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

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

#281

Post by asdff » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #103

IndrekR wrote: post #78

For the road wear — tax the tires proportional to the tire weight. But that most likely would mean few-fold increase in the tire cost and may impair road safety. Easier to add an annual fee proportional to the square of fully loaded vehicle mass. Would be about £1k/yr on average. Less for smaller cars, more for larger ones.

I think it’d be pretty bad to penalize electric cars based on weight squared unless fossil fuels are eliminated from transportation. Then I agree.

Why not? Penalize all vehicles based on weight squared. People shouldn't be moving to electric cars if they actually are concerned about climate change. They should strive to replace as many trips as possible with bike commuting and letting the car they already own and works fine sit in the garage collecting dust, versus willing a new one into existence from parts extracted from around the earth and perpetuating an autocentric and consumptive lifestyle.

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

#282

Post by bagels » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 6:47 PM UTC

enragedcacti wrote: post #147

Robotbeat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “pollute more from the tires being heavier” is a myth, by the way. There was an article that circulated claiming this, but they never actually measured the tire pollution of electric cars, just extrapolated from ICE cars with really terrible and ultimately false arguments. Electric cars tend to use low rolling resistance tires (potentially less wear… if you’re experiencing less rolling resistance, that means less…

> Electric cars tend to use low rolling resistance tires (potentially less wear… if you’re experiencing less rolling resistance, that means less energy ends up being used to produce wear, so less wear occurs… in part due to geometric effects and partly due to composition of the tires). Electric cars are also fairly comparable in curb weight due to massive weight reductions elsewhere, plus improved traction control (a…

I don't think torque, tire compound and driving habits can be ignored in a serious analysis.

Also, cheap tires tend to have harder, longer lasting compounds.

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

#283

Post by brippalcharrid » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #262

brippalcharrid wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the fourth power of axle load according to the AAHSO report ( https://camdencyclists.org.uk/2020/06/the-fourth-power-rule-... ) A 30-ton 5-axle HGV would be 6 tons per axle, a BMW 7-Series would be 1 ton per axle, and a heavy cyclist on a heavy bicycle would work out to around 0.05 tons per axle, so while a car might cause ~1/1000th of the wear of a heavy truck, a bicycle would cause less than 1/100000th of the…

The point is that it's not worth doing even for cars. If the toll for the truck was $50, the proportional toll for the car would be one half of one cent.

On the other hand, trucks are often speed-restricted and the tax might need to be on the order of $50k for a 60-foot truck (which would still equate to around $50 for a car). The costs would be passed down to all of the things that trucks are used for, so I suppose the average person wouldn't really pay any less for combined transport+groceries+fuel+household goods, but it might incentivize the use of smaller trucks with lighter axle loads, but that would also mean more drivers/poorer fuel efficiency/more accidents per ton per mile. At the least we should be mindful of the way that motorists are providing a subsidy to the logistics industry (which we indirectly benefit from, as well).

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

#284

Post by analog31 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

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.

Bikes are a lot less delicate than people seem to think. My daily driver has road bike rims and tires. They're quite durable. The region has some bike paths that are crushed limestone on hard clay, and sometimes I find myself on gravel roads, off-road shortcuts, or even "easy" mountain bike trails.

The main issue is comfort. Riding rough roads on hard tires gets old after a while. Also, real MTB'ing, where the trails are designed to be challenging, is its own beast.

I also prefer avoiding car traffic if possible.

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

#285

Post by analog31 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #217

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…

> My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for heavy trucking. Road wear grows at the 4th power of vehicular weight, assuming similar tire pressures. An F-150 that weighs one and a half times what your Mazda 3 weighs, does 5 times the road wear. Would you like to calculate how much those tomatoes would cost, if everybody were paying their f…

Don't worry, I wasn't opposing the subsidy, just calling it for what it is. In a sense I'm helping reduce road wear by riding a bike. ;)

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

#286

Post by Ajedi32 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #217

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…

> My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for heavy trucking. Road wear grows at the 4th power of vehicular weight, assuming similar tire pressures. An F-150 that weighs one and a half times what your Mazda 3 weighs, does 5 times the road wear. Would you like to calculate how much those tomatoes would cost, if everybody were paying their f…

> Would you like to calculate how much those tomatoes would cost, if everybody were paying their fair share of road wear?

The cost is already there, it's just extracted through taxes rather than through increased prices of transported goods.

The advantage of shifting maintenance costs over to those creating those costs in the first place is that it allows the market to properly optimize for those costs. If transporting those tomatoes by rail is actually cheaper overall once you factor in road maintenance costs, but you aren't charging those costs to the trucking companies, then they're just going to keep shipping tomatoes by truck even though it's less efficient. The invisible hand of the market cannot optimize for costs it doesn't know about.

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

#287

Post by smilekzs » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 6:58 PM UTC

lini wrote: post #184

faichai wrote: post #19

Everyone always seems to jump from general schemes (road tax, fuel duty) to Orwellian tracking (GPS everywhere). Seems like a simple scheme of mileage tracking and net charge tracking would do. You then have an overall energy use / mile figure that you can use to price each mile so people who buy more efficient cars are rewarded, and then charge by total number of miles, so people who do fewer miles pay less.

Too many unknowns with the mileage solution. The most obvious for me is travelling abroad - travelling by car between EU countries is not uncommon. Another issue is that the mileage of the car is not very hard to modify. In Eastern Europe, buying a second-hand 10 year old car, imported from Germany, is almost funny because most seem to be around 90-100 000 miles (140-160 000 km), while looking for the same make and m…

A solution has been long in place in the US for commercial vehicles. It's called IFTA. It's possible because commercial vehicles have to report their mileages to authorities frequently anyway.

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

#288

Post by rexreed » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #253

rexreed wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So auto-related taxes and fees fund policing and defense and general taxes fund roads. Sounds... convoluted. I reiterate that none of this really makes much sense, and I think we're seeing the end result of those policies.

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

#289

Post by cogman10 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

enragedcacti wrote: post #158

dahfizz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electric cars are also fairly comparable in curb weight due to massive weight reductions elsewhere, Seriously, this meme needs to die. A Tesla model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 340, and the model 3 is hundreds of pounds lighter than an SUV like the BMW X3. Batteries are heavy, but so are gas engines & transmissions.

> 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…

It should be noted that weight has been dropping YoY and is expected to drop further when M3 gets a structural battery pack. Those drop the weight not only because there's now no longer a structure the battery is bolted to, it is the structure, but also because the weight drop lowers the batteries needed to get comparable range (further reducing weight).

Model Y is the first tesla vehicle with a structural pack.

I expect that other EV manufactures will eventually follow suit. Why wouldn't they? Less batteries and materials is a win win.

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

#290

Post by Ajedi32 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #17

causi wrote: post #5

Tax vehicles based on actual wear to the road surface and add it to the annual tag renewal. Of course, that would stop us from conveniently ignoring the fact that the vast majority of road wear comes from semi-trucks and other heavy vehicles.

That would just result in a trivial tax for personal vehicles and high taxes on heavy trucks (which would just get passed on resulting in more or less a consumption tax, which isn't necessarily bad but that's outside scope for here) Additionally, despite a lot of people saying they want to use taxes to "handle externalities" or some other sort of "pay per usage" type manner like that what they actually want is to tax…

Road wear isn't the only consideration though. Cars take up space on the road while driving, and as anyone who's ever been in a traffic jam knows, there is a limited amount of road space available.

Maybe it'd make sense for trucks to fund the majority of wear-induced maintenance costs, but for new construction and improvement projects (e.g. increasing the number of lanes on a highway) cars should pay a significant portion of that.