This will kill EV adoption, just to put it into perspective this is the equivalent of an average ICE car (38.6MPG) having 25.5p added per litre of fuel, in a single budget.
The even more ridiculous thing is plug in hybrids are 1.5p per mile, so people with 80+ miles of range in their Golfs etc. will pay half price, even though they are needlessly dragging around an internal combustion engine for 99% of their journeys.
For those of us who can’t charge at home, who are already paying sky high rates for electricity, this is just another kicking on top of the kicking that we’re already getting for the crime of not having big enough houses for charging ports.
Another short-term, non-strategic, ill thought through policy. Yay.
@TIN @manualoverride hmmm. I never like this argument. it implies you bought a car that you couldn’t store with the assumption that you could get subsidised (perhaps free) parking on public land?
Don’t get me wrong, I feel for you, but “I couldn’t afford a plot big enough for a car in my chosen location, and wasn’t willing to live somewhere cheaper, but bought a car anyway” is the neutral position people think it is. I’d like an extension but I can’t just put a home office on the road outside.
I’m not sure where you’re based, but here in the UK about 60% of urban homes don’t have off-street parking - much of our housing infrastructure was built before cars were a thing.
The complaint is that without off street parking, there is nowhere to put an EV charger, so you have to use public charging infrastructure. Public charging has higher costs, by about 6x.
If the government really had an aim to reduce UK carbon emission, which is its stated position, then encouraging use of public transport and electric transport would be a strategic choice which this new road tax and the increased tax levels for public charging don’t seem to support.
There are many ways in which this could be resolved, none of which are being pursued by this government.
@TIN I’m based in the UK. I agree that parts of this could have been thought through better but I don’t think publicly subsidised parking outside homes that were built within walking distance of towns & stations, because that was how you reached towns before cars existed, is neutral or a net good. Those houses become overvalued because people price in cheap parking, meaning people who can’t/can’t afford to drive are priced out of homes that would suit their lifestyles.
@TIN meanwhile buses are held up in traffic by drivers living in or near urban centres, and those car owners drive door to door rather than using public transport, reducing the profitability of the public transport and leaving fewer transport options for non-drivers. Meanwhile pedestrians are left with no or narrow pavements because an entire lane of the carriageway, maybe two, is given over to stationary vehicles.
@TIN and high streets suffer because walkable town centres suddenly become a less tempting option for the people who could spend ten minutes walking in, or ten minutes driving *out* to a supermarket they can park at (where again, their parking is “free”, ie it is subsidised by shoppers paying more, and not all of those shoppers are drivers)
@TIN and, lastly, if all your roads have cars parked along them then there is no room for safe cycle lanes, which again challenges any efforts towards net zero. Not least for children and teens, as suddenly all their parents have to chauffeur them in cars for every middle-distance urban journey for their entire childhood and adolescence to get them safely to their destinations, rather than letting them get there alone or cycling alongside them in a segregated lane.
@TIN none of this is to say that nobody should be allowed to park near their house; but in general it would do us all good to recognise that parking is *never* free, even if we’re not personally paying an upfront fee.
It’s a really interesting point and I hadn’t thought about street parking as an uncosted benefit before. I suppose the suburban semi with a drive also has street parking, which means that they get the benefit too, it’s a public good, but they’re only using it for visitors or n+1 cars. No easy solution for that.
The key point I was making though, before we get too distracted by the parking argument, is that for those of us driving electric without home charging it’s already very expensive and it would be nice to rebalance that if we’re going to move to per mile road pricing.
It is also strange to move just one vehicle fuel type to per mile taxation, rather than all of them.
@TIN I agree with your last point: the per-mile setup should apply to all vehicles according to size and weight if it is truly for road wear. Pollution can then be captured separately according to fuel source. Unfortunately the government has been too toothless to increase fuel duty for years.
Regarding your other point: yes! I think councils should run permit charging like resident parking: if you have a resident permit you can charge in council car parks for £x.
Why would it be for road wear specifically? That’s not the current situation (as indicated by the fact that vehicles with lower emissions pay less), and none of it is hypothecated for road-specific funding anyway.
@HermitBee because that’s why Reeves said electric vehicles should pay per mile. She announced it by saying "Because all cars contribute to the wear and tear on our roads, I will ensure that drivers are taxed according to how much they drive, not just by the type of car they use.”
I’m not saying this particularly carries through to how roads are funded; I’m saying if this claim *is* the reason to tax EVs then the tax should be structured differently.
Ah fair. I didn’t listen to the words that went with the policy, because they are usually in direct opposition to it. Like how she didn’t just raise income tax.
@TIN @manualoverride I wonder if longer term a solution might be for councils to offer resident-permit-charging in public car parks.
Where do you park normally? I would expect them to force on street parking and chargers fitted to shared spaces if they were serious about adoption, obviously this charge proves they aren’t.
I’m in a first floor flat, I park on the road outside. On street parking would be sensible but as you say, not mandated at present.
Yeah councils tend to block it all too often, extremely annoying
It’s not short-term, and it’s not non-strategic. Government has to replace fuel duty revenue.
Strategy: let’s stop burning oil which the planet can not afford
Things that support strategy:
You see how this goes? We decide on the macro level aims and then come up with a range of policies which support those goals
That’s nice, but explain how the government would invest in public transport after the loss of £26bn of revenue?
Well, the oil and gas subsidies to private companies that are making record profits currently stands at 18bn, so that makes a big impact in your figure.
I suppose the other thing I’d ask is how much you think climate change is going to cost the UK on an annual basis in pure economic terms
Let’s get EVs owners to pay at least fraction of the roads maintanace cost. Terrible, I am telling you, terrible 🙄
We already pay vehicle tax, same as all other vehicles? If it’s about taxing vehicles per road mile, let’s do that for everyone.
But let’s also put in place an overall tax regime which contributes to the strategic goal of carbon reduction, a multi-faceted aim.
Do you pay fuel duty? No? So you are not paying the same as other vehicles.
I’m not using the same fuel as other vehicles? Isn’t that kind of the point?
Look, in the end, the tax regime is there to encourage and discourage behaviour in line with overarching government strategy. If the strategy is to stop burning stuff, that should be encouraged and enforced through multiple channels including taxation.
The point is you are expecting other drivers to subsidise your road usage.
Tough titties, you need to start contributing now. Less than half of what others do.
I think you’re still missing the point but I’m going to assume that it’s intentional now.
It’s been real, chatting with you. Have a good life.