[Technology] Pay by the mile road pricing...

[Blue3]

Electric cars are potentially a £40BN threat to the tax take through loss in fuel duty.

Is pay per mile the only realistic future now for motoring?

https://news.sky.com/story/road-pri... pay per mile might not take up the shortfall

 

[Justice]

I agree, and would use the extra tax take to make electric power much more user-friendly to help people make the transition.

Personally I think all car companies should use a standard battery and instead of having petrol stations you just buy a new battery when yours is running out of charge, but that's unlikely to fly given it would involve someone pulling the industry together.

Millions of batteries being produced and dumped is hardly going to be good for the environment.

 

[Krusty]

Are they going to track every journey and demand to know who was driving? Can't see that being very popular!

or will it be a quarterly/annual meter reading like your utility bills? will you be able to get cheaper miles if you drive offpeak?

Sounds like a right shambles and they haven't even designed the system yet.

 

[keaton]

If motorists are no longer polluting the environment why should they continue to pay a regressive tax ?

They'd still be polluting the environment. It would depend how the car was made , how its energy is made etc. It would still cause far more damage to the environment than walking, cycling or public transport

 

[zefarelly]

glad you did the sums, yes there is effective road use pricing already. hence a new direct road pricing will need to offset against fuel duty and VAT to be fair all round.



evidently they dont respond to pricing - see above. lockdown was quiet because all workers, office, trade, delivery, stopped with serious effect on the economy. the roads contribute a very large portion of economic activity indirectly.

And directly.

I'd love to walk/cycle to work, accumulative factors over 30 years, have meant in my industry I have to travel further and further to work, they are primarily globalisation and property prices.

Would happily take a pay cut to work closer to home

 

[Gwylan]

By 2030, we'll be well on the road (ha,ha) to autonomous cars. The concept of owning a car will be on the way out (you can be sure that the insurance costs would rocket and I'm sure it would be taxed accordingly too).

Once we have self-driving cars, we can have all sorts of road pricing: different rates for urban and rural; different rates for peak and off-peak travel; discounts for essential workers; discounts for car-sharing etc. It would be a much more efficient use of road space.

I know people are talking about self-driving cars being available in a few years time but there's a long way to go yet but 2030 does seem feasible.

 

[blue-shifted]

Thats a bit of a ''red herring'' in terms of the NHS - The ailments to individuals are just pushed back to later in life when the population gets ill from another different ailment they need to treat.

Also people live longer and State Pension costs are higher and Care for the Aged - In a way in terms of Health Service it was better when smoking bumped people off early. Get the tax money and then no need to pay them a State Pension or Care home costs

That's your position?

Set up society so that they get their illness and death out of the way early?

Nice argument

 

[blue-shifted]

I’d happily drive one if it was able to do the miles required for my job on a daily basis.

The point I always return to is how are people going to charge them once they are the mainstream ?

Lots of people can’t even park outside their house so how are they meant to charge their car up ?

The thought process and the practicality behind the grand idea is pretty poor.

It's just in the early stages. In infrastructure isn't there yet. Though for many it's more likely to be somewhere away from the home

 

[blue-shifted]

Millions of batteries being produced and dumped is hardly going to be good for the environment.

The environmental objections to electric cars are valid. They aren't perfect. They are better than what we have and can be part of the solution to get us through the short term until we've improved other transport technology .

Science, as we've seen, is capable of working at great speed when there is a necessity to do so.

 

[A mex eyecan]

Thats one element I wonder about. I live on a street of terraced house, narrow pavements. Probably room for, at most, one car outside each property. Going to need to be quite some shift to see each of those houses having one small car that they run a cable over the pavement to. Presumably the tech will come.

ooh, think of all the friggin spam ambulance chasing calls, ‘I’m calling because you fell over some plonkers cable that was laying across the pavement. Is that right’

 

[blue-shifted]

What people need with transport options is to be nudged towards more environmentally friendly options.

The truth is it's cheaper to commute by car than it is to commute by public transport. The sums need to be tilted the other way through state intervention.

There's also issues of car culture and perceived status which get in the way, which taps into wider disagreements about individual rights v the greater good. ... so ....
Loads of people wouldn't take public transport because they consider it beneath them. In major cities it's the only realistic way of getting around so this car as status symbol thing is less prevalent.
Loads of people wouldn't get on a bike, because they don't consider themselves a cyclist. This whole culture war which seems to exist needs to have the passion and emotion taken out of it.

