Electric cars. What will be the 1st unique tax be?

Electric cars. What will be the 1st unique tax be?

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dfen5

Original Poster:

2,398 posts

217 months

Tuesday 27th March 2018
quotequote all
I reckon the first big tax on ‘green’ Electric cars will be a battery recycling tax.
2nd, possibly increasing VED according to the kWh used per mile?
3rd. Battery capacity?

The taxes are coming, it’s just a case of what (watt) and when.

numtumfutunch

4,834 posts

143 months

Tuesday 27th March 2018
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Smug tax

CS Garth

2,870 posts

110 months

Tuesday 27th March 2018
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Road tolls

Trevor555

4,488 posts

89 months

Tuesday 27th March 2018
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Smart motorways.

We public are not stupid enough to believe they're spending all that money on safety.

V10 SPM

574 posts

256 months

Tuesday 27th March 2018
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Electromagnetic radiation per kilometre

996TT02

3,324 posts

145 months

Tuesday 27th March 2018
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Power tax. Simple truth - cars like Teslas with that outrageous performance are really no greener than an economical conventional runabout. Not my supposition, there was a pretty well researched article written about this.

Electric may well be green but extreme electric misses the green point completely. Sort of replacing a single filament type bulb with not one, but 16 CFL or LED bulbs.

AlexRS2782

8,141 posts

218 months

Tuesday 27th March 2018
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Variable / tiered billing on electricity when the car gets plugged in for charging?

If current smart meters already point out exactly what uses what power at any given time, i'm sure it wouldn't take much programming on the next wave of meters to differentiate normal household usage / car charging and then bill accordingly.

lbc

3,248 posts

222 months

Tuesday 27th March 2018
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£1000/year Tax for causing CO2 pollution from power stations.

And all the roadworks caused by running electric cables for charging points.

Edited by lbc on Tuesday 27th March 23:41

sjg

7,514 posts

270 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
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Won't be unique to electric cars, but road pricing. Want to drive your car on a busy bit of road at the same time as everyone else? You'll pay more for it. Electric cars are still cars and all the issues of congestion, parking, etc don't go away.

Norway was going to introduce an extra tax (or rather, reduction in the EV tax rebate) for vehicles over 2 tons - abandoned for now but that was going to hit Tesla pretty hard, all the regular EVs like the Leaf, eGolf, i3, etc are well under that. Can see more structure around taxation based on list price over here along the lines of the >£40k list price VED supplement now.

Likewise variable pricing for electricity will happen, but as far as electric cars go they'll just get a bit smarter to charge when electricity is cheapest, most people will just be topping up a small proportion of the battery each day so it can be a couple of hours window in the night. The vehicle to home stuff is interesting, potentially use your car to power the home when electricity is expensive in the evening, top it back up in the small hours when it's cheaper.

Edited by sjg on Wednesday 28th March 09:23

NeoVR

436 posts

176 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
quotequote all
dfen5 said:
I reckon the first big tax on ‘green’ Electric cars will be a battery recycling tax.
2nd, possibly increasing VED according to the kWh used per mile?
3rd. Battery capacity?

The taxes are coming, it’s just a case of what (watt) and when.
Its already coming in 2021 on PHEVs where the tax will depend on emissions and also the battery-only range.. although thats generally to close the tax "loophole" of the current models.

caseys

317 posts

173 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
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NeoVR said:
Its already coming in 2021 on PHEVs where the tax will depend on emissions and also the battery-only range.. although thats generally to close the tax "loophole" of the current models.
That's more an incentive I think to move from the PHEVs (which are just a bodge/tax dodge) - I drive a 330e and as a business car user do a lot of miles. It's great for the weekends, but not so good for 100+ mile trips. The new tax bands in FY 2020-2021 are an incentive to move from a 330e into an i3 - doing that my monthly BIK will drop from £170ish to £20!

I agree with others, that generally we'll move to a pay per mile variable rate road charge use based upon time of day / congestion / type of road. Just need ANPR bolted onto all the variable speed limit cameras and away we go.

gmaz

4,547 posts

215 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
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There will also be a massive shortfall on tax revenue from fuel.

modeller

461 posts

171 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
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Whatever tax is put on EV's .. it'll be many times more on dino juice.

danp

1,614 posts

267 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
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None.

Smart meters really aren’t very clever, they just give the overall household consumption. Smarter ones could be more granular but look how well the current rollout has gone...

Govt subsidised home chargers do have a SIM in them that can send back usage etc, but if you were taxed on it you could just plug into a 3 pin socket.

As mentioned road pricing is the most likely method, and that would presumably hit all cars in equal measure.

pherlopolus

2,117 posts

163 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
quotequote all
danp said:
None.

Smart meters really aren’t very clever, they just give the overall household consumption. Smarter ones could be more granular but look how well the current rollout has gone...

Govt subsidised home chargers do have a SIM in them that can send back usage etc, but if you were taxed on it you could just plug into a 3 pin socket.

As mentioned road pricing is the most likely method, and that would presumably hit all cars in equal measure.
I bet they will hit ICE heavier than EV, but I agree road pricing will come soon.

MrOrange

2,037 posts

258 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
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5% VAT is levied on the electricity to charge them, and this is unique as a vehicle tax. I marine VAT on domestic fuel will rise some day, maybe based on total kW consumption to avoid penalising lower users.

PHEV is very viable stepping stone for users who range anxiety is an issue, or those that can’t stretch to a Tesla. And whilst some see it as a tax bodge, if it gets folks out of vile diesels and into the most efficient, smaller, petrols.

aaron_2000

5,407 posts

88 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
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Nothing I like more than paying road tax just to see our roads crumble and our motorways become a massive joke. 30MPH speed limit on the motorway covered in average speed cameras, never seen it so congested. They're outright just trying to make driving a pain.

pherlopolus

2,117 posts

163 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
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No such thing as road tax 😁

98elise

27,735 posts

166 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
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996TT02 said:
Power tax. Simple truth - cars like Teslas with that outrageous performance are really no greener than an economical conventional runabout. Not my supposition, there was a pretty well researched article written about this.

Electric may well be green but extreme electric misses the green point completely. Sort of replacing a single filament type bulb with not one, but 16 CFL or LED bulbs.
I for one am shocked that a 2 ton high performance car is no greener than an economical runabout....who knew smile

That aside, one of the benefits of EV is that economy is not dictated by the peak power available. In like for like driving all power variants of the Model S will consume similar amounts of energy. It's simple physics. In the case of the dual motor high power variants they can be more economical than the single motor lower power ones, due to the smaller second motor.

ICE engines suffer high losses with high power which is why increase peak power means a loss of economy no matter how you drive them.

To use your analogy you have to option of switching all 16 bulbs on, or just one.

Plug Life

978 posts

96 months

Wednesday 28th March 2018
quotequote all
996TT02 said:
Power tax. Simple truth - cars like Teslas with that outrageous performance are really no greener than an economical conventional runabout. Not my supposition, there was a pretty well researched article written about this.

Electric may well be green but extreme electric misses the green point completely. Sort of replacing a single filament type bulb with not one, but 16 CFL or LED bulbs.
So that "pretty well researched article" (which seemingly doesn't have an internet presence) conveniently forgot about the zero local emissions and the approx. 70-75MPGe global emissions from the current UK grid that gets higher as the grid gets cleaner.