NotATrainspott
Established Member
- Joined
- 2 Feb 2013
- Messages
- 3,224
I broadly agree with this but please don't forget tyre particulates. Brake particulates may largely disappear due to regenerative braking, but as an EV is heavier than the equivalent IC vehicle the tyre particulates will probably be more (also meaning shorter tyre life and more road wear).
In the absence of a road pricing system I think a mileage charge is an acceptable compromise - the rate per mile could be made dependent on the vehicle weight. Or perhaps even a tax on tyres - although that might encourage people to keep them in use longer than is safe.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/states-move-closer-to-taxing-you-by-how-far-you-drive/
Oh yes, very much so. That's one of the reasons why vehicles with a larger mass need to be taxed more, since they'll generally produce more tyre particulates. I'm sure there will need to be some recognition of different tyre types in future too, but it's easy to create a mass-based tax today.
A mileage charge in itself won't work, because you need to tax the 2 mile school run in central London far more than a 20 mile jaunt across the Western Isles. Arguably we should also include a time factor too - there's not much problem driving about at 2am when the roads are empty.
In China, all electric vehicles must be fitted with a level of information reporting to the government which will enable this sort of pricing. It's somewhat inevitable that the same tech will be trivially possible everywhere else too. Once it's the car's own GPS signal being used, you can be as precise as you like with a charging scheme. It would even be possible to remove physical barriers to car movement like bollards and bus-only sections, and just have very high charges for driving through them.
This will be especially important when urban areas try going car-free. If you've got a flat in the Old Town of Edinburgh in the proposed car-free area, then a system which makes it still possible to do occasional trips to a superstore in a private car (rented or borrowed) and drive all the way to your door is going to be very useful. If it cost £5 for the privilege that would be little barrier to occasional use but it would pretty much guarantee no one would try doing it every day unless they had some very good reason.
Intelligent charging like this can help with all sorts of otherwise intractable problems. For instance, you can effectively toll NOT driving on a motorway or trunk road, to minimise through traffic in traditional urban centres. You don't need to have any crazy system based around the address stored on file for the car registration (which will never work, because people's lives are complex) to ensure people aren't over-charged for living somewhere.