back to road tax

[Psamathe]

It's likely that electric cars will become dominant over the next couple of decades. They would pay 0 petrol tax, but still cause just as much damage to the roads. Therefore it makes sense to me to have both a tax on fuel, the use of which should be proportional to the pollution caused, and also a tax on distance driven, scaled by vehicle weight, to cover the cost of road maintenance.

Let's not forget that electricity in the UK is not carbon free. So using an electric still contributes to CO2 emissions. Just not at the point of use.
....

Does anybody have any data for any comparison for greenhouse gas emission differences between ICE and all electric cars ? I would have thought that generating energy in a large power station would be more efficient than in a small ICE in a small car but then you have transportation losses (tankers using fuel and national grid not being 100% efficient, recharging losses, etc.).

I generally think that getting income is not a problem for any government (subject to daft manifesto commitments they then decide to keep to!), It's more a question of who pays the tax. For example, currently we seem to have more than enough taxation revenue to the point where we can have quite significant tax cuts for the wealthy (corporation tax). If tax income was the problem then there is no way we would be giving away such massive tax cuts. So I see it as about who pays more than how much.

Ian

[pete75]

Yes but the UK has expensive fuel. Over 30% more expensive than Australia, twice the price of the USA and Russia.

And yet it is still not expensive enough to cover the externalities.

Says who?

[Mick F]

Hi guys, back to the argument.

By paying per mile .......... as that is what the option is by putting VED onto fuel ............... people would be paying per mile.
Sounds fine eh?
Suits the majority maybe?

What about the people who have no option but to drive the "miles"?
Yes, lets have more public transport. Lets have universal public transport? Brilliant idea. Bring it on!

Until that happens, some folk MUST drive their personal transport ........... and those people would be penalised and have no option to be penalised.

[Mr Evil]

Yes but the UK has expensive fuel. Over 30% more expensive than Australia, twice the price of the USA and Russia.

And yet it is still not expensive enough to cover the externalities.

Says who?

There have been quite a lot of studies on the cost of air pollution, for instance the Royal College of Physicians reckon that there are >£20 billion in health effects per year, much of which is due to cars. That alone accounts for most of the income from fuel tax. Other costs are harder to estimate, but potentially far higher, such as the millions of deaths from war in the Middle East, a portion of which can be attributed to the need for oil for transport. At the extreme end, the potential cost of greenhouse gas emissions is the future collapse of our civilisation, which cannot be measured in mere economic terms at all.

[ambodach]

When electric cars become common the government will introduce a tax of some kind on them. Remember diesel used to be cheaper than petrol until enough people changed and a tax was increased as soon as they thought they could get away with it.

[pete75]

And yet it is still not expensive enough to cover the externalities.

Says who?

There have been quite a lot of studies on the cost of air pollution, for instance the Royal College of Physicians reckon that there are >£20 billion in health effects per year, much of which is due to cars. That alone accounts for most of the income from fuel tax. Other costs are harder to estimate, but potentially far higher, such as the millions of deaths from war in the Middle East, a portion of which can be attributed to the need for oil for transport. At the extreme end, the potential cost of greenhouse gas emissions is the future collapse of our civilisation, which cannot be measured in mere economic terms at all.

The majority of pollution comes from sources other than cars.
I'd argue that taxes paid by drivers not only cover all the externalities but also pay for much of the NHS , pensions, education etc etc.

[ian s]

The most likely end to our "civilisation" is nothing to do with green houses gasses, it is the uncontrolled population growth on the planet, about which no one seems to have a clue how to control, therefore it is ignored. Cure this one, and most other problems go away. Imagine how much nicer this country would be with half the population. If we don't do it, nature will, somehow, sometime, and it won't be nice. Trivia like road tax, will pale into utter irrelevance.

[old_windbag]

The most likely end to our "civilisation" is nothing to do with green houses gasses, it is the uncontrolled population growth on the planet, about which no one seems to have a clue how to control, therefore it is ignored. Cure this one, and most other problems go away. Imagine how much nicer this country would be with half the population. If we don't do it, nature will, somehow, sometime, and it won't be nice. Trivia like road tax, will pale into utter irrelevance.

Preaching to the converted from my side. Hans rosling the late statistician said the models of world population stabilise out at 11 billion, so they don't predict uncontrolled growth. But imagine over 50% nore people on the planet and we are seeing the strain on NHS, roads, schools, housing in our own western world country with 60-70 million with about 7 million concentrated in the capital. God help the poorer countries as our demands on resources impact them. Nature would intervene and one issue is anti-biotic resistant bacteria, think they've found a variant of gonnorhea( mispelt ), that may put people off procreating . But apart from the material resources for everyone, we will still have the energy demands and with the far eastern countries acceleration of car ownership etc.

It's not doomsday but it may reduce our quality of life somewhat...... and unnecessarily as in the west we've had good birth control for decades. Longer lives are great but have 4 or 5 generations in parallel rather the 3 we are used to could be a problem. One benefit we could take advantage of is in living longer healthier lives we can work to a much older age to ease the pension crisis. Not what people want I guess but we shouldn't burden those below us with those costs if we are living longer.

[irc]

It's likely that electric cars will become dominant over the next couple of decades. They would pay 0 petrol tax, but still cause just as much damage to the roads. Therefore it makes sense to me to have both a tax on fuel, the use of which should be proportional to the pollution caused, and also a tax on distance driven, scaled by vehicle weight, to cover the cost of road maintenance.

