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When electric vehicles start to be taxed, should BEVs be charged by weight?

Should BEVs be taxed by weight class?


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Bletchleyite

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The TfL consultation on future road user charging schemes invites respondents to select from a range of additional factors that should be taken into account in setting the price; these include the availability of alternative transport for the route taken and household income

You can always trust TfL to find a complex, obfuscated and expensive solution with lots of catches and penalties. Just look at Oyster etc.
 
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AM9

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That ship has sailed, the vast majority of the population go everywhere with an electronic tracking device on their person anyway.
And of course, this one only tracks the vehicle not any of its occupants.
 

lachlan

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No.

I would abolish VED entirely and tax motoring based on where it does most harm and where public transport is most viable - in urban areas - by abolishing all free parking within "city limits", primarily, including on private land. Let rural people drive EVs around rural areas tax-free as there's often no sensible alternative, but push them to use P&R into cities. You can't usefully drive cars without parking them somewhere.

Weight affects tyre particulate emissions a bit but this to me isn't enough to push taxation that way.
Agreed with this, though I do think there should also be a charge for using the trunk route network enforced by a network of cameras that would double as average speed cameras. Charging for long-distance journeys could help make rail more competitive against car for these.

This system, tied to numberplate recognition, could be used to tax those who choose to drive a bulkier EV, or one that has poorer pedestrian safety records, for example.
 

GLC

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The annual MOT already records the mileage the car has covered (although with no checks to ensure that mileage always increases…), and you can’t tax a car without a valid MOT.
 

AM9

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And what you're doing with said vehicle. I wouldn't trust any group with access to 3 letter agencies with my mode of transport.
No, - it only says where the vehicle is, not which person is (or persons are) driving it. What is it that is bothering you?
 

DelayRepay

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Ooooh, a government tracking device! I wonder what that'll be used for...

I'm not keen on being tracked either, but that won't stop tracking of cars. Although it doesn't have to be a GPS tracker, it could just report miles covered rather than roads used. That of course depends on pricing - if there are different tariffs for different roads, or different times of day, then more data would be needed.

The TfL consultation on future road user charging schemes invites respondents to select from a range of additional factors that should be taken into account in setting the price; these include the availability of alternative transport for the route taken and household income

Household income seems an odd thing to use; why should an adult child living at home pay more because of their parents' income? Or indeed why should a pensioner who lives with their grown up pay more because of their offspring and offspring in-law's income?

And although I can understand the public transport suggestion, this appears to be an attempt to protect TfL's fare revenue rather than anything to do with EV usage. It would be fraught with difficulty - e.g. people with certain disabilities who would struggle to use public transport will need to be exempt, and TfL will have to deal with regular complaints from drivers who used their EV due to public transport disruption.

I would suggest such a scheme should be simple. The only factors I would consider are length of journey and time of day. If there is a desire to encourage use of smaller cars, then this should be addressed by retaining vehicle excise duty (with a zero rating for certain cars) and/or changing the way VAT is applied to new vehicles to incentive the purchase of small ones.
 
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AM9

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I'm not keen on being tracked either, but that won't stop tracking of cars.
Vehicle movements are already tracked on a very large scale, - in towns and cities, on urban routes, on motorways and in almost every car park. There's no point complaining about that because it is already working as we speak. This anonymity of drivers thing is a myth. If the authorities want to track somebody, it is becoming easier every year without installing anything in their vehicles.
 

LOL The Irony

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Charging for long-distance journeys could help make rail more competitive against car for these.
Nerfing one mode of transport to make another look better is wrong. How about improving rail to make it more competitive against the car? Woah, crazy, right?
What is it that is bothering you?
Do you really want the government knowing everything you do? What's then stopping them from tracking control inputs or speed? What will they do with that data? Will it make the vehicle easier to hack?
Or on foot, by bike or bus?
What if Stacey lives in the sticks, then what? (I don't get why you're nit picking over a throwaway comment to explain better vehicles to use on the roads that aren't giant SUVs).
 

AM9

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Do you really want the government knowing everything you do?
It doesn't bother me because in the grand scheme of things, if they want to know "everything I do" they can do it already. However I don't get up to anything that they might be even remotely interested in and there are plenty of people that they should be watching before they've got the time for me.

What's then stopping them from tracking control inputs or speed?
I don't make a habit of speeding and am prepared to answer for it when I do.

What will they do with that data?
Mine? - probably nothing.

Will it make the vehicle easier to hack?
What do you mean by hack? By whom?
 

DelayRepay

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Do you really want the government knowing everything you do? What's then stopping them from tracking control inputs or speed? What will they do with that data?

The government could already find out plenty about me. They could use my mobile phone records to track where I've been, they can use ANPR to track my car, they could use my bank details to track my spending. I'd rather they couldn't, but I don't really have anything to hide and the convenience of having a mobile phone, a bank account and a car outweigh the privacy concerns, for me.

And I don't think I'm uncommon. If people were generally concerned about being tracked, Oyster cards and use of contactless payments on public transport would never have taken off in the way they have. Neither would e-tickets; people would have continued to pay cash for paper tickets if they were worried about being tracked. And just look how willing the population at large was to scan barcodes to enter all kinds of venues during the pandemic.

In terms of them tracking speed - well they can do that via cameras already. Again I'm not keen on being tracked, but there is an argument that tracking speed would make the roads much safer. Not sure where I stand on that to be honest but I can see a benefit if it reduces the number of serious collisions. There's even an argument for enforcing car drivers taking breaks to avoid fatigue, in the same way HGV drivers and train drivers already do.
 

AM9

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Pretty well all of the above makes sense to me. There seems to be a few who think that painting the imperative to remove CO2 creating vehicles as some kind of stealth strategy by authorities to track movement of innocent citizens and consequently persecute those who don't follow the party line. This pure conspiracy theory stuff, and those that think fighting the introduction of fair road charging once the option to apply duty to the primary energy source (fuel) goes, are kidding themselves. As you say, that ship sailed years ago with the mass acceptance of mobiles, card/other digital payments and barcode/QR code location revealing technogies.
The other prop in the arguments against EV adoption seems to be based on snapshot assessments of the current patchy provision of charging facilities, being unchanged as the number of users increases exponentially. This is ignoring the huge business opportunity that offering charging services presents. That's how the supply of fuel expanded across the country, (which itself will contract just as rapidly once demand falls away when the population of ICVs withers away).
 

matacaster

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But they're doing an important service whilst damaging the road. Stacey can just as easily take the kids to school in a Golf instead of a Range Rover.
My god.... A golf?... The rest of Stacey's school mums would assume she'd be going to the food bank next... The ignomy of it... She'd rather die!1654869359051.png
 

PeterC

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My god.... A golf?... The rest of Stacey's school mums would assume she'd be going to the food bank next... The ignomy of it... She'd rather die!View attachment 115987
Not as outrageous as it seems at first sight. 40 or more years ago I remember a letter in our company newspaper from a manager's wife complaining about the qualifying grade for a company car. In her social circle only the peasants paid for their own vehicles.
 

philthetube

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They should be taxed by weight x square footage to encourage use of smaller cars, ice vehicles should be higher taxed though the same formula should be used.
 

LOL The Irony

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They should be taxed by weight x square footage to encourage use of smaller cars, ice vehicles should be higher taxed though the same formula should be used.
So what you're saying is we should introduce something similar to the Kei regulations?
FYI, these are;
No longer than 3.4 metres
No wider than 1.5 metres
No bigger displacement than 660cc
No more power than 63bhp
 

Bletchleyite

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I'm not sure how sensible this is, given that small cars still cause congestion (the need to leave a gap between them dwarfs the actual length) and other than for street parking take up the same amount of parking space because bays are a standard size. It might also necessitate people having two cars when otherwise one would have done - and if a household has only one car, there will pretty much by definition be less driving.
 

KenA

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With the further rise of electric vehicles, it is inevitable that they will start to pay vehicle tax at some point in the near future. And with Bentley wanting to raise the maximum weight for a class c license from it's current 3.5 ton limit, due to their cars already being quite heavy, once their battery electric models are released, they will be close to touching that limit. This however, is just the tip of the BEV iceberg, with them being notoriously heavy vehicles due to all the batteries they have to carry.

So I raise this question; should they be taxed on weight?
The real big financial issue is the tax on the electric. Fuel duties raise a massive amour of revenues. It is about 60%. Currently electric only attracts 5% VAT. The main option being looked at for EV's is pay per mile
 

Bletchleyite

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The real big financial issue is the tax on the electric. Fuel duties raise a massive amour of revenues. It is about 60%. Currently electric only attracts 5% VAT. The main option being looked at for EV's is pay per mile

I still favour urban congestion charging, motorway/major road tolling and parking taxation as a preferable way. Car use needn't be discouraged in rural areas as there's no real alternative anyway.
 

matacaster

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How about adding in the weight of the occupants to the proposed weight tax? That would help to reduce number of morbidly obese types!:D
 

LOL The Irony

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Currently electric only attracts 5% VAT. The main option being looked at for EV's is pay per mile
I still think weight class would be better as it'd encourage people to seek out lighter, therefore, smaller cars. Fuel duty can be replaced by hydrogen vehicles taking most of the slack, with public charging points taking up the remainder via a toll.
 

matacaster

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So the tax would have to change every time.that you gave somebody a lift?
Cars already have sensors in seats to detect passenger occupancy. Simple enough to transmit a little extra dataand process.. Why not?
 

Sonik

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I still favour urban congestion charging, motorway/major road tolling and parking taxation as a preferable way. Car use needn't be discouraged in rural areas as there's no real alternative anyway.
I agree, it would be a logical extension to systems that often already exist e.g. smart motorways, ULEZ etc.

I believe Singapore do this already, for the whole country, albeit they don't really have any rural areas.

Nottingham already has a local tax on parking spaces at workplaces.
 
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