 

[Berty23]

Bit of an obsession with this "key worker status". Anyone who has to travel for work will equally suffer. My job role takes me all over the place. I can't do it from one location. As I look after beer many will see that as key.

It was just to make a point. As others have said it will often be lower paid. Probably better than key worker. Also worth noting that since we bought a new car our tax a year has plummeted compared to our old banger. So those who can afford nice cars also pay less. Feels wrong.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

They'd still be polluting the environment. It would depend how the car was made , how its energy is made etc. It would still cause far more damage to the environment than walking, cycling or public transport

So you are arguing for a tax on mileage but not one that aims to raise the sums currently made from fuel tax because there is still some pollution but not as much ? Perhaps that would need to be quantified and applied to other areas of the economy as well. It does seem that the environmental argument is moving the goalposts. We have a way of drastically reducing carbon emissions but this is not enough for you as the ideal is that everyone cycles or takes public transport. For most people neither is practical. What about the elderly ? What about people who live in towns, villages and the countryside? They will have to continue paying a regressive tax. Sounds suspiciously like an anti car rather than anti pollution agenda.
I have no problem with motorists paying tax as long as it is progressive ie income tax. I don’t see any reason why people should pay extra for using taxpayer funded infrastructure like roads and hospitals and I reckon if this were introduced it wouldn’t be long before it becomes operated by private companies looking for profits.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

My worry about the electric car is longevity, specifically around battery life.

We know that a petrol engine, if serviced appropriately will easily do 150k miles, a diesel 250+k so based on 10k per annum, these engines will do between 15 & 25 years.

Now, we've all owned a mobile phone, when it was new it would go for days on a single charge, but get to 5+ years and it's likely to go flat in less than a day - batteries age by not being able to hold their charge so efficiently.
So what will happen to 5 year old electric cars that, when new, did 400 miles on a single charge but now only manage 30-ish miles before batteries go flat.

They will need to fix battery life issues before electric cars can truly become sustainable - or electric cars will need a battery replacement scheduled in on a regular basis [2 year service cycle?]
Who has factored that cost in, both financially and environmentally?

 

[Gwylan]

This thread really does read like something the manufacturers of horse-drawn carriages would have been having around 1900

 

[keaton]

So you are arguing for a tax on mileage but not one that aims to raise the sums currently made from fuel tax because there is still some pollution but not as much ? Perhaps that would need to be quantified and applied to other areas of the economy as well. It does seem that the environmental argument is moving the goalposts. We have a way of drastically reducing carbon emissions but this is not enough for you as the ideal is that everyone cycles or takes public transport. For most people neither is practical. What about the elderly ? What about people who live in towns, villages and the countryside? They will have to continue paying a regressive tax. Sounds suspiciously like an anti car rather than anti pollution agenda.
I have no problem with motorists paying tax as long as it is progressive ie income tax. I don’t see any reason why people should pay extra for using taxpayer funded infrastructure like roads and hospitals and I reckon if this were introduced it wouldn’t be long before it becomes operated by private companies looking for profits.

I don't think I voiced any opinion or agenda I just corrected you that car drivers would still be polluting the environment.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

I don't think I voiced any opinion or agenda I just corrected you that car drivers would still be polluting the environment.

A bit like all other consumers then I guess.

 

[zefarelly]

A bit like all other consumers then I guess.

quite, there are quite likely non drivers sitting there at home clicking and buying oceans of plastic tat from thousands of miles away being delivered by diesel chugging cans whilst eating frozen NZ Lamb, fruit and veg all flown in from the southern hemisphiere.

 

[GT49er]

Ah, the lack of foresight and forward planning! Once there were city centre offices, within a reasonable shut of train and bus station, so public transport commute was for many a viable option. Trouble was the shortage and/or expense of city centre parking, so mist of them packed up and moved to out of town sites ................. plenty of car parking space but no public transport!
Some of those city centre offices are still standing empty!

 

[keaton]

quite, there are quite likely non drivers sitting there at home clicking and buying oceans of plastic tat from thousands of miles away being delivered by diesel chugging cans whilst eating frozen NZ Lamb, fruit and veg all flown in from the southern hemisphiere.

A bit like car drivers then I guess