EV-based road transportation is not viable

[Red Squirrel]

Unfortunately I think it's inevitable that we see a km tax everywhere once EVs go mainstream.  Governments are going to lose a big source of revenue and they're not going to be happy about that.  Not only the regular sales tax on fuel, but the regular gas tax and the carbon tax. Almost half of the cost of gas is taxes.  I can see them eventually do the same with solar.  When you're not paying for hydro, the government is losing out in sales tax as well as income tax from the income the hydro company is losing out on. In PEI they already do charge tax on solar.  Not too sure how it works but I do recall an article about an off grid couple that got nailed with that.

[eti]

Repeating something doesn't make it come to pass, no matter how much one wants it to. Fait accompli, it ain't, dear friends.

EV is a disastrous fumbling eco greenwash blunder bullshit brainwash.

[nctnico]

It's a typical anti-EV policy by a government that's opposed to them for various reasons.  From a quick Google it appears that Victoria state has huge oil and gas refining and resource, so you can imagine the lobbyists have a lot of influence.

It is not anti-EV policy. The reality is that traditionally a lot of taxes are collected through the sales of fuel in order to have people who travel a lot, pay more to maintain the roads. There is nothing wrong with that and BEV owners will have to pay their share of the costs for keeping the roads in good order. BEV taxes are inevitable; the lack thereoff is simply a form of subsidy which will have to end at some point. In the Netherlands BEV owners will start paying road taxes after next year for example and likely there will be a tax per km as well coming soon.

[tggzzz]

It's a typical anti-EV policy by a government that's opposed to them for various reasons.

Nonsense. The current lack of taxes on EVs is a subsidy benefiting EVs.

Some people seem to see every phenomenon through the blinkers of their prejudices. For some those prejudices are religious ("it's a miracle!"). For others it is political ("remoaners", "capitalist pigs"). For others it is gender and/or sex. You are the same, although your prejudice is different.

Someone has to pay for the roads. Currently in the UK the payment is indirect through taxes on ICE fuel. That works: easy to collect and proportional to usage. That isn't a bad starting point for the future. I believe removing the subsidy on BEVs will have to happen, and it won't be unpopular.

[tom66]

It's a typical anti-EV policy by a government that's opposed to them for various reasons.  From a quick Google it appears that Victoria state has huge oil and gas refining and resource, so you can imagine the lobbyists have a lot of influence.

It is not anti-EV policy. The reality is that traditionally a lot of taxes are collected through the sales of fuel in order to have people who travel a lot, pay more to maintain the roads. There is nothing wrong with that and BEV owners will have to pay their share of the costs for keeping the roads in good order. BEV taxes are inevitable; the lack thereoff is simply a form of subsidy which will have to end at some point. In the Netherlands BEV owners will start paying road taxes after next year for example and likely there will be a tax per km as well coming soon.

It's an anti-EV policy when they exist in such low numbers; it's deliberately designed to reduce their adoption by a state with vested interests in oil continuing to be used for transport. I don't have a problem with EV's being taxed when they're a significant proportion of the vehicle market.

[tom66]

Someone has to pay for the roads. Currently in the UK the payment is indirect through taxes on ICE fuel. That works: easy to collect and proportional to usage. That isn't a bad starting point for the future. I believe removing the subsidy on BEVs will have to happen, and it won't be unpopular.

In the UK, taxes are not hypothecated.  Roads are mostly paid for by council tax at the local level, and by central government funding which comes from everything.  Trunk routes are paid through and maintained by central government except where adopted by the local authority.  (It's complicated to say the least.)  Needless to say, fuel taxes plus vehicle excise duty, take in around twice as much as is used to maintain their usage if you want to assign the taxes to a particular cause.  The majority of the roads you drive on (your local area) are probably funded by your council tax, and not the petrol you buy.  Sounds fair, right?

I agree someone needs to pay for the roads, though there's clearly not an imminent shortfall in terms of the money the government is actually spending (doubtless given the condition of many, more needs to be spent.)  In the long term, some form of electric vehicle taxation will be needed, though it does present challenges when they can be filled up from virtually any electrical source.

[nctnico]

It's a typical anti-EV policy by a government that's opposed to them for various reasons.  From a quick Google it appears that Victoria state has huge oil and gas refining and resource, so you can imagine the lobbyists have a lot of influence.

It is not anti-EV policy. The reality is that traditionally a lot of taxes are collected through the sales of fuel in order to have people who travel a lot, pay more to maintain the roads. There is nothing wrong with that and BEV owners will have to pay their share of the costs for keeping the roads in good order. BEV taxes are inevitable; the lack thereoff is simply a form of subsidy which will have to end at some point. In the Netherlands BEV owners will start paying road taxes after next year for example and likely there will be a tax per km as well coming soon.

It's an anti-EV policy when they exist in such low numbers; it's deliberately designed to reduce their adoption by a state with vested interests in oil continuing to be used for transport. I don't have a problem with EV's being taxed when they're a significant proportion of the vehicle market.

No. It is better to tax from the beginning so people won't complain about being hit wit a tax 'all of the sudden'. Or people claiming it is an anti-EV tax... In reality, the costs of BEVs have dropped quite significantly so subsidies in the form of tax cuts are no longer necessary.

[tggzzz]

Someone has to pay for the roads. Currently in the UK the payment is indirect through taxes on ICE fuel. That works: easy to collect and proportional to usage. That isn't a bad starting point for the future. I believe removing the subsidy on BEVs will have to happen, and it won't be unpopular.

