5 ms·
For the road wear — tax the tires proportional to the tire weight. But that most likely would mean few-fold increase in the tire cost and may impair road safety
by IndrekR 4y ago
For the road wear — tax the tires proportional to the tire weight. But that most likely would mean few-fold increase in the tire cost and may impair road safety. Easier to add an annual fee proportional to the square of fully loaded vehicle mass. Would be about £1k/yr on average. Less for smaller cars, more for larger ones.
- iso1631 4y agoYou should make it proportional to the miles driven. Someone who does 1,000 miles a year causes far less wear than someone doing 30,000 miles a year That's the crazy thing about vehicle excise duty, if you do 1,500 miles a year you might use 300 litres of petrol (about £150 tax), but you could be paying another £160 in VED, making the total tax 20p per mile Meanwhile someone doing 30,000 miles at the same mpg will be paying about 10p per mile
- Robotbeat 4y agoI think it’d be pretty bad to penalize electric cars based on weight squared unless fossil fuels are eliminated from transportation. Then I agree.
- cptskippy 4y agoIt's not really a penalty. Road repair costs are real and you should be paying your share proportional to your usage of the road and the amount of damage your vehicle causes. When ICE are the only game in town, a fuel tax is a simple solution because larger more damaging vehicles are generally less fuel efficient. The downside is that anyone using fuel for non-ICEV usage is unfairly taxed. Perhaps putting the tax on tires is the solution because tire wear tracks to usage and vehicle weight as well? You can still have a fuel tax to penalize ICE in addition.
- Robotbeat 4y agoFuel taxes WERE ALWAYS supposed to be a conservation measure and Pigouvian tax on pollution AS WELL AS a use tax. So a replacement tax that doesn’t have the same effect of taxing CO2 emissions is effectively subsidizing CO2 emissions compared to the status quo. That seems like a bad idea.
- cptskippy 4y agoI don't think anyone was suggesting what you're calling a bad idea.
- asdff 4y agoWhy not? Penalize all vehicles based on weight squared. People shouldn't be moving to electric cars if they actually are concerned about climate change. They should strive to replace as many trips as possible with bike commuting and letting the car they already own and works fine sit in the garage collecting dust, versus willing a new one into existence from parts extracted from around the earth and perpetuating an autocentric and consumptive lifestyle.
- Robotbeat 4y agoBecause then you’re effectively subsidizing CO2 emissions by penalizing the significantly lower emissions vehicles.
- freemint 4y agoWhy should society be subsidising road damages by penalizing light cars? It is giving people an incentive to buy larger range electric cars which also need more resources for batteries. Lighter electric cars can also use smaller motors for the same acceleration.
- Robotbeat 4y agoI have nothing against incentivizing smaller electric cars. But the problem is folks will just buy fossil fuel cars of the same class because they’re slightly lighter (also can be weighed with an empty gas tank).
- freemint 4y agoSo what placing wrong incentives because they neutralise a bad incentive in one component is still bad.
- asdff 4y agoYou aren't penalizing the lower emissions vehicles such as ebikes and regular old bikes which is the point. Switching to a 5000lb EV that you exchange every lease isn't the solution.
- _ea1k 4y agoIf implemented properly and adjusted for mileage, this would have interesting impacts on both the cost of EVs as well as the cost of liquid fuels. EVs tend to be heavier, so they'd pay more on average. OTOH, fuel transport trucks are very heavy and fully taxing based on the square of fully loaded weight would increase transport costs significantly. This would end up getting passed on to ICE vehicle users. This solution works, IMO.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoBig problem with taxing more heavy trucks is that price will get moved on customers, which will move it on end users. And because almost everything is transported by a truck into shops, which will cause hike in prices for goods in shops - you are now punishing poor.
- pornel 4y agoI wouldn't mess with the tires. It creates financial incentives to compromise on safety by using old tires, avoiding buying separate summer/winter tires, may create a black market for untaxed tires without quality control, etc.
- asdff 4y agoThen you can do what was done when these things came up for emissions and have tire checks along with your smog checking. Tread depth doesn't even need a fancy inspection site. A parking officer could easily be checking tread depth while they are also looking for double parked cars and out of registration tags.