No more Zero vehicle band tax on electric cars

You need to provide effective and attractive alternatives, then incentivise people to use them.

You need to both discourage the behaviour that you want less of and encourage the behaviour you want more of.

The lesson of the Netherlands is that it both needs to be easier to use public transport +/- bicycles and harder to use cars. Paradoxically this also makes it easier to use cars, because when it’s successful traffic is massively reduced.

Of course maybe you want to disadvantage rural commitments even further – you know, the ones with shitty public transport links and higher distances to services etc?

The problem is big cities have made cars rubbish on their own with traffic and parking and by taxation, emissions zones, etc.  Which then means there’s a political will to sort out public transport .

Rural areas have crap public transport because cars are still cheap (there’s free parking everywhere) and easy (there’s no traffic).

If you made the parking at Ribblehead as expensive as central London I guarantee that all those people driving there to look at the train line would realize you can actually get a train there.  Same with locals, if Aldi and Lidl in Catterick charged £10 to park,  then people in Hawes in their Nissan Micras (Sorry Kojak / Generalist I don’t know Kent)  wouldn’t drive there and would shop locally at Elijas instead.

or even zero-rate it for those who are genuinely isolated or have no option other than to commute long distances by car

And therein lies a problem.

There’s a difference between between the local rural economy (which probably involves very little actually driving, Farmers aren’t known for their commutes), and people who live in rural areas. If you live in Hebden, Kirkby Lonsdale, or Hawes and commute in Manchester you are not the victims of this, you are the problem.

I agree, at some point they’re going to have to do something because:

a) Roads need paying for if people want to drive

Any old public money can pay for roads and vehicle excise duty can pay for, you know… that expensive thing… the NHS.

I agree that electric vehicles need to pay their fair share of the costs associated with providing infrastructure

VED doesn’t fund infrastructure, it goes into the general taxation pot. Even if it did, it wouldn’t come close to providing enough money – we all fund roads from general taxation, whether we own a car or not.

The lesson of the Netherlands is that it both needs to be easier to use public transport +/- bicycles and harder to use cars. Paradoxically this also makes it easier to use cars, because when it’s successful traffic is massively reduced.

Problem comes when one political party is bleating about the War on Drivers, and the other goes on about hard working motorists despite 1:3 households in the UK not having a car, and 1:4 people not being able to drive.

It’s hard to believe anyone enjoys sitting in a traffic jam and given that building more roads doesn’t work, the solution is exactly as you describe.

You cannot simply penalise people for doing what they need to do.

I thought that was exactly how it works.

Developing tax policy to inhibit non-preferred behaviours is a thing.  I’m not denying that.  Just saying that taxes always get set according to political affordability which only becomes linked to individual voter affordability if the overall revenue curve from an increase reaches an inflection and the opposition drive a wedge into that particular issue in order to screw us elsewhere.  We pay what can be afforded (cf. price of bikes/e-bikes) and we get a chance to cast our vote for one or other pack of scoundrels to form our government.  These rules seem to be constant.

I feel a wee bit guilty now – my ‘dirty diesel’ attracts £0 VED and doesn’t even meet Euro 6!

We all know deep down that road pricing is probably the answer.

They should’ve tiered it on efficiency and kept extra low rates to reward you for buying smaller cars with small kWh batteries to continue the push for efficiency.

Bang on. Should have revised VED for electrics to be based on weight. Want (and can afford) an expensive lightweight electric car… knock you socks off. Want to drive an electric tank, at any cost… pay your way/weigh.

weight x miles x list price x annually escalating constant = tax would be hard to argue against.

Could be made palatable by abolishing VED and fuel taxes.

The challenge is how do you log miles. It’s easy to say it’s recorded with the annual MOT , but that’s open to being easily fiddled. It would need some sort of black box system, and that wouldn’t be popular with the liberal right wing.

You cannot simply penalise people for doing what they need to do.

You can, you just push them into making a decision about how much they need to do it.

Smoking, drinking, gambling, driving.

I thought that was exactly how it works.

Developing tax policy to inhibit non-preferred behaviours is a thing.

Only when there’s a viable and decent alternative.

You need to both discourage the behaviour that you want less of and encourage the behaviour you want more of.

Yes, but that can only be done when the behaviour you want is actually achievable.   It’s fine to dissuade people from driving and encourage them to use trains or busses instead, but when there isn’t a bus or train to the place you need to be, then what are you supposed to do? You’re forcing people to pay the penalty when they have no choice. This is both immoral and deeply unpopular.

weight x miles x list price x annually escalating constant = tax would be hard to argue against

I don’t think so.  Driving 20 miles across rural Wales between towns to get to work is not the same as driving 20 miles across congested Bristol.  And the weight thing is a red herring – efficiency is the important metric.

There’s a difference between between the local rural economy (which probably involves very little actually driving, Farmers aren’t known for their commutes)

Hah.  Most people who live in the countryside aren’t farmers.  They are people who need jobs, but due to the density of business activity they need to drive to other towns or villages to work, and do stuff like take their kids to school. Then they need to go to another village to get their car serviced or another place to get a thing they need etc etc.  It’s pretty rare that you can do all these things with public transport.  Out of all car users in the country, rural inhabitants are the last ones you want to go after.

You can, you just push them into making a decision about how much they need to do it.

Getting to work is quite high on most people’s list of priorities.

weight x miles x list price x annually escalating constant = tax would be hard to argue against.

Works for me, I’d make it so the ‘ordinary’ driving licence allows you drive say; up to a  1.5lt 4 door, maybe 2 tonnes, after that you want more engine? more people? you take an annual [paid for] test and pay more tax. You want a 4×4? prove that you live on a farm, or in the highlands, I’d ban the sale of things like Range Rovers or Q7s etc anyway, and make max curb rate weight rules for everything else.

I’d make the Daily Mail readers faint. It’d be fun.

If you want to discourage the use of heavier cars, just ban power steering.

Getting to work is quite high on most people’s list of priorities.

Yes, but why do they need to live 20 miles away.

Ramping up car taxes and abolish stamp duty to encourage people to co-locate near their employment would be beneficial to everyone.

Hah.  Most people who live in the countryside aren’t farmers.

I agree, I grew up in a succession of “Turn right at the signpost in the middle of nowhere and go a couple of miles further” type places.

Commuting is killing actual local economies.  I went to my parents in the Dales a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t get anything to eat as every restaurant in Hawes was shut and it’s because people working in catering trades have been priced out of the area by commuters.

People should not be living in rural areas and commuting 20 miles into town by car, its not sustainable.

Out of all car users in the country, rural inhabitants are the last ones you want to go after.

Congestion charge, parking charges, parking permits, ULEZ, and general self limiting by congestion has already “gone after” urban car users.

Rural areas have crap public transport because cars are still cheap (there’s free parking everywhere) and easy (there’s no traffic).

City dweller me thinks.

I used to be all for road/milage pricing… but I think the switch to electrics reduces the need for this now… the environmental cost of cars will be shifting fast to the negative effects of production and away from fuel costs.

They have crap public transport because the usage is so low that the bus companies, for example, don’t bother providing the services as it will lose them money.

I use to get the bus to work on the 07:15 bus and 90% of the time I was the only person on it for 10 miles trip it was making.  Would have made more sense just to send a car to take me!  Not surprisingly the service was cancelled leaving just the 11:00 bus now so great if you want to get to work at 12:00 but may be more use to people going to town to do shopping but I have no idea how many people use it.

City dweller me thinks.

@tonyF1

I’ve moved to a big village, it’s practically cosmopolitan now the pub has re-opened. Before that growing up:

<1997

I think the nearest house was 2-3 miles away?

<2008

It was a joke that we’d moved out of the sticks because there was a postbox < 2 miles away, but you still had to go 3 miles in the opposite direction to see a streetlamp.

What I’d rather is people started campaigning for and using public transport rather than campaigning to keep their cars cheap.

