No more Zero vehicle band tax on electric cars

Any tax on vehicles (I think) should be based on mileage and use regardless of what you drive, can’t be that difficult to work out considering most of us have to have an MOT every year that records mileage. If you use it a lot you pay more, simple. Rich Santa Cruz owners in their 3 ton EV monster trucks breaking up the roads doing 30k miles a year should pay more than the old lady in her old Nissan Micra at £250 a year in a village in Kent going to Tescos once a week.

Oh we’ve had a “mileage based tax” on the books for ages, its called fuel duty except successive governments stalled it for fear of permanently angry pricks in Hi-Viz vests “protesting” by blocking forecourts and main roads. These days they attack ULEZ cameras so we should probably pop a couple of percent on while they’re distracted…

In all honesty I can’t see the controversy over EV owners paying a bit more VED now, would it actually stop people buying the things? Will people be chopping their Teslas back in for ICE Audis again?

My point was actually something different. If you are saying that every user should be counted as contributing 100% to has burning, then my question is who is using all that green energy? Not EV owners (in your argument). Not cooks. Not factories. So who? You end up with a contradiction.

I am not saying anything at all about how we should count individuals contributions. A bunch of green eneregy gets generated, which is usually less than the total amount people want. So we burn gas to make up the shortfall. If anyone used less electricity, it doesnt matter who, we would burn less gas.

Everyone’s marginal generation comes from gas. There is no contradiction.

Its like tax. Say I have a personal allowance, then pay 20% over and above that. My overall average tax rate is 10%, but my marginal rate is 20%. I could arbitrarily assign which hours of which days I assigned to which tax rate, but it wouldnt matter, cutting out any given hour would always mean a 20% marginal tax rate. This will continue to be true until I fall back below the personal allowance threshold. There is no contradiction.

At any given moment, our renewable and nuclear genaration is the grid’s personal allowance, and if we are to generate more than that, it has to come from gas. There is no point allocating which person is using which unit of electricity.

Everyone’s marginal generation comes from gas.

What’s marginal generation?

There is no point allocating which person is using which unit of electricity.

But that is what you are doing when you propose that it’s EVs that are using the non-renewable part. Why is it my EV and not someone’s E bike or hair straighteners etc?

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/electricity-market

The marginal producer of electricity in the UK is most often gas because it is one of the most expensive sources, so is chosen last in the ‘merit order’ on the spot market. But it serves a vital role because gas-fired power stations can be easily switched on and off at short notice to make sure that supply balances to meet demand. Renewable energy sources, on the other hand, are unpredictable due to changes in weather, while nuclear energy provides a fairly constant source of power that is difficult to turn on and off.

Any additional unit demanded, (or unit not used) is allocated to gas because that is the marginal generation. It doesnt matter whether it is an EV being charged or someones hair straighteners.

Just like how if I had not worked on any given day last year, I would have avoided paying 20% tax on that day, even though my average tax rate was 10%.

What’s marginal generation?

But that is what you are doing when you propose that it’s EVs that are using the non-renewable part. Why is it my EV and not someone’s E bike or hair straighteners etc?

Assuming that for the whole time any of those devices were in use there was gas being burned, 100% of the demand they were requiring was met by gas. So all your examples were marginal use. In the extreme scenario where everyone turned off their electrical devices (so no gas is being burned) and you were charging, the additional (marginal) load is being met with renewables.

It’s a bit like voting. Voting makes a difference, and if everyone votes one way a change happens. But your individual vote in a single direction makes no difference at all

Assuming that for the whole time any of those devices were in use there was gas being burned, 100% of the demand they were requiring was met by gas. So all your examples were marginal use

No. Gas is marginal generation, but it’s not allocated to any particular use, so no-ones usage is marginal. You cannot say that everyone’s usage is responsible for marginal generation being used because it’s not. Only 43% is. So you can’t say my car is charging with 100% gas and my dishwasher isn’t. And you can’t say everyone’s energy usage is 100% gas because it’s not.

You can’t single out my car for the fossil fuel half of the output and your PC or whatever as the renewable half.

Molgrips. I don’t pay 20% tax overall on average, I pay 10%. But on every single day of last year, if I had not worked that day, I would not have paid 20% tax on that day. Every single day has a marginal tax rate of 20%, until I cut out so many days that I fall below the personal allowance. 

