No more Zero vehicle band tax on electric cars

None of those things are real then tony fi or have a cost?

Monbiot has some discussion of it here.  I have read a more expanded referenced version of this but cannot find it now.  I’m not going to waste more time on this because you will dismiss it no matter what as its not what yo9u want to hear nor does it mesh with the pro car propaganda pumped out

https://www.monbiot.com/2000/08/03/drivers-are-undertaxed/

I just tried to ballpark quantify the per-car the lost revenues from EVs replacing ICEs.

I reckon a petrol car doing 45mpg for 12,000 miles a year paying £1.45 a litre will be paying 1,051 in duties and taxes.
(1,264 litres used – duty = 1,264*0.5295 = £722 duty. The VAT proportion of total fuel bill of 1,264 is £329)

To match that with an EV would need an overall tax rate of £1,051 / 12,000miles = 8.5 pence per mile.
Some tax is already taken via VAT for electricityg. Lets assume 3.7 miles/hw.hr and an average cost per kw.hr of 15p (kind of an average between cheap home charging and some motorway charging). Total cost would have been £486, which would have brought in £81 of VAT. This makes the “missing” tax/duty revenue close enough to a round £1,000.

So it looks like about 8p per mile ish is needed to recoup fuel duty & VAT incomes.

Or to add a duty / increase the rate of VAT on electricity used for charging vehicles. Problem there is how to control it. You could make the vehicle report kW.hrs added over the year and charge duty on the kw.hrs used instead of on the miles driven? The tech is clearly there (my i4 can show me graphs of both these things via the cars app). That would be a duty of £1,0000 / 3,300kw.hr = 30p per kw.hr

Or… a flat charge of an additional £1,000 a year on top of an equivalent existing ICE VED rates. That’s a bit unfair I think as whilst the charge could vary for different vehicle classes it doesn’t account for mileage so someone who does 1k a year pootling the shops pays the same as someone doing 25K miles a year.

So – ignoring political realities and “selling it to the people” etc, if I was in charge of this and could not just move the tax burden elsewhere (non-doms / millionaires anyone?) I would just scrap yearly VED and impose either an 8p/mile driving duty or a 30p/kw.hr duty. Or a balance between VED and this to make it less painful to swallow. Average out at £500/yr VED and halve the duty maybe.

There is also a rather interesting article from Oxera at the link below which includes some quantification of overall tax takes from VED and Fuel Duty (£25BN vs £7.4BN in 2022/23) and looks at some future alternatives.

Electric vehicles: a future without fuel duty?

He is the UK govewrnment estimates of the costs of road collisions deaths etc

total annual cost 15 billion if I have read it right in 2012 – less accidents now but obviously the costs will be greater per accident

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/995110/rrcgb-valuation-methodology.pdf

Hmmm – I might be wrong but I don’t think that EV motor or gearbox bearings are typically designed as a maintainable part – they’re fit for life. Easily achievable by specifying the right parts and designing properly. Compared to industrial machines they will have a very easy life.

Lolwut?

Let’s compare shall we, a pump running constantly with no load changes vs a motor  running up and down and getting the life knocked out of it by rough roads, sudden load changes, axial loads and several things that could be out of balance due to wear and tear.

That’s my point, car bearings have a terrible life and are designed to be as difficult to replace as possible. To replace mine you need a press to get them out the shell and a £300 tool to press them in without wrecking them, by contrast I’ve replaced industrial motor bearings with bearing pullers, heat and a drift. Why? What’s wrong with a grease port and a squirt every service?

otherwise we should dismiss you as a stopped clock.

You do know they’re often right, right?

Seriously – car engine / gearbox duty cycles and life times are pretty light vs industrial applications. I’m talking engine / gearbox bearings here, not suspensionn / cv joints – they’re both different and also no different between ICE and EV.

Let’s looks at the lifespan of a car engine / motor gearbox. 150,000 miles life expectancy over circa 15 years ish. At an average of 40mph that’s 3,750 hours of run time. Most of which is at moderate load as car duty cycles have an extremely low load / something like 0.5% of their life at max power / torque as the peak capability is only there for transient performance / occasional overtakes.

Now let’s see what 3,750 hours life span gives on a 24/7 application which is quite common for industrial motors, pump: etc all of which use bearings.

3750/24/7 = 22 weeks. So a car gearbox would be dead in less than 6 months. And that’s not accounting for the higher industrial duty cycles such as the ISO prime PG rating where the average is 70% of the peak power or continuous where its 100%, only stopping for servicing.

Typical industrial product would have a 10+ year lifespan often more. Equivalent to millions of miles and several decades on a car. Look also at commercial trucks – they do several hundred thousand miles. So those applications have grease ports etc as they are needed.

So yes, in comparison to those applications the automotive duty cycle and life expectant e is pretty tame and grease ports etc ere not needed within its own expected lifetime – usually oil lubrication either pressure fed or splash is sufficient. I guess you’ve noticed that everyday cars don’t have “service / grease the bearings” on their service schedules – it’s a repair rather than PM action. also most cars die from the body shell rusting and general age related failures, not bearing wear out.

Re shock loading etc – again they have quite an easy life as they’re generally mounted to the body shell via rubber mounts, and the body shell is connected to the wheels via rubber mounts and the suspensio then finally the wheels are connected to the ground via pneumatic rubber tyres. So compared to industrial equipment they are positively cosseted.

By the way – your description of replacing car bearings makes it sound like you’re talking wheel bearings / CV joints. They are no different between an ICE and an EV so no change in approach is needed other than ensure they’re rated for the torque and weight.

You peddle this again and again like you’ve worked the numbers. I’m challenging you to provide actual numbers (rather than TJ facts) here otherwise we should dismiss you as a stopped clock.

You do know they’re often right, right?

In this case, twice a day, every day. Almost 100% correct.

They’re in many cities round here. I’ve been involved (on the car side) in two of the current clubs in Goteborg. Cars are cleaned and maintained regularly, most have dedicated club spots, with chargers if they are EV. Flagging a dirty or dangerous car takes 30-60 seconds and in most cases they’ll assign you another car within a 3-5 minute walk (or even the next parking space). Or a refund and compensation.

Sounds good I’ll let him know.  Is there a direct flight from Edinburgh airport ?

Its the same in Edinburgh.

Is there a direct flight from Edinburgh airport ?

Most of them are using the same back end software. Cloud, App and Car.

I find it weird that he’s managed to find a car club which has decided not to use some of the most important features.

I suspect this might have been right at the beginning of the edinburgh car club ie teething issues.  I have used it, I have friends who use it a lot.  I have never heard of anyone having these issues.  Its a great scheme

total annual cost 15 billion if I have read it right in 2012 – less accidents now but obviously the costs will be greater per accident

So less than half the amount raised in taxes on cars? Seems like a reasonable amount, and even if it wasn’t other methods of transport are not 100% safe

Yes – so that is just one of the costs of cars – add in roads and all the other stuff and car drivers are hugely subsidized from general taxation

Yes – so that is just one of the costs of cars – add in roads and all the other stuff and car drivers are hugely subsidized from general taxation

You say that often but never seem to have any figures to back it up. Total road spending is around 11bn, the injuries thing is maybe 15bn, road policing is small change so there’s 8bn left spare till you get to the 34bn in fuel/ved, and that’s before the other billion or so in toll roads and low emissions zones, and a further billion in parking profit. To be “hugely subsidized” I’d expect an extra 20bn or so in government spend that’s not accounted for.

Yes – so that is just one of the costs of cars – add in roads and all the other stuff and car drivers are hugely subsidized from general taxation

You’ve only provided some accident costs from 2013 nothing else and still insist on peddling your nonsense propaganda as you haven’t a clue on the actual costs.

Tick tock please stop.

Tony: what do you think are the actual costs, then? I’m challenging you to provide actual numbers.

Tony doesn’t need to provide data – it’s TJ who is the one pushing this argument.

It’s Tony that’s being asked.

I would also argue that trying is seperate out the total “costs of motoring” is a fools errand. Society has road transport so closely intertwined into how we function that the costs are arguably showing up most everywhere, but equally so are the benefits. E.g. take road transport away and you would not have food on the supermarket shelves, indeed there would not be a supermarket as trucks would have been used to build it. Does that mean that a proportion of the tax take from
Supermarket sales can legitimately be used to fund roads and cars? That applies to every other economic and social activity that depends on cars and road transport.
I think that the current answer is yes – tax revenue is mostly pooled and used where appropriate.

That’s not to say that TJ doesn’t have a point but to continue down the rabbit hole he’s taking is on would require a wholesale re-evaluations and reworking of the entire economy to look at how it could work with an alternative to road transport. Whilst that is a noble quest it’s a bit out of scope from this thread.

TBH every time there’s new research on the true cost of motoring, there’s also a new set of figures… And they all disagree.

The only consistent thing from the academically inclined research is that there isn’t a single government anywhere that actually makes motorists pay enough to cover the costs.

From what I can remember the most generous study I’ve seen regarding the UK gives about a 20% shortfall on 15 or so billion tax/VED/duty take, that was all direct spend on roads and infrastructure. Worst case is about 150%. But that included lots of intangible costs as well as the indirect spend.

I was going to post what @whatgoesup said. It’s absurd to try and point the finger at “drivers” costing us a certain amount. Most of those drivers are driving places to do other things, many of which are quite important. Transport is vital for economic activity.

In the future we will need to minimise the need for transport, undoubtedly we will need to be far more efficient than we are now.

many of which are quite important.

I’d disagree with the “many”.

A vast number of people in traffic every day could just as easily stay home, they either do something that is completely zero value, or could do it from home.

If you really wanted to purge out zero value jobs that would rip out a lot of the UK economy….

I’m not going to waste more time on this because you will dismiss it no matter what as its not what yo9u want to hear nor does it mesh with the pro car propaganda pumped out

From what I can remember the most generous study I’ve seen regarding the UK gives about a 20% shortfall on 15 or so billion tax/VED/duty take, that was all direct spend on roads and infrastructure. Worst case is about 150%. But that included lots of intangible costs as well as the indirect spend.

The total tax on motorists is 46bn –

7.5bn ved
24.8bn fuel duty
12bn vat
1bn parking
1bn low emissions/toll roads

15 bn of road spend wouldn’t touch the sides

was going to post what @whatgoesup said. It’s absurd to try and point the finger at “drivers” costing us a certain amount. Most of those drivers are driving places to do other things, many of which are quite important. Transport is vital for economic activity.

If you want to include that as a positive then it also follows that there are a bunch more negatives to include – the costs of all the congestion ie the hours spent in traffic, the costs of the diseases of inactivity becauise folk no longer feel sdafe to walk or cycle etc etc

5lab – 15 billion of road spend, 15 billion of costs from all the death and disabilities then all the other costs

Well this has got quite silly. If TJ has his way the 15 minute city conspiracists might actualy have a point.

A lot of the cost of driving could be reduced with a bit of effort and investment, particularly the accident statistics, just enforce our current laws on emissions, road worthiness and driving rules.

VED is going to difficult to replace, or rather fuel duty will, it’s the perfect tax at the moment, very hard to avoid and penalises people doing large numbers of miles, driving inefficiently and driving in congested areas. I cant see any pay per mile system being very well policed. Maybe a large VED might a be a good thing, make those that really don’t need a vehicle think twice, a headline yearly cost is harder to swallow than paying it each time you fill up.

“If you want to include that as a positive then it also follows that there are a bunch more negatives to include”

That is exactly my point. All the positives and negatives have to be considered together. When you try and do that it fairly quickly becomes an exercise to model almost all of current society as whole – transport is so integrated that it can’t be disconnected from just about anything.

TJ – can I please ask that you drop this much wider discussion, so that the thread can focus on the question of replacing duties and taxes from ICEs with EVs which I think was its intent.

If you would like a discussion of overall societal taxation and how society can move away from cars as a whole then please start a thread on it. It would be a very valuable, interesting discussion and would help to avoid this one being pulled further down the rabbit hole.

If you want to include that as a positive then it also follows that there are a bunch more negatives to include – the costs of all the congestion ie the hours spent in traffic, the costs of the diseases of inactivity becauise folk no longer feel sdafe to walk or cycle etc etc

Absolutely.  Just don’t over-simplify it.  It’s an extremely complicated situation, I reckon it’s nearly impossible to un-pick the effects that road spend has on the economy.

I’d disagree with the “many”.

A vast number of people in traffic every day could just as easily stay home, they either do something that is completely zero value, or could do it from home.

Yes, that’s a point for debate.  I’m anti-road and pro-PT in general, I just don’t think you can do simple costings when you don’t really know the benefit.

TJ – can I please ask that you drop this much wider discussion,

I would rather he move it to the EV thread 🙂

penalises people doing large numbers of miles, driving inefficiently and driving in congested areas.

Hmm I disagree a little.   I think that whilst most of the traffic in urban areas is producing bad congestion and emitting a lot per mile, the number of miles done is quite low.  You get through FAR more fuel commuting 80 miles each way on a motorway than you do 4 miles each way in a city.

“TJ – can I please ask that you drop this much wider discussion,

I would rather he move it to the EV thread 🙂”

Oh god no – please don’t!!!! It’s about economics and society as a whole, not EVs.

Topics like like tend to completely detail whatever thread they’re attached to.
This is a topic needs its own thread.

@tjagain – can you please start a thread on this ? Something like “Benefits and problems of road transport – how could we could do better” or similar ?

What’s wrong with a grease port and a squirt every service?

Couldn’t you argue that a properly engineered bearing doesn’t require lubrication at all? Greasing bearings is to account for poor fit and to keep muck out.

Seriously – car engine / gearbox duty cycles and life times are pretty light vs industrial applications. I’m talking engine / gearbox bearings here, not suspensionn / cv joints – they’re both different and also no different between ICE and EV.

Let’s looks at the lifespan of a car engine / motor gearbox. 150,000 miles life expectancy over circa 15 years ish. At an average of 40mph that’s 3,750 hours of run time. Most of which is at moderate load as car duty cycles have an extremely low load / something like 0.5% of their life at max power / torque as the peak capability is only there for transient performance / occasional overtakes.

Now let’s see what 3,750 hours life span gives on a 24/7 application which is quite common for industrial motors, pump: etc all of which use bearings.

3750/24/7 = 22 weeks. So a car gearbox would be dead in less than 6 months. And that’s not accounting for the higher industrial duty cycles such as the ISO prime PG rating where the average is 70% of the peak power or continuous where its 100%, only stopping for servicing.

Typical industrial product would have a 10+ year lifespan often more. Equivalent to millions of miles and several decades on a car. Look also at commercial trucks – they do several hundred thousand miles. So those applications have grease ports etc as they are needed.

So yes, in comparison to those applications the automotive duty cycle and life expectant e is pretty tame and grease ports etc ere not needed within its own expected lifetime – usually oil lubrication either pressure fed or splash is sufficient. I guess you’ve noticed that everyday cars don’t have “service / grease the bearings” on their service schedules – it’s a repair rather than PM action. also most cars die from the body shell rusting and general age related failures, not bearing wear out.

Re shock loading etc – again they have quite an easy life as they’re generally mounted to the body shell via rubber mounts, and the body shell is connected to the wheels via rubber mounts and the suspensio then finally the wheels are connected to the ground via pneumatic rubber tyres. So compared to industrial equipment they are positively cosseted.

Not so sure about all that.  In an EV peak torque will happen at almost every acceleration.  Most EV motors are coupled directly (almost) to wheels, so less cossetted than an RWD car for sure.  Most EV motors will have a max rotation speed significantly in excess of a ICE or even most industrial motors at over 12000RPM and even at moderate speed will be rotating far faster than an ICE and over a much wider range of temperatures.

The bearing in out i3 started to go at 80k miles, so not a long life.

@whatgoesup I’m not going to break that down as I’m on my phone so bear with me.

Yes, my point about shitty proprietary tools is in relation to wheel bearings. I expect @mert is better placed to inform me better but it seems like either a cynical way to rinse folk and keep things in network or badly executed reliability engineering.

FWIW I’d probably have paid for the tool and press a  couple of times over if I’d replaced my own hub bearings. They’re not that reliable.

You haven’t considered my point about constant speed either. What is on/off/regen/off/on torque loading doing to any drivetrain bearing? People are **** useless and mechanical sympathy is a rare trait. Add in dynamic loading in all directions and the only equivalent I can think of with similar instability and hostile environment is a ship and they chew through ball bearings.

My point about motors is that in an industrial setting they are stable and will have good alignment (hopefully). On a car? C ‘mon…

5lab – 15 billion of road spend, 15 billion of costs from all the death and disabilities then all the other costs

what are all the other costs? you’re claiming that motorists are heavily subsidised, so far the maths has them costing £30bn and providing £45bn. For them to be heavily subsidised we’re missing maybe £25bn of spend

Read the posts above.  It details but does not quantify other costs – some of them.