A simple tax by listed wet weight would be sufficient.
maybe make under 1000kg free for the Ami and similar to encourage them for those who need them, and really ramp it up for over 2000 for the wankpanzers however they are propelled.
sliding scale in between to make manufacturers really think about the car weight in the same way they were able to amazingly come in just under the emission bands once they put their minds to it.
the difference between EV and ICE can be done by adjusting fuel duty, eg ICE will pay more per mile.

If the per mile is done via fuel duty (bonus for efficiency baked in) then by weight is going to pretty much correlate to resources used to build and eventually scrap; and damage/wear to roads.

Localised pollution dealt with by LEZs and congestion charging as currently.

no need for black boxes or any other charge by mile scheme.

If the per mile is done via fuel duty (bonus for efficiency baked in) then by weight is going to pretty much correlate to resources used to build and eventually scrap; and damage/wear to roads.

I agree with the principle but then you need to meter the electricity.

City dweller me thinks.

it’s obvious that the vast majority of people in rural areas – same as everywhere – would still drive for most journeys rather than use public transport even if it were decent, simply because it’s more convenient, and still cheap – and people in the UK are inherently lazy (there’s no established culture of routinely using bikes for transport like there is in some other countries)

ayjaydoubleyou has it spot on

Yes, but why do they need to live 20 miles away.

Good grief.  You say you grew up in the countryside but either it was a very posh middle-class version of countryside or you had your eyes and ears very firmly closed.

Moving house is difficult, expensive and disruptive. Finding a job is also difficult – if you live in a village (where you might’ve been born and brought up, and your support network might be) and you are lucky enough to find a job ten miles away, forcing people to move or refuse the job would cause terrible problems.  Mobility is important for the economy and for the workforce, if you restrict it you will have more unemployment. Sure, people could move to a city, but that’s going to demolish rural communities even more so than they already are.  See 19th century Scotland for an example of how this can end up.

Commuting is killing actual local economies.  I went to my parents in the Dales a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t get anything to eat as every restaurant in Hawes was shut and it’s because people working in catering trades have been priced out of the area by commuters.

There’s a difference between rural people working the only job they can find in the next town (or working several jobs, or doing temporary work) and middle class people who work in the big city pricing locals out of the area.

People should not be living in rural areas and commuting 20 miles into town by car

Sometimes it really is the only option.  You may not be aware of this, but it really is.  Life happens.  As for sustainability – go stand by a roadside in rural Herefordshire and count the cars.  Are you willing to destroy local communities to get so few cars off the road?  Now go stand by the M25 and count the cars, tell me which one you want to fix first.  You could fix them both and yes, it would be brilliant, but you need to work out the most effective way to spend the money first to have the biggest impact.

What I’d rather is people started campaigning for and using public transport

That is literally what I am advocating, scroll back a bit, it was the first thing I said.  What I am objecting to is the order in which things are done. You cannot penalise people when there isn’t a choice.  Give them a choice first THEN encourage them to use it.

I went to my parents in the Dales a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t get anything to eat as every restaurant in Hawes was shut and it’s because people working in catering trades have been priced out of the area by commuters.

No, the reason is Brexit. Same for lots of places in the Dales, eg. Dent where I had a good chat with the landlords and the local farmer* who used to have the Brewery on his land. One pub is now two days a week, the other relies on family members to keep it open. No European workers has pubs and other hospitality businesses on their knees. Similar stories in the Highlands as well (one pub/restaurant I know there is now completely staffed by South Africans to keep going… not every business owner has the contacts, means and scale to make that kind of more distant staffing happen though).

[ * this old guy was awesome… insisted we called the village “Town” and had a good pretend argument with the family I was visiting with, who all have the surname “Dent”… where as he shared a surname with the guy on the old monument in the centre of the “town”.  Had a good old chat about the Brewery with him… it was when it was shutting down production… we were there to help finish the last few casks at one of the pubs. ]

Another recent anecdote… The Torridon @ Torridon… was in their bar getting, er, wasted after a weekend of riding… lovely staff… most of the French… one from Barbados (via Salford… what a contrast)… the UK playing “boo foreign workers bad” needs to be reversed if we want to keep rural businesses, especially hospitality, open.