Say we generate 500kwh of electricity via renewables. That is fixed because that’s how sunny and windy it is today. Gas is used to make up the shortfall, say that happens to be 100kwh. If we had required 1kwh less, we would have chosen to only generate 99 kWh from gas. It wouldn’t matter which of the 600kwh of electricity we had not needed, and so the marginal generation for all of those 600kwh was gas, unless we cut out 100kwh or more, in which case the marginal power is from renewables.

Seems fair that VED and the luxury car tax is coming in. Obviously these are used to incentivise behaviour and totally agree that a decently scaled VED of size, weight and emissions would help.

EV motoring has been pretty cheap for the last few years – was certainly a factor when I got mine. Current car is definitely too big for my needs and I’ll be back in smaller vehicle at the end of the lease. Taxes to push more people into this approach will help.

To put it another way, suppose that tomorrow we all used 1% less electricity. Do you think our solar and wind generation would fall by 1%?

Worth remembering that charging a car isn’t ‘additional demand’. It’s displacing energy demand from one source (petrol, diesel) to another (electricity). While of course reducing that demand is important, it’s also worth displacing the demand that remains from higher carbon to lower carbon generation. In the case of vehicles moving from an at most 30% efficient ICE to an at least 70% electric motor is already such a huge win that burning gas to power an EV still represents less CO2 per mile than an ICE.

The French scheme with the Renault Five is interesting… not just using the car battery to shift energy demand in the home, but across the local grid as a whole. Those cars on that scheme will help doubly when it comes to shifting energy use to renewables… they’ll end up meaning that less fossil fuels as a whole will be burnt than if they didn’t exist… they won’t just mean less compared to using an ICE car… but less than if no car was at those households. That’s mind boggling and totally unintuitive.

[ simple version … V2G (vehicle to grid) uses all those car batteries as a distributed storage system for the grid, not just for each home, allowing peak to off peak demand shifting both for the grid and for energy generation ]

This is the awesome bit about EVs, and I dont understand why is it not widespread already. A fully charged EV could power a household for a few days. Or many households for a few hours. Pimping out your EV’s battery to the national grid will be a vital way to redistribute energy between periods of high and low renewable generation. As others have pointed out, EV batteries are enormous compared to powerwalls and other household batteries.

It needs a lot of very different organisations to work together… in France that can be pushed forward faster by the government because of its stakes in multiple key industries. Let me find a short English version of how it will all hang together…

https://media.renault.com/mobilize-v2g-where-the-future-electric-renault-5-becomes-a-source-of-energy/

That suggests it working in some form in the UK very soon as well. Not aware of how/who/when.

Octopus already on it, albeit with a very limited number of cars:

https://octopus.energy/power-pack/

has to be the way forward though!

I thought one of the issues with gas fired power stations is you can’t turn them off and on quickly so they usually form the base load and it’s often wind that gets turned off when demand drops as you can feather the blades pretty easily. Pretty sure renewable suppliers can get paid not produce, another plus with renewables over traditional generation. We still have loads of oppprtunity for more renewables, its grid connection and nimbism thats holding things up, not the technology or lack of suitable locations.

Seems fair that VED and the luxury car tax is coming in. Obviously these are used to incentivise behaviour and totally agree that a decently scaled VED of size, weight and emissions would help

This – it’s absolutely never about money needed for the (because tax doesn’t pay for anything) exchequer. It’s about taxation for incentivising (or de-) behaviour. And as usually things are the wrong way around – because it should be incentivised currently.

The writing was on the wall when grants started to disappear. I remember the 5K manufacturing grant and grant for the charge points of 250.

When interest rates come down (not looking good currently as May was considered the first real possibility back in January) then lease cars may become favourable again. You pay no VED there.

Without huge State push EVs are looking a bit of a mess (and I say that as a leaser of 2 vehicles.)

Handing this over to the private sector is and was a massive mistake, and has totally ruined any sort of joined up thinking. The maintenance of charge points alone is enough to boil your blood.

I’m lucky and I always can charge at home but the whole thing is begging for state capital.

Over to Labour for this one probably. (Don’t hold your breath.)

“I thought one of the issues with gas fired power stations is you can’t turn them off and on quickly so they usually form the base load”

No, this is completely wrong, gas turbines are very fast to switch on and off.

