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Pay per mile schemes are fairer than fixed higher annual taxes on electric vehicles, since those often over-tax low mileage vehicles and under-tax high mileage

Pay per mile schemes are fairer than fixed higher annual taxes on electric vehicles, since those often over-tax low mileage vehicles and under-tax high mileage ones. The biggest problem with them, by far, is how do you collect this mile information? The current popular option is to plug in a OBD-II dongle that constantly drains the 12-volt battery, and sends your location data to some third party who then forwards it to government (with questionable privacy assurances). You could also just use odometer, but rolling back would become commonplace if you'd pay less.

Etheryte 2y ago
I think using the odometer makes sense, since you need to take your car in for periodic checks anyway it would be easy to tack that on. I doubt winding back would be a large issue since there are already economic incentives to do it for better resale value, but it isn't really an issue afaik.
Tagbert 2y ago
Modern odometers are digital and cannot be rolled back.
- jajko 2y ago
  Sure they can, almost everything in car is hackable with enough effort, look at after sales chip tuning. This would be about billions, so a great motivation. There may be some tamper-proofing possible to thwart most of folks, but we talk about government, not really the champion of technological excellence.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Surely each individual car owner is not paying billions is taxes. And the people who are making billions (e.g. by distributing services to do this) are a lot easier to go after.
Twirrim 2y ago
> The biggest problem with them, by far, is how do you collect this mile information? In the UK every car is required to have an MOT done, which is an annual, comprehensive, safety check of the vehicle. The results are recorded with the Ministry of Transport. It would likely be very trivial to add odometer reading to the recorded data (it probably is recorded already, for that matter), and use that.
- cjrp 2y ago
  It’s already recorded on the MOT, but you don’t require one for a car newer than 3 years old.
deleted 2y ago
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Etheryte 2y ago

I think using the odometer makes sense, since you need to take your car in for periodic checks anyway it would be easy to tack that on. I doubt winding back would be a large issue since there are already economic incentives to do it for better resale value, but it isn't really an issue afaik.

Tagbert 2y ago

Modern odometers are digital and cannot be rolled back.

jajko 2y ago
Sure they can, almost everything in car is hackable with enough effort, look at after sales chip tuning. This would be about billions, so a great motivation. There may be some tamper-proofing possible to thwart most of folks, but we talk about government, not really the champion of technological excellence.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Surely each individual car owner is not paying billions is taxes. And the people who are making billions (e.g. by distributing services to do this) are a lot easier to go after.

Twirrim 2y ago

> The biggest problem with them, by far, is how do you collect this mile information? In the UK every car is required to have an MOT done, which is an annual, comprehensive, safety check of the vehicle. The results are recorded with the Ministry of Transport. It would likely be very trivial to add odometer reading to the recorded data (it probably is recorded already, for that matter), and use that.

cjrp 2y ago
It’s already recorded on the MOT, but you don’t require one for a car newer than 3 years old.

deleted 2y ago

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