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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

#301

Post by youngtaff »

pif wrote: post #140
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? It's a fee for polluting, not using the road. It is not what you call it, but what you spend it on.

And it’s part of general taxation…

Roads are funded partly out of local taxes, and partly out of general taxes - there’s no hypothecation of ‘road tax’ paying for roads

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

#302

Post by vanilla_nut »

zackmorris wrote: post #215
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.

Came here to say the same thing. Road wear comes from heavy transport fleets, not commuter vehicles, so all of the infrastructure to monitor semis and tax shipping fuels is already in place. The shipping industry doesn't want to pay that tax, which is why they're lobbying to pass the tax onto the rest of us. Privatize profits, socialize costs.

I would guess that huge SUVs and enormous trucks represent a not-insignificant proportion of road wear, since those vehicles are more common than semis.

Agreed that a road wear tax based on weight makes sense though. It might make sense to use a function of weight + miles driven per year to get an even more accurate measurement of road wear contribution.

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

#303

Post by Robotbeat »

asdff wrote: post #281
Robotbeat wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Because then you’re effectively subsidizing CO2 emissions by penalizing the significantly lower emissions vehicles.

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

#304

Post by Robotbeat »

cptskippy wrote: post #275
Robotbeat wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel taxes WERE ALWAYS supposed to be a conservation measure and Pigouvian tax on pollution AS WELL AS a use tax. So a replacement tax that doesn’t have the same effect of taxing CO2 emissions is effectively subsidizing CO2 emissions compared to the status quo. That seems like a bad idea.

I don't think anyone was suggesting what you're calling a bad idea.

People saying we should replace a fuel tax with a weight tax (without a replacement CO2 tax) are suggesting that.

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

#305

Post by cptskippy »

Robotbeat wrote: post #304
cptskippy wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone was suggesting what you're calling a bad idea.

People saying we should replace a fuel tax with a weight tax (without a replacement CO2 tax) are suggesting that.

You said yourself that were were fuel taxes, so you're assuming they're suggesting replacing all of them.

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

#306

Post by nemo44x »

_vertigo wrote: post #155
nemo44x wrote: post #143

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". It's really more that many cyclists are in the way and aren't going the speed limit. You end up holding up a lot of traffic that is forced to go slower and that's annoying to everyone. to be frank, when you're driving a car a person on a bike taking up the entire road is annoying. This is why people really disli…

As a cyclist, I am also trying to get somewhere, and I don't enjoy being on the road with motorists either. Based on your comment, I have to assume we live in different areas. I live in the city, and generally it is better and faster to bike because one can bike almost as fast as a car due to not needing to wait for traffic and there's no need to find parking at the destination. From my POV, the motorists I have to s…

I take the subway when in the city or a taxi if it’s faster. People on bikes get hit all the time and police investigations nearly always find the bike rider at fault.

The town I’m in outside the city is not a small town. There’s very little that’s more annoying than a group of spandex clad Tour de France wannabes taking up the entire road so they can cosplay.

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

#307

Post by google234123 »

enragedcacti wrote: post #176
Robotbeat wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s comparing to a similar performance ICE vehicle. Model 3 is much higher performance than the civic, more comparable to the BMW.

Sure, and the Civic Type-R has a 0.8 second faster 0-60 than an SR+ M3 while weighing 550 lbs less and beats the Model 3 Performance at Nurburgring by over a minute while weighing over 1000 lbs less. All while having a $10k-20k lower MSRP. the Type-R is only 15 seconds behind a model S plaid at nurburgring which is more than 50% heavier. But beyond that, if the only thing you ever try to compare is 0-60 performance t…

> All while having a $10k-20k lower MSRP

Civic Type-R is a 40k car, just like the model 3 and it probably has high markups above the MSRP on average.

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

#308

Post by mateo411 »

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…

> Road wear grows at the 4th power of vehicular weight, assuming similar tire pressures.

That's fascinating, is there an equation for road wear in relation to vehicle weight and other factors?

--- EDIT ---

Ten seconds after I posted this, I see somebody else also asked this question and there is this link.

https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

The fourth power rule, I guess it was empirically measured.

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

#309

Post by dahfizz »

bluecalm wrote: post #297
dahfizz wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that people should only withdraw exactly what they deposited from Social Security? Do you think that a patient should pay 100% of their healthcare costs under socialized medicine? I find it so strange that roads aren't viewed as a public service, and instead should be taxed (regressively) to cover the cost of the road by those using it. I'm fine paying fully for my own road use, as long as I can stop pay…

The difference between roads and other things you mentioned is that current road infrastructure, especially in cities have huge costs for health, lifestyle, mental health. I don't want cars in cities and if I have to have them I want car owners to pay the full cost of making city life way worse hoping alternatives emerge.

You can make that argument about anything, though.

You need roads to have a civilization, otherwise you have no way to transport the goods you consume, or get to the hospital quickly, etc. What you're arguing is that you don't like the current implementation.

I don't like the current implementation of medicare / medicaid / social security. It definitely is suboptimal for people's (mental) health, including those in my family. It still comes out of my paycheck. It's also an order of magnitude more than whatever gas taxes and tolls I pay.

That's just the nature of living in a democracy. If everyone paid for exactly the services they used, taxes wouldn't exist.

I just find it curious that people on HN rally against the cost of roads, when they absolutely benefit from the roads being there. Military, SS, or Medicare are services that the average citizen doesn't use at all, and cost much much much more than roads.

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

#310

Post by renewiltord »

brianwawok wrote: post #232
Flockster wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds interesting, do you have some more infos about this, how the 4th power comes about? I don't have any intuition why it would be that "high". Or some keywords to lead my google searches ;)

Start here https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

Study is here https://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr61g/61g.pdf

But raw data is hard to find

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