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

carwow.co.uk

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

#251

Post by enragedcacti »

dahfizz wrote: post #208
enragedcacti wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Tesla model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 340 Sure, but its also 500-1200lbs heavier than a Civic depending on the trims of each which has very similar utility to an M3 and is much closer in TCO to a model 3 than a 340 or an X3 is. We shouldn't be having our cake and eating it too by saying "electric cars are more expensive but the TCO so much lower than ICE that its worth it" and then make comparisons to ICE veh…

The point is that ICE cars and electric cars are comparable in weight. There are some ICE cars lighter than an electric car, and some ICE cars heavier than an electric car. Some of that is just due to the fact that electric cars are new, and haven't moved into the "ultra light sporty car" segment with the civic or Miata. The point is you don't see a BMW go down the road and freak out about how heavy it is. But there…

> The point is that ICE cars and electric cars are comparable in weight.

My point is that this just isn't true in the general sense. I didn't choose the Civic because its an "ultra light sporty car" I chose it because it's in a very similar class of car to the model 3 and moves a lot of units, but you could look at the Camry, Corolla, Accord, or Altima and see that the heaviest trims of all 5 (including hybrids) all weigh less than the lightest model 3 currently available.

Those 5 cars cover every sedan on the top 25 sales list other than the Model 3. I'm sure there are tons of luxury sedans that weigh more than the Model 3, but their total number of units is much smaller than any of the 6 cars we're talking about and their TCO is massively higher as well. So if you weigh the average comparable vehicle on the road the Model 3 will weigh more, and the Model 3 is one of the lightest 250+ mile EVs! the Polestar 2 weighs 4400 lbs!

FWIW I agree that the tire pollution thing is a silly aspect to focus on when comparing EVs and ICE, especially considering a lot of people who believe the lie that it makes EVs worse overall are probably driving a mall crawler or bro-dozer that weighs 5000+ lbs.

https://insideevs.com/news/527966/electric-cars-from-heavies...

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

#252

Post by tiernano »

hedora wrote: post #245

These sorts of articles have always confused me. This would be a great problem to have! If gas usage gas halves then double the tax, and so on. Once gas taxes are 10-20x what they are today, we can talk about how to find replacement revenue. Also; the annual ongoing damage Britain is incurring from burning fossil fuels is already way above 35 billion pounds. Focusing on where the money for those repairs is coming fro…

that aint going to work... if the tax doubles, people will start to revolt. Taxis, Trucks, Van drivers and anyone who either 1) cant afford a new electric car, or 2) cant buy one one for one reason or another (distance they travel, stuff they carry, etc) are going to be very pissed off. And if more people do go an buy electric cars, your still in the same boat...

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

#253

Post by iso1631 »

rexreed wrote: post #105
iso1631 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK local council tax funds local roads, and national government (funded mainly from income tax, national insurance and VAT) funds major trunk roads.

How does that square with the main point of the article: "The UK government receives tax revenue from drivers of petrol and diesel cars via two key methods: fuel duty, which brings £28 billion a year into government coffers, and Vehicle Excise Duty (road tax), which nets roughly £7 billion. Combined, these sources make up 1.5% of the UK’s GDP and account for around 4% of all tax revenue."

Because that tax "funds" things like the police and defense

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

#254

Post by Robotbeat »

sokoloff wrote: post #166
dahfizz wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially considering the extra sales tax on the battery, tax on electricity, and even personal property tax on the battery. I don't understand, do you pay an extra tax on the battery? Sales & property tax on a $60k car should always be the same, regardless of powertrain.

The electric car I drive (LEAF) costs about $12K-15K more than the roughly comparable ICE car (Versa). Taking the lower estimate, the sales tax difference in my state is $750, which is the state gas tax on just over 3100 gallons or about 100K miles of gasoline purchased for the car.

Yup, and consider that sales tax applies any time the car is sold, and often cars are sold multiple times in their lives.

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

#255

Post by chickenpotpie »

hedora wrote: post #245

These sorts of articles have always confused me. This would be a great problem to have! If gas usage gas halves then double the tax, and so on. Once gas taxes are 10-20x what they are today, we can talk about how to find replacement revenue. Also; the annual ongoing damage Britain is incurring from burning fossil fuels is already way above 35 billion pounds. Focusing on where the money for those repairs is coming fro…

That would make the gas tax a tax on the poor, whom cannot afford electric cars

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

#256

Post by causi »

prmoustache wrote: post #169
stefan_ wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that roads have terrible capacity as a transport system and therefore many many many miles of terribly expensive road only exist to accommodate the space taken up by a comparatively small number of vehicles, with semi-trucks and other heavy vehicles often a minority. Count the heavy vehicles: https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/status/11912952051876864... Don't get me wrong, the tax sys…

Imho individual cars should be banned except maybe for people with disabilities. They simply make people hateful, angry at everyone and generally unhappy. And an awful lot of space is wasted for them to stay parked most of the time. Between 15 to 50% of the existing roads should be dedicated to non motorized use (depending on the geography, moutains can pose some challenges at times), the rest to a dense network of a…

Imho individual cars should be banned except maybe for people with disabilities.

Append "in any area with a population density over 5,000 per square mile" and I'd agree with you.

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

#257

Post by xxpor »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #255
hedora wrote: post #245

These sorts of articles have always confused me. This would be a great problem to have! If gas usage gas halves then double the tax, and so on. Once gas taxes are 10-20x what they are today, we can talk about how to find replacement revenue. Also; the annual ongoing damage Britain is incurring from burning fossil fuels is already way above 35 billion pounds. Focusing on where the money for those repairs is coming fro…

That would make the gas tax a tax on the poor, whom cannot afford electric cars

The truly poor can't afford a car regardless, especially not at 2GBP/L gas prices already.

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

#258

Post by blibble »

happyopossum wrote: post #237
blibble wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would indeed prefer the odometer based solution to the GPS but it's not perfect (and you are currently exempted from the gax tax model if you have a electric vehicle on private roads / tracks, I doubt too many are affected by this though)

> you are currently exempted from the gax tax model if you have a electric vehicle on private roads Private roads are irrelevant - electric vehicles don't pay gas tax, that's the point of this whole conversation.

> Private roads are irrelevant - electric vehicles don't pay gas tax, that's the point of this whole conversation.

uh, yes?

which wouldn't be the case if we switched to a tax based on an odometer

that's the point of this whole conversation.

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

#259

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rgbrenner wrote: post #173
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under this model you should also account for the amount of damage done by the vehicle. Which scales with the fourth power of axle load, i.e. ~100% of the road damage is caused by large commercial vehicles, to the point that collecting it from passenger vehicles isn't even worth the collection infrastructure. It certainly isn't worth the privacy cost.

Even if a road never sees a single truck, it will still need to be replaced and/or repaired eventually. Things like the freeze-thaw cycle destroy roads too.

Which has nothing to do with usage, so shouldn't be priced with usage.

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

#260

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pengaru wrote: post #239
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a matter of "massively more" -- with those numbers the damage from anything other than large commercial vehicles is a rounding error which, if accounted for proportionally, would cost more money to collect than the amount collected.

Except not all roads are built to handle heavier vehicles, such roads experience significant wear from common weight automobiles. I don't think the cost of maintenance for such roads is a rounding error.

Most roads are built to handle heavier vehicles and the few exceptions rarely if ever see enough traffic to result in maintenance costs not dominated by nature and weather.
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