Coal was base load but it’s been completely phased out decades ahead of expectations. Nuclear is the only really steady power source now, and that’s basically because the infrastructure is so expensive that they have to run full speed to be anywhere close to affordable. We could easily shut them down but they’d still cost billions and they’d look even more stupid than they already do.

I’ve just watched a Top Gear report of an electric G-Wagen.
GBP180k, weighs over 3 tonnes, range of 280 miles from a 116kwH battery. It can’t tow anything as apparently its too heavy already. Depreciation probably horrendous over 3 yrs.

Perfect for in town and the skool runs.

VW E-Up. 36kwh, range 180miles, weighs 1.3 tonnes.
Perfect for in town and the skool runs.

Yer pays yer money etc etc but it’s nuts if they are on teh same vehicle tax band.

it’s nuts if they are on teh same vehicle tax band.

I think this is it.

There needs to be a progressive approach to vehicle taxation, ‘rewarding’ efficiency and ‘essentia’ and progressing towards costing a lot to be ‘inefficient’ and ‘excessive’.

VW E-Up. 36kwh, range 180miles, weighs 1.3 tonnes.

Even this weight is nuts! Something that small should be much lighter.

As an EV owner I’m fine with moving onto the standard VED rate, I do think they need to adjust the Expensive Car Supplement though – not so much to incentivise people to switch to EVs but to not penalise them for doing so. An EV will generally be around £10-15k more for an equivalent spec. to an ICE due to the battery cost so it either needs to be raised to £50k before it triggers for EVs or if that’s too much hassle to admin raise it to £50-55k for all cars and introduce another band at say £80k that’s a higher charge again to make up for the lost revenue.

Something that small should be much lighter.

An ICE VW UP still weighs a tonne. Modern cars have taken on a lot of extra weight to keep us safe (when inside them).

Anyway, sounds like many of us are up for vehicle weight being one of the considerations when calculating car related taxation. Would be interesting to see how that would play out in the media if a political party adopted it as a proposal.

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.

Is that because YOU don’t need anything bigger/larger etc etc?

My 4×4 is a saloon, I live rural and no one clears the road passing our house of snow, nor grits it – winter tyres go on in Oct to be taken off in May.

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

Folk don’t work for the same employer for ever, this isn’t the 60’s.  And what about when you get laid off, only look for work in your local area or expected to move and then what about the next time?  For the record I’ve been laid off 6 times, and expecting it again this year.

@Fueled I understand the concept you are describing. But I don’t think it’s useful to attempt to use this concept for carbon accounting where EVs are concerned. The mistake you are making is assuming that EVs that are responsible for extra demand and not everything else. This is just creative accounting, and you seem to be using it to burst the bubble of EV evangelists.  Similar to the accusations that EV fans think they are ‘saving the planet’.  Whilst there may be some people who think along those lines, I am certainly not under any illusions that anything I do is ‘saving the planet’; but I do know that the choices I make can affect my overall impact.

The French scheme with the Renault Five is interesting… not just using the car battery to shift energy demand in the home, but across the local grid as a whole.

This was mooted right from the start of the current EV market.  Nissan, being one of the first developers, used the CHAdeMO connector on their cars which was always bi-directional, however it became the Betamax of charging standards and even they have been forced to drop it.  Just as that has happened, Octopus have finally announced the commercial availability of a bi-directional home charger that you can use today to convert your Leaf into battery storage – hence the earlier comment.  I’m not sure how this is feasible with a CCS connector, it seems Renault have developed something that may be proprietary.  But yes, it’s a brilliant idea.

An EV will generally be around £10-15k more for an equivalent spec. to an ICE due to the battery cost

I don’t think this is the case any more.  Manufacturers are obfuscating this by filling EVs with gadgets so you end up comparing them with top spec ICE models. Which isn’t necessarily wrong.  The main problem is that the cheapest ICEs are a lot cheaper than the cheapest EVs; but like-for-like there’s not a huge amount in it.

Even this weight is nuts! Something that small should be much lighter.

Light, strong, cheap – pick TWO.

Cheapest iD3 is £35k, cheapest Golf is £27k. But the Golf has a bog standard 112 bhp petrol engine with a manual transmission, whereas the iD3 has 200bhp and is effectively automatic. If you bump that petrol Golf up to 150bhp and make it automatic then it becomes £31k and the difference is down to £4k.  But – you are getting these things on the iD3 whether you want them or not. So is it actually a fair comparison? If you want the things then it is, but not if you don’t.