Guys – the motor bearings are really NOT an issue.

They will be in perfectly adequate alignment as the position is controlled by the motor and gearbox casings which fix in place the bearings and the motor shaft plus output shaft connections. Any misalignment would be via the drive shafts which have CV joints at either end – designed specially to deal with misalignment

Changing loading doesn’t do too luck to the bearings as it’s primarily torsional / the bearings don’t see torsional stress (which is kinda the whole point of a bearing), they would only see any reaction loadings which are quite easy to calculate and design for. EVs don’t see instant peak torque every time they set off – no one drives like that (you’d destroy your tyres and make your family sick within no time) but even if they did the bearings should be designed with those loadings as an input to the design process.

Rotational speed is easy to deal with too – bearings are easily designed for way in recess if EV rotational speeds which are something like 10-15k max.

Re multi directional loadings – the driverrain of a car is specifically designed to avoid this (including ICE). You use the CV joint design to take this away, have a sufficiently highly rated bearing at the output shaft location to cope with higher and variable tangential loadings (axial generally absorbed by having a splined shaft design) and from that point onearsa as you travel into the differential (they still have those), gearbox and motor everything is controlled by the casing which can be designed to be as stiff as it’s needed.

They are also easily protected against dirt or water ingress via seals. Not a new design needed as existing car output shaft seal designs still work – just carryover.

Seriously – bearings are NOT a limiting factor. Of course manufacturing defects and poor designs happen. If specified and designed properly they are easily capable to last the life of a vehicle with no maintenance.

Note – this doesn’t apply to CV joints and wheel bearings which do see all manner of unpleasant loads, but they are simply carryover from ICE cars so are no better or worse.

Also – this has no relation to the bearings on mountain bikes which die regularly due to dirt and water ingress as it’s not practical to seal them robustly enough – the seals would be significantly deeper, and higher friction so with bikes we just accept that they are replaceable.

Re wheel bearings – on my VW they were bolt-on hub units with the bearings already in – fantastic and easy to change. On the Merc they were two sets of roller bearings with separate races; the outers had to be pressed in and out of the hub; you need a dial indicator to set the right play and the rear seal which has the ABS sensor ring pressed into it had to be pushed in flush, but not too far as they were made to be able to be pressed in about 1mm too far FFS. It was a right faff.  You can however also buy the whole unit ready installed but, y’know, it was more expensive…

A lot of weird thread policing going on here. If a topic that is a core element of the thread subject doesn’t interest you – don’t talk about it…

1bn parking

lol there’s no world in which paying for parking is a “tax”

10-15k max

Try 22-25k max. Most run to ~20k, give or take. Biggest issue is rotor balance and clipping the stator at higher speeds. Which also can mangle the bearings.

Comparing industrial and automotive bearings is a pointless exercise.

The whole deck of design requirements is totally different. Industrial is serviceability, steady loads, maximum MTBF, weight, cost and size are a way down the list. Cost, size and weight are a big deal in auto, loads fluctuate wildly, MTBF is done by testing (i can plug an industrial bearing spec and loads into a calculator and get a moderately good estimation of B10 or B5 life, it’s been around long enough that i used to do that on a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet!), serviceability is tempered against cost of ownership, being able to swap a bearing quickly in a factory plant making a million quid a week is key. Automotive (much though i dislike the concept) it’s cheaper to swap the assembly and make the bearing system simpler. 2-3 hours to swap the whole assembly, rather than 5 to dismantle, change the bearing, reassemble.

I’ve done both. Chemical plant equipment, pumps and mixers mainly and on the automotive side, transmission, head and bottom end, some super/turbo charger stuff and (obviously) xEV motors.

You could make an automotive bearing as durable and easy to replace as an industrial one, but the car would probably weigh 500 kilos more and cost twice as much. The performance would be dire as well. Industrial bearings are designed for steady state use, they even have start up and stop cycles programmed into most of them, to warm up, get the grease or oil moving before the loads hit. Try that with an average (or below average) driver, they’ll trash the bearings in weeks.

Loads of other shit going on too. I’m glad i don’t do bearing stuff anymore. It’s bloody horrible.