Let's not forget that electricity in the UK is not carbon free. So using an electric still contributes to CO2 emissions. Just not at the point of use.
....

Does anybody have any data for any comparison for greenhouse gas emission differences between ICE and all electric cars ?

As far as CO2 goes an small efficient petrol car is roughly equal to an electric car in the UK.

If you are interested in carbon emissions, 21kWh per 100 km is equivalent to 105 g CO2 per km, assuming that electricity has a footprint of 500g CO2 per kWh."

This would suggest that, purely in terms of CO2 emissions, electric cars are neck and neck with the most fuel efficient "fossil cars". Pretty impressive, but nowhere near as "clean" as some might have us believe.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -emissions

[thirdcrank]

Most of the arguments for not putting the tax on the fuel seem to come from people who do a lot of driving who pay for their own motoring. That suggests to me that it would be an effective way of reducing vehicle use.

[ian s]

Out of curiosity how do folk propose to tax the electricity used by vehicles, because the electric vehicles clutter the roads just as much as internal combustion engine vehicles, probably cause more pollution world wide than internal combustion engine vehicles, and cause proportionally no less accidents internal combustion engine vehicles.

[Psamathe]

Out of curiosity how do folk propose to tax the electricity used by vehicles, because the electric vehicles clutter the roads just as much as internal combustion engine vehicles, probably cause more pollution world wide than internal combustion engine vehicles, and cause proportionally no less accidents internal combustion engine vehicles.

Why tax them? (only meant partially). I really mean what is the purpose or VED? Is it to "pay for the roads?" or just to raise income for the gov. If just to raise revenue it is inefficient (high admin for the income) and a single payment irrespective of distance does not discourage use.

France seems to manage without a VED, so why not the UK? Why not raise the revenue through other means (I wont go into obvious alternatives at risk of diverting the discussion onto current political policies). There are road use alternatives (e.g. tolls) - though I'm not particularly in favour of them.

Comes down to the purpose and VED is inefficient as a revenue source, does not discourage road use (even in some ways penalises those doing low mileages), does not really reflect the pollution and impact, etc.

Ian

[[XAP]Bob]

Does anybody have any data for any comparison for greenhouse gas emission differences between ICE and all electric cars ? I would have thought that generating energy in a large power station would be more efficient than in a small ICE in a small car but then you have transportation losses (tankers using fuel and national grid not being 100% efficient, recharging losses, etc.).

Yes - there is quite a lot of information out there...

ICE efficiency: 20% typical - Toyata celebrated 38% as a new record for efficiency a couple of years ago...

Power station efficiency: typically 35-50% (depends on fuel etc)
Of course if you can use the waste heat for a district scheme etc then you are going to come in with much better figures.

National Grid efficiency is ~98.5% (slightly lower in the shetlands, higher in most of the rest of the country)

Tesla charging efficiency is somewhere over 80%, including the losses due to the car never actually switching off

So ignoring the fact that some proportion of grid energy is carbon neutral you're still better off doing the electrical conversions...

And that's ignoring the electrical costs of pumping fuel, the tankers and refineries etc. (power stations use less refined fuel, or often more locally sourced fuel and some don't use any at all)

[Vorpal]

If you want to understand the impact of a motor vehicle on the environment, you need to look at more than emissions. A car has an impact from the very concept, until its demise. Whether it becomes a bit of rural scenery, or it's disassembled and recycled, the whole life cycle needs to be accounted for.

Many methods for ranking how green cars are account for the manufacturer emissions, using estimates, but they don't look at the overall sustainability through the life cycle. There are a number of methods, which have been developed by universities to do this, but until they are in popular use, it is impossible to say whether one model is better than another. Furthermore, we cannot understand when is the best time to replace them from a sustainability perspective.

Things to consider:
-raw materials; not just the minig of metals, but also the toxicity of some elements used in electronics, batteries, etc.
-manufacturing; emissions and efficiency (and what about models manufactured in multiple locations?)
-transport of vehicle from manufacturer to consumer
-use; length of time, number of miles
-emissions of green house gases and pollutants (including the cost of health effects)
-parts, maintenance, disposal of oil & lubricants
-decomissioning; recycling, reuse of components, etc.

Should we also include social aspects? How about the eventual cost to the human species in erms of global warming? What about infrastructure such as roads, petrol stations, charging points for electric cars, etc. Most models include no costs for these things.

[mjr]

I think we need more roads not less. New roads can often divert traffic away from local roads and make them more enjoyable to cycle.

New roads can divert traffic, but they usually don't and certainly not often. In general, more roads optimised for motorists encourages more motoring - https://journalistsresource.org/studies ... u-s-cities holds true in the UK too.

More enjoyable to cycle? It's disappointingly rare that a diverted road remains open for cycling only. More often, the old road is left open to provide yet more accesses for all traffic onto the diversion (the former A47 at pretty much every smaller place bypassed between Peterborough and Norwich, the former A5 at Milton Keynes, the former A142 at Witchford, the former A43 either side of Northampton or Brackley, for example), or they're closed to all traffic (the former A11 between Elveden and Mildenhall, or the former A43 either side of Towcester, for example).