An ICE VW UP still weighs a tonne.

Yes, proves the point. Nearly 30% more is nuts, imagine how efficient EVs would be with weight parity. Iirc our Zoe weighs more than our golf estate.

I’d love to be able to use the car as a battery for the house. During the sunnier months we’d never need to import and in the winter our entire import would be during lowest demand periods.

Light, strong, cheap – pick TWO

In this case all 3, the ICE version.

@molgrips comparing the headline power is flawed. The id3 is 200bhp and I bet 2t. The golf is 112bhp and probably 1.3. not so much difference in the bhp/t figures.

imagine how efficient EVs would be with weight parity.

If you have regenerative braking makes almost no difference. Once a mass is moving it doesn’t need any energy to keep it moving. There is an immaterial amount more tyre drag from the additional weight, but the extra energy required to accelerate the car is mostly recovered during deceleration.

If you have regenerative braking makes almost no difference. Once a mass is moving it doesn’t need any energy to keep it moving.

Drag says otherwise and regen while good does not reclaim that much if the input energy. So yes less mass less energy available to reclaim but at the same time significantly less used to accelerate it in the first place.

My Seat Mii (ICE version) has a kerb weight of 865kg. Same vehicle as the VW Up! and well under a tonne.

The Mii Electric is 1235kg. I suspect if just searching for VW Up weight the results are a range that covers both ICE and electric.

No, the weight range for the current ICE UP straddles the tonne mark, without the EV being included.

The EV is, as said, 30% more again.

New cars are heavy. Their EV variants heavier still. And in all its forms, that’s still a light car compared to what’s selling in big numbers new right now. Qashqai’s weigh 30% more again.

I suppose one of the reasons you might be a bit hacked off if you have a newish EV is that existing low taxes on diesels (many of which fiddled their emissions reports) have remained unchanged, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem to do this to EV drivers.

Personal suspicion is that over the next few months there will be a lot more anti-EV legislation pushed through or announced as the government try to appeal to their target demographic of grey-haired climate deniers.

That’s a huge range of weights and I cant think of any spec differences that would account for > 135kg.

@Molgrips I think we have to agree to disagree. I’ve run out of analogies or ways to explain it. For every additional EV plugged into the grid to get 1kwh of charge, one additional kwh has to be generated by burning gas. The same is true for every additional pair of hair straighteners, or every additional lightbuld. We already use more electricty than we generate via renewables, so the additional has to come from gas. This will be true until our renewable generation is large enough to not need topping up with gas.

It isn’t creative accounting and I am not trying to disparage EVs. It is just an often overlooked fact.

@molgrips comparing the headline power is flawed. The id3 is 200bhp and I bet 2t. The golf is 112bhp and probably 1.3. not so much difference in the bhp/t figures.

The Golf Match with 115 ps has a 0-60 time of 9.9s versus 7.4s for the iD3, so regardless of the bhp/t the iD3 is a lot quicker.  Even the 150ps version does it in 8.6s.  But whether or not this constitutes like for like depends on if you care.

I’ve run out of analogies or ways to explain it.

I fully understand your point.  I just don’t think you can use that reasoning to make the claim that EVs are 100% fossil fuelled; because by allocating fossil generation to EVs you are at the same time allocating renewable generation to other things that could just as easily not be plugged in.

For every additional EV plugged into the grid to get 1kwh of charge, one additional kwh has to be generated by burning gas.

You agree that a percentage of electricity is produced from renewables, right? So who is using that “green” electricity?

Even if they are (they aren’t) the switch away from ICE to electric powered solely by energy produced solely by gas (no such thing available) then you’re still reducing emissions by a significant amount. It’s not worth the argument. Reduce emissions by 25%… or by 60%… or perhaps even by 100%… all these scenarios suggest that any new car you buy should be electric if emission are a concern (and they should be). If the worst case you can cherry pick is a 25% reduction… it’s a no brainer. If you’re buying new.

Can we agree that while the charging of all the EVs currently in existence today might be partly powered by renewables, each new EV added to the cohort will be powered by gas? Or, equivalently, owing to the addition of this new EV, the proportion of EV charging done by using renewables will decrease?