In the UK, taxes are not hypothecated.  Roads are mostly paid for by council tax at the local level, and by central government funding which comes from everything.  Trunk routes are paid through and maintained by central government except where adopted by the local authority.  (It's complicated to say the least.)  Needless to say, fuel taxes plus vehicle excise duty, take in around twice as much as is used to maintain their usage if you want to assign the taxes to a particular cause.  The majority of the roads you drive on (your local area) are probably funded by your council tax, and not the petrol you buy.  Sounds fair, right?

I agree someone needs to pay for the roads, though there's clearly not an imminent shortfall in terms of the money the government is actually spending (doubtless given the condition of many, more needs to be spent.)  In the long term, some form of electric vehicle taxation will be needed, though it does present challenges when they can be filled up from virtually any electrical source.

I'm glad you agree (by omission) that EVs not paying tax is a subsidy that needs to be removed.

The exact mechanisms, however convoluted, by which the cost of infrastructure is collected is far less important than:

• collecting the cost, somehow
• being fair in that more usage leads to more cost

[Someone]

3c per km is unreasonably high imo. What are fuel taxes, $1.50 a liter?

Your (absent) maths is crap, at $1.50 per litre (pure tax) and 7l/100km would be 10.5c/km.... what production car runs along at 2l/100km?

This would almost certainly contravene GDPR, and won't happen. The simplest way is to tax electricity at the point of use, and to charge more, the more is used, rather than discounting it for heavier users.

And solar users pay no tax?  No, road charging is the only way to make it fair, on the basis of replacing fuel tax.

Yep. In the NL there are also plans to tax per distance travelled. But the problem is that the NL is a small country and there is a significant number of people that drive significant distances outside the country.

and that is somehow completely different from people buying fuel (with its high taxes to offset the externalities such as road costs its use creates) in one jurisdiction but driving in another?

Per km road use fees already exist to solve this funding "problem" for EVs:
https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/registration/registration-fees/zlev-road-user-charge
the 2.6c/km rate puts EVs at equivalent taxation to a fossil burner with 5.9l/100km fuel consumption (perhaps a little higher than the current EU new car average)

[tom66]

I'm glad you agree (by omission) that EVs not paying tax is a subsidy that needs to be removed.

No.  I've never disagreed that EVs may eventually need to be taxed, if you go back 20 or so pages (man this discussion has gone on too long.)  It's not an easy problem to solve though - probably requires road charging to be fair because there will be some who can charge on home electricity or from solar and pay much less tax than e.g. a levy on public charging.  Road charging is very expensive to do, requiring either tamperproof metering on each car (you can't use MOT mileage because private mileage, other drivers, out of the country, etc. plus odometer tampering is trivial) or some kind of ANPR system (which inevitably would only capture some types of user, and is really expensive to do for e.g. rural countryside, so you have the side effect of people avoiding express routes to avoid tax; see also M6 Toll.)  That's why I think it might not even happen and instead the taxation just comes from somewhere else, like income tax or a higher VAT chargeable on new cars, but predicting the future on tax is even more nebulous than for the future of transport.

It's worth noting EV users do already pay some tax - 20% VAT is applied on public charging and 5% VAT on home electricity.   This is of course less than fuel duty.   

The problem is on one hand, you argue EV's are too expensive and inconvenient for the general consumer and now you want to apply taxation to their usage to counter some of their benefits in terms of low cost of operation.  The end goal is to electrify transport, to allow zero emissions driving.  I'd be also opposed to a tax on hydrogen cars (even if I don't think they're feasible.)  We should be promoting ZEV usage in the time when people are taking a risk on a newer technology, not discouraging their take up. 

[Haenk]

Just received a notification by "Deutsche Bahn" (german railroad quasi-monopol company).
They are notifying me of some maintenance going to happen soon (there is a single track about 100m away) - they are actually installing charge infrastructure for electric trains.
The idea is to have battery powered trains, using quick charge on a couple of track segments (like 5km length each) and in stations.

On battery, these trains will go up to 140km/h and have a range of 150km max. (probably not both features at the same time).

[tszaboo]

3c per km is unreasonably high imo. What are fuel taxes, $1.50 a liter?

Your (absent) maths is crap, at $1.50 per litre (pure tax) and 7l/100km would be 10.5c/km.... what production car runs along at 2l/100km?

https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe/
Here is a map with taxes. Average seems to be 0.5-0.6 EUR/l plus VAT which is on top of this and double taxed, but whatever. That would place it around 3.5 cent/km range for petrol with 7l/100km consumption. The 3c/km for electric cars is quite reasonable IMHO. That would be around 20c/KWh.

No. It is better to tax from the beginning so people won't complain about being hit wit a tax 'all of the sudden'. Or people claiming it is an anti-EV tax... In reality, the costs of BEVs have dropped quite significantly so subsidies in the form of tax cuts are no longer necessary.

I never seen things happen here all of the sudden, there are always intermediate periods. Compare this to living in an autocratic hellhole, and suddenly realize it's very nice here.

[tom66]

Just received a notification by "Deutsche Bahn" (german railroad quasi-monopol company).
They are notifying me of some maintenance going to happen soon (there is a single track about 100m away) - they are actually installing charge infrastructure for electric trains.
The idea is to have battery powered trains, using quick charge on a couple of track segments (like 5km length each) and in stations.

On battery, these trains will go up to 140km/h and have a range of 150km max. (probably not both features at the same time).

Battery-electric trains surprise me.  I know that they're being trialled at the UK at some point for rural rail electrification, but I would have thought that the cost of the infrastructure for such trains, whilst of course not trivial, would be quickly paid off compared to using reasonably large battery packs on the train (wear and tear, extra mass, purchase cost etc.)   A bit "penny wise pound foolish".