so much.

Road bikes aren't really designed for being in traffic in the first place so that places some of the downsides of that on the user. I've used one for many years, so don't get me wrong, I love riding one but it is abundantly clear to me that when my bike tires fits into the slots of a drain that that is my problem and not the problem of whoever designs and maintains the road.

In many places a road bike isn't actually street legal (no bell, no fenders, no lights, of course you could add those).

Re: Electric Cars – fuel duty and road tax: how to replace £35B annual revenue

#200

Post by LeifCarrotson »

tzs wrote: post #174
belorn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bicycle and pedestrians could be exempted from a road tax based on fairly simple assumption: the wear and tear is minimal compared to a car. It wouldn't even surprise me if the wear and tear is so small that it can't even be measured. But I could be wrong. It would be interesting to hear if heavy bike/pedestrian roads have higher road maintenance than those that are used lightly. My guess would be that the major wear…

> bicycle and pedestrians could be exempted from a road tax based on fairly simple assumption: the wear and tear is minimal compared to a car. It wouldn't even surprise me if the wear and tear is so small that it can't even be measured. That is the case, which came as a surprise to me. For things like the road bed, where the force from the surface is going to be spread out more, I'd expect the car to do more damage b…

> Any given small patch of road I drive or ride over would only get about 29% as much force on it from the car as it would from the bike at any given time a tire is on that patch of road.

...

> This is similar to why if I were to put a flat metal plate on my chest and set a bowling ball on top it would not hurt, but if I were to set hold a dagger against my chest and set a bowling ball on top it would likely hurt a lot.

This is because your chest is weak and soft in comparison to the incompressible metal plate or dagger blade, which is not analogous to the situation on the road. A better analogy would be poking yourself with the tip of an al dente noodle compared to the load transmitted by a large, spongy slice of bread. Neither is going to hurt you in any way.

Whether your tire is transmitting 110 psi or 32 psi doesn't matter much because the compressive strength of Portland cement concrete is ~4000 PSI and the compressive strength of bituminous pavement is ~500 PSI.

However, soil bearing loads are on the order of 15-50 psi under constant loading, and can act as a spring or can yield at much lower transitory loads. The dirt beneath the pavement (or rather, the dirt beneath the gravel beneath the pavement) gives easily, so instead of asking the concrete to survive the compression forces caused by the contact patch, you're asking it to form a beam/plate that spreads the loads over a broad area, and asking that beam to resist deflection rather than crushing. The real damage, and the reason that damage scales with the fourth power of axle loading, is caused when a large truck rolls over the road, the ground shakes, and the roadbed flexes down into the soil under the axle and back up after it passes.

Try to imagine riding your road bike over a piece of cardboard laid on the sand. That wrinkling and creasing is much closer to actual road wear patterns than a dagger cutting your chest.

Post reply on HN