The Car thread - The Bear and Badger

poprock

LivDiv wrote:

Charge the utility companies when they do a shit job filling the road back in.

Pisses me right off does that. Our street is in a conservation area and all the building frontages are B-listed. Every detail of stonework, ironmongery, window trim, etc is tightly controlled to keep it looking as intended. But the pavement? And the road? Fuck it, the Council can make that look like a patchwork of shite without fear of retribution. They literally tarmaced over the cobblestones a few years back because repairing the stone would have been too difficult for them. Makes a mockery of the whole heritage thing – why bother?

jdanielp

poprock wrote:

The part that makes me angry is the assumption that loss of fuel tax income MUST be recouped from somewhere else.

Owners of electric cars will be paying tax on their electricity bills. Why the fuck should they be taxed again on top of that?

Good point about electricity tax, but for me this should be more about sharing the costs of road maintenance more proportionally based on vehicle choice and distance driven so as to encourage more people to drive less damaging vehicles and to consider how far they need to drive overall...

poprock wrote:

e.g. lower charges for light electric vehicles and higher charges for heavy diesel and petrol vehicles.

Yep, a fine principle. But remember electric cars are really bloody heavy.

Indeed, although weights are coming down quickly as battery tech improves and a lot of people could manage with smaller vehicles than they currently chose. Weight/emissons scaling would lead to lower charges for private cars/bikes and higher charges for bigger commercial vehicles anyway if done well.

Obviously this all needs to be done in conjunction with some serious investment in public transport and the redevelopment of urban environments to make them more compatible with active travel as opposed to private vehicle usage. Emergency Covid changes have helped kick start the latter aspect.

poprock

Unlikely wrote:

Tax for my S2000 is more than TEN TIMES the tax for the Mazda. WTAF. Still, I got a drive on a stunning autumn day with the top down earlier.

Likewise here, actually. Tax for my MR2 is ten times the tax for our Alfa. Funnily enough, I guarantee you the Alfa is having 10x the impact on the environment that my MR2 is. So the current system’s broken.

Bob

Plus it unhelpfully taxes the poor people who can’t afford a modern car harder. Fucking BoJo!

Anyway fuck this shit I just found out you can buy a lotus Elan for about £15k! Surely a future classic

Bob

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?advertClassification=standard&postcode=IM51WL&radius=200&make=LOTUS&model=ELAN&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly New&onesearchad=New&advertising-location=at_cars&is-quick-search=TRUE&include-delivery-option=on&page=1

Webbins

Strong Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 vibes there. Just need a reet foggy day.

GooberTheHat

Doesn't millage tax unfairly target rural communities that don't have access to good public transport and have to drive for miles just to get to the shops?

Bob

Webbins wrote:

Strong Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 vibes there. Just need a reet foggy day.

20 years ago my boss had a mint example he stored in the showroom and it was a £30k car can’t believe how cheap that is

Bob

To put it perspective people
Are asking £12k for 05 civic
Type R now

Unlikely

poprock wrote:

Unlikely wrote:

Tax for my S2000 is more than TEN TIMES the tax for the Mazda. WTAF. Still, I got a drive on a stunning autumn day with the top down earlier.

Likewise here, actually. Tax for my MR2 is ten times the tax for our Alfa. Funnily enough, I guarantee you the Alfa is having 10x the impact on the environment that my MR2 is. So the current system’s broken.

Not sure whether or not that env. impact assessment is correct but I have made my peace with the fact that an hour in the Honda a couple of times a week is offset by me walking to the shops (Co-Op - half hour round trip, Tesco 45 mins) every time we need something. Apart from the school run the CR-V and Mazda are barely used.

GooberTheHat

Aren't we already pay millage tax because of the tax on fuel?

poprock

That’s the point Goobs. The argument is that electric car owners won’t be doing that.

Bob

poprock wrote:

That’s the point Goobs. The argument is that electric car owners won’t be doing that.

Increase road tax for electric cars - job done

GooberTheHat

Sorry, I'm barely skim reading between a late night at work and a migraine.

Dinostar77

Bob wrote:

poprock wrote:

That’s the point Goobs. The argument is that electric car owners won’t be doing that.

Increase road tax for electric cars - job done

Yes. The false dawn of electric cars needs to be taxed further. All those precious metals used in the batteries and increased electricity demands from our fossil fuel burning power station. Its no good for the planet.

Unlikely

Cars aren't good for the planet full stop. If you're going to take it to the extreme then you will need to walk everywhere. In bare feet.

LivDiv

How about a tyres tax.
The more your tyres wear the more the road wears right? Other than the odd occasion where lack of use leads to cracking or punctures.

Taxed as a percentage of cost like VAT. More expensive tyres pay more tax but the owner should be able to afford it, again like how VAT works.

It could encourage people to drive more sensibly as doing so damages tyres less. Those twats that still need to wheel spin everywhere will be paying for the mess they are making.

No need to track mileage at all, tyres are a perfect barometer of miles and drive style.

poprock

Only if you all have the same tyres. Different rubber compounds, different treads, what pressure they’re filled to … och, it’s too complicated.

LivDiv

Yeah probably.
Still seems better than having a Sunak box.

poprock

I think at the heart of my annoyance is this assumption that the Government is entitled to this pot of money from motorists and need to recoup it elsewhere if fuel sales reduce.

They don’t talk about needing to raise taxes elsewhere because people smoke less tabs, for example.

LivDiv

I wouldnt mind paying it like any tax if it was going to be used correctly.
They will unfortunately likely hand it Grayling so he can hire a cone supplier with no cones.

Dinostar77

https://news.sky.com/story/new-petrol-and-diesel-cars-banned-from-sale-after-2030-under-governments-green-plan-12135084

Surely this will end up inflating the prices of the used car market (and allowing bob to retire ten years earlier). I can see record sales in 2028/2029 before the ban.

I dont see ICE engines going away, if we can switch to 100% synthetic fuels (hopefully via F1 leading the way) then maybe we wont be forced down the bleak electric future.

Funkstain

..bleak? oh because of the "joy of driving ICE" sort of thing, right

yeah that's a bit niche really. my concern is always that EV is a bit of a false dawn in terms of resources required to build then run the things. would've thought the smarter long term bet is hydrogen cells, although I'm aware that I know fuck all about it, just seems more sensible / more long term

jdanielp

What's the problem given that electric cars already use fewer resources over their lifetime than ICE and that this will only improve with time? Also, as has been mentioned previously, the real key is to reduce the number of people that drive and the amount that they drive.

Dinostar77

All for hydrogen fuel cell technology. Agree that EV is a false dawn. Shame to lose the sound of a v8/v6 etc. I'm not a fan of EV. I think gov will be forced to u-turn on this as infrastructure for EV doesnt exist at moment.

Funkstain

I agree, any u turn would come due to lack of overall strategic planning. for example it doesn't' take long to build out a whole bunch of fast charging stations. but it does take a lot to provide all the grid for the stations - and I'm all for nuclear, but they aint' be ready for 15 years if we're lucky

for example I'm all for "nudging" people away from driving but you need to institute proper mass transit everywhere and we've got a clusterfuck there: the terrible franchise system hasn't been properly replaced yet, and we're spending a small country's GDP on a link to make Brum to Lon 20 mins faster

EV clearly better for environment, at scale, than ICE, I'd say, when all taken into account (although still some doubts about lithium and other battery tech, that shit takes some nasty mining to do) but hydrogen even better maybe? would need to see latest stats and data and research but instinctively feels that way

finally, this kind of shit (large government proclamations) needs to happen so I'm happy about it on the whole, but it needs to be backed by better / clearer / realistic strategy and investment (£4B of previously-announced funds doesn't really cover a fraction of this), as an obvious general point. I couldn't give a shit about V6 and V8 it's nostalgia (no criticism, just emphasising that I think it's niche and not a real consideration vs climate change), but phasing them out (although good overall) hardly dents climate change which needs china and the US to stop burning so much fucking coal, and us (globally) to stop eating so much beef and sheep etc, and stop buying things (somehow without crashing various economies), and stop wearing so much cotton, and start properly insulating homes everywhere and stop air-conning empty offices etc etc

poprock

This sort of grand proclamation from the Government without a viable strategy to achieve it is Peak Tory. It ties in to their ‘small state’ ethos where they make a decision then expect ‘the market’ to sort out delivering it.

There are a few points I think it’s important to note, because these are barriers to real change:

New cars only, because they can’t ban all our existing vehicles overnight.

Don’t talk to me about active travel. The UK lacks the proper climate for us all to walk and cycle as often as our government seems to think we want to.

It’s geographically and economically biased. It hits rural communities harder than urban and it assumes everyone can afford to get on the ‘new car’ bandwagon of leasing instead of owning. And that’s without even starting on the shitty provision of public transport as an alternative.

Electric might not be the best move. Alternative fuels may be better, as Dino said. Remember how bullish our Gov were on diesel only a few years back? That’s why my diesel Alfa only pays £20 road tax. Now they’ve banned new diesels. Not exactly a stellar track record for making long term decisions.

As Funk says, the charging network can be built (if anybody can be persuaded to pay for it because the Gov ain’t investing) but the grid needs huge change to handle it too. Again, where’s that investment meant to come from? It’s not just about the rise in demand, it’s about the type of demand – fluctuating two-way transfer of electricity instead of steady one-way. It needs a rebuilding of the entire national grid, which ain’t cheap or fast.

Our glorious leaders have made this 2030 statement on private vehicles only. That’s because it lets individual car owners believe that they and their government are making a difference, when in reality it’s a drop in the fucking ocean. This switch to electric doesn’t include small commercial or heavy goods. No vans, no trucks, no ships, no airplanes. One fucking cargo ship - one can pollute more than the entire UK ownership of private cars in a year. So excuse me if I call this PR stunt a clear case of fiddling while Rome burns.

I_R

It does feel like the end game is to get back to an earlier era of car ownership where only people that really needed them or were reasonably wealthy owned a car.

The country has changed quite dramatically though. Urban sprawl is a thing, there's been a huge movement of commuters to the countryside and public transport is almost non-existent now compared to the 70's in rural areas. Leisure and shopping is spread around the edge of towns and cities rather than densely packed in the centre.

This feels like it will only work by people muddling through. Electric cars will have to take off, but a lot of people are going to be driving about in very old petrol cars for a long time after the deadline.

Roujin

One hope with a move to electric vehicles is it paves the way towards getting in road power to vehicles so they either don't need batteries, or can carry a much smaller battery, as the distance away from power sources will be greatly reduced.

Funkstain

Yeah what pop is saying is all true. Nevertheless to lots of people, this kind of announcement can seem shocking, in scope and impact (perception being key word here) and that in turn can shift needles on public accepting other measures: nuclear power, massive investment in insulation, newly formed electric grid, whatever else is actually truly needed.

Do I have any faith the gov will use it in this way? Well, no, not particularly. But 2030 is a way off and maybe a future government can stand on its shoulders. The reality is we will all need to accept a big shift in lifestyles if we’re to avoid the worst of climate change, and whilst I’ve come to agree with people like Paul who maintain the main thing is gov regulation or self regulation of large corps (energy, transport, agriculture and food, etc) we will still feel impacts and need to make our changes. I feel perhaps this kind of announcement can be a primer for that.

But as I type that I find myself disagreeing with it: surely public acceptance would come more easily if the pronouncements were made against big corps etc, and not private car owners. Oh well fuck the tories eh

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories