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

#341

Post by warmwaffles » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 1:18 PM UTC

phpisthebest wrote: post #205

warmwaffles wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ie 5 years or 50,000 miles It also depends on the make and where you live. I stretched my Yokohama's out to ~80k miles with good tread still left when I replaced them. But I live in the southern part of the US, so we don't have to deal with snow and ice cycles that cause tires to wear faster.

Heat breaks down rubber as well having "good tread" is not the only failure point or wear indicator, a tire can be bad while having "good tread"

Of course, I inspect my tires weekly looking for sidewall damage, dry rot, and other various deformities. I also rotate my tires fairly frequently (every 8-10k miles usually coincides with oil change)

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

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Post by balderdash » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #159

balderdash wrote: post #122

I think people are starting from the wrong end of the problem. It appears we have two types of roads, access roads (think last mile roads in residential or rural areas) whose replacement cycle is driven by useful life vs usage. Then we have high throughput roads, that have enough volume to require usage driven replacement cycles. So if those access roads are y% of the miles and x% of the cost, then a vehicle “access”…

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.

Agree, seems like access rates and toll rates should scale with vehicle weight, but that the slope would be lower in access rates than usage rates.

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

#343

Post by balderdash » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

988747 wrote: post #149

balderdash wrote: post #122

I think people are starting from the wrong end of the problem. It appears we have two types of roads, access roads (think last mile roads in residential or rural areas) whose replacement cycle is driven by useful life vs usage. Then we have high throughput roads, that have enough volume to require usage driven replacement cycles. So if those access roads are y% of the miles and x% of the cost, then a vehicle “access”…

The actual problem is that government is going to lose 35 billion per year in tax revenue, and they are trying to prevent that. What they actually spend that money on is secondary, they just need a good story to tell to their voters :)

Lol - yep, people always struggle with the concept of fungibility in this context. It’s like when we give $1b of food aid to a country and prescribe it can’t be spent on military hardware, and pretending we didn’t just free up $1b for military spending…

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

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Post by Robotbeat » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

freemint wrote: post #339

Robotbeat wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why should society be subsidising road damages by penalizing light cars? It is giving people an incentive to buy larger range electric cars which also need more resources for batteries. Lighter electric cars can also use smaller motors for the same acceleration.

I have nothing against incentivizing smaller electric cars. But the problem is folks will just buy fossil fuel cars of the same class because they’re slightly lighter (also can be weighed with an empty gas tank).

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

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Post by Robotbeat » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #338

Robotbeat wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, plus personal property tax. If I own the car for 8 years before selling it and the battery is about $10,000 In value and the sales tax rate is 6% or so, the tax I’m paying is already equal to the gas tax I already typically would pay driving a 30mpg the average number of miles per year in a typical state. And some localities have personal property taxes, and that $10,000 battery often puts the car in a higher br…

Well I'd never heard of personal property tax before! So people are taxed for owning things, that they paid tax on when they bought them? I can see how that devalues an electric car vs an ICE alternative.

Yes, it’s pretty bad. It’s like a wealth tax for the middle class, and a pretty high rate, too.

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

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Post by frosted-flakes » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

innocentoldguy wrote: post #333

frosted-flakes wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

I'm pretty sure I know more about my area than you do and we do NOT use property taxes to pay for roads here. Property Taxes are used for things like: * The general fund. * Grants. * Costs associated with assessing and collecting taxes. * Justice Courts. * Education. Not maintaining local roads.

Then your city is the exception to the rule and can be dismissed as an outlier.

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

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Post by TimPC » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #312

TimPC wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the actual measurement is off. If a single truck did over $3 million in road damage per year we’d have far worse infrastructure problems than we do. Chances are if you tax road damage you’re charging the hummer $10/year and the truck $31,700 or so.

Let's leave the specific numbers aside and just assume that there's a huge gap, e.g. ~$10 to ~$30k. You still haven't explained why that "doesn't work". Clearly it would make some truck operations uneconomical, but that's a feature. The assumption is that the cost is being paid today, but it's effectively a subsidy that society is paying for. Even if someone's going to argue that trucking is so critical to society th…

I think if it creates a substantial disincentive for fuel efficient transportation we are going to end up making global warming far worse as we go to many more smaller vehicles for most transportation.

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

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Post by brippalcharrid » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #323

brippalcharrid wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It most certainly would not cost $50k for any size truck to travel down one road once, which is what matters if you're paying the cost to build infrastructure to track usage. It might cost a semi truck $50k a year , but this also points in the direction of not tracking specific usage even for trucks: Just check the odometer during the annual inspection and then distribute the highway funds to states proportionate to…

Yes, obviously I was talking about an annual charge ("a tax") based on vehicle road wear; I don't think anyone had suggested that we charge a truck driver $50k for driving down one road, once. It's very common for the odomoters of heavy goods vehicles to be checked and for mileages to be logged regularly (this is probably a legal requirement in many cases, if not just a standard industry practice). I agree that toll collection would be unsuitable. My point was that charges for the use of large goods vehicles would need to be orders of magnitude higher than they are now, but that the charges for cars would still be sufficient to more than cover the cost of collection.

And if people wanted, the President of the National Cycling Federation could present the Secretary of Transportation with a $5 bill in an annual ceremony.

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

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Post by zaroth » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #230

zaroth wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are, however, much more significant positive intrinsic and extrinsic values to pervasive passenger and truck infrastructure than there are negative externalities. Namely, it’s a fundamental underpinning of modern civilization.

transportation is fundamental, that its necessarily via incredibly space inefficient personal automobile is not.

It’s certainly fundamental to the world we live it as it exists today, and particularly in suburban / non-walkable environments.

With climate change, crime, and COVID I would say that those “space inefficient” personal transports will become even more fundamental, not less.

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

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Post by asdff » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 5:43 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #274

asdff wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one ever says "why don't we charge pedestrians fees for sidewalks," for good reason. Bike infrastructure should be thought of as the same way. A paved bike path is going to be like a sidewalk: it will last as long as the elements permit it no matter the amount of usage it sees. Versus a road used for vehicular traffic that is heavy enough to degrade the road, that sort of usage makes a lot more sense to tax.

That isn't true. Pedestrians put more pressure on the ground than cars do. Google it if you don't believe me. The reason sidewalks last so long is they're made of cement rather than asphalt. If you made roads out of cement they would last just as long if not longer. And the reason they make sidewalls out of cement is they have to. If they made then out of asphalt they would decay very quickly.

Have you ever seen an asphalt bike lane age? It never gets potholes. The top layer just expands and contracts or is invaded with tree roots. Over time the elements wear out the tar and the gravel loosens.

Compare that to a road where the truck literally forms grooves into the asphalt. It ripples like the viscous material it is in those conditions under multiple tons of weight. An intersection by me looks like its plaid with the grooves from perpendicular trucking traffic. And cement roads do last a long time but they aren't indestructible. I live on one. Trucks damage them and crack them up over time and the city has to fill in potholes. The more construction going on the more damage. Any big apartment build just destroys the concrete apron and sidewalk on the lot with the equipment because its that heavy. Orders of magnitude heavier than any human on a bike can be.