“VED doesn’t fund infrastructure, it goes into the general taxation pot. Even if it did, it wouldn’t come close to providing enough money – we all fund roads from general taxation”

Motoring taxes raise around £40Bn. Roads spending is around £11Bn.

https://ifs.org.uk/books/road-map-motoring-taxation

https://www.statista.com/statistics/298667/united-kingdom-uk-public-sector-expenditure-national-roads/

“pay their fair share of the costs associated with providing infrastructure”

I would expect better this forum.
VED doesn’t pay for infrastructure, either construction or maintenance – this comes from general taxation.

The most significant tax loss going from liquid fuels to electricity is tax – Petrol and Diesel are very heavily taxed to the point that it in effect a pay-per-mile tax with a weighting towards less efficient vehicles paying a higher rate.

The only real way to replace this is a pay per mile system based on actual miles driven. Not that will NOT be popular (however remember it effectively already exists, just indirectly as a tax on fuel).

People should not be living in rural areas and commuting 20 miles into town by car

So who should be living in the millions of rural houses?

Farm workers?  No, farms need a fraction of the workers they used to have because of mechanisation.  In a village of 500 there are maybe 15 local jobs.

Retired people? No, they move back to towns when they get old as they struggle to drive and there are no local services.

Working from home?  Not a chance.  We get 0.5mp/s on the phone line or around 3mb/s on a 4g router, that now only works intermittently as the 3g is turned off and 5g is years away.

So is it better for the environment for my house to be knocked down and a new house to be built for me in the suburbs, or to commute 15 miles in an EV powered mostly by the solar panels on my roof?

Good grief.  You say you grew up in the countryside but either it was a very posh middle-class version of countryside or you had your eyes and ears very firmly closed.

No I grew up a leftie thinking how can this be made better for those who can’t afford “to commute 15 miles in an EV powered mostly by the solar panels on my roof?” rather than assume everyone can bootstrap themselves out of the problems in a sustainable way.

People should not be living in rural areas and commuting 20 miles into town by car

On a purely selfish note I’d rather live in a rural community and commute to work.

I have zero desire to live in a town or city.

I simply don’t buy the emissions claims any more. With ice engines the fuel tax was close enough but surely EV emissions is dependent on how the electricity was being generated at the time you happen end to charge the car so it could 100% green or 100% fossil fuel depending on the lap of the gods.  Also surely my 8 year old car I bought used is still better for the environment than me buying a brand new ev or having work provide me with one which they would.

It feels a little soon to let a disincentive to buy an EV creep in. However it would be good to do something to incentivise smaller lighter EVs to continue adoption beyond the largest models in a manufacturers lineup

ircFull Member
“VED doesn’t fund infrastructure, it goes into the general taxation pot. Even if it did, it wouldn’t come close to providing enough money – we all fund roads from general taxation”

Motoring taxes raise around £40Bn. Roads spending is around £11Bn.

And the total costs of motoring are many times the road spend.  Death and disability caused by cars, diseases of inactivity, all that land tied up by parked cars, damage to buildings, cost of enforcing motoring law etc etcv

Rural public transport?  Back in the 70s the village I lived in 20 miles north of Glasgow had 2 buses an hour into town.  I worked on a golf course 10 miles away – I got the bus there at 6 am.  Last bus home 11 pm.  Now 2 buses a day.  Its perfectly possible to have decent rural public transport.  It just needs political will and money – and that money could easily come from raised taxes on drivers.  Take 20 years to change it all now of course but we could make a start.

but surely EV emissions is dependent on how the electricity was being generated at the time

Partly true. With our current energy mix, the carbon emissions of ICE vehicles is still many fold that of any electric vehicle charged at any time of day.

By 2030 (assuming the Tories are kicked out) all electric vehicle charging will use renewable energy only.

Needs a lot of work going into grid upgrades and resilience though (again, will happen if Tories are moved on).

Even sooner than 2030 it will be possible for all electric cars to be charged at off peak times without using fossil fuels.

Of course most of us will still be using ICE cars for years (decades) to come… if only because we can’t afford new cars… but a simple weight based charge for the larger EVs is probably sufficient to encourage take up of more efficient vehicles that cause less road damage and create fewer non-fuel particulates. Charging based on energy usage for EVs is probably overly complicated and unnecessary. Keeping fuel duty for our ICE cars to keep pressure on milage/usage still makes sense though. And should be increased (I say this despite it hitting me).

On a purely selfish note I’d rather live in a rural community and commute to work.

I have zero desire to live in a town or city.

Same for me.  I moved out of town 25 years ago and am never going back.  As said up there though, I did actually use the bus and then walk remaining 3 miles to work most days before the service was canned so we only needed one car.

Back in the 70s…

Back in the 60s my grandad was one of a handful who owned a car in his village. Proper Lord of the Manor!

No point quoting 50 year old tales of happy bus journeys when car ownership was low and bus, bike or motorbike were most peoples only transport options.

And back then ‘leisure’ wasn’t the thing it is now. Most peoples leisure was down the local of a weekend. And holidays were ‘factory fortnight’ on the train to Skegvegas. Now people are traipsing all over the country every weekend.

Society has changed and putting that mobility genie back in the bottle will take a lot of doing.

Personally I think the only thing that will change things radically it is self driving vehicles where you just book one on your phone and it comes to your door.

And the total costs of motoring are many times the road spend. Death and disability caused by cars, diseases of inactivity, all that land tied up by parked cars, damage to buildings, cost of enforcing motoring law etc etcv

If you’re trying to calculate the indirect costs you should also add in the indirect benefits, the massive boost to the economy (and thus general taxation) that fast, flexible, nearly ubiquitous personal transport at a low cost provides. That far outweighs any of your proposed costs you’ve added – eg the costs of the traffic police is less than £100m – insignificant

What I’d rather is people started campaigning for and using public transport rather than campaigning to keep their cars cheap.

Problem is no one will pay for this as the cost is always going to exceed revenue. I live in a smallish village of 500 and one bus a day at 11:00 that comes back next day.

Car ownership is an absolute necessity here and a lot of folk locally wouldn’t consider cars cheap as they make minimum wage.

eg the costs of the traffic police is less than £100m – insignificant

Which is a small part of the costs of enforcing motoring law

No point quoting 50 year old tales of happy bus journeys when car ownership was low and bus, bike or motorbike were most peoples only transport options.

I was talking about the late 70s not the 30s and the point of the story is that good rural bus services are possible.  Deregulation and subsidy cutting is what has done for rural buses not an inherent difficulty

If you’re trying to calculate the indirect costs you should also add in the indirect benefits, the massive boost to the economy (and thus general taxation) that fast, flexible, nearly ubiquitous personal transport at a low cost provides. That far outweighs any of your proposed costs you’ve added – eg the costs of the traffic police is less than £100m – insignificant

Which then misses the point that those benefits are usually quoted against staying at home doing nothing (or sitting in a traffic jam doing nothing).

When people quote the economic benefit of cycling, trains, busses, or anything that isn’t a car they’re usually giving the delta to a car. E.g the economic benefit of Crossrail is largely the result of getting people off the M4 and north circular.  The economic benefit of HS2 was in getting freight off the M40, the economic benefits of cycling are the health benefits and local spending Vs sitting in a car.

And just imagine what an economy would look like balanced away from cars (and housing but that’s a different but linked argument).  Those thousands of pound’s currently spent my every household on personal transport which ultimately ends up either aboard, or concentrated with shareholders. Plus the drain they put on local economies because if you’re getting in the car to dive somewhere, it’s more likely you’ll drive a bit further to the big out of town warehouse shops.  What if it was instead spent locally? Spend the cost of your new car on home improvements with a local builder. £60 tank of petrol on the drum lessons you always wanted. The service and MOT bill on snazzy moleskins from a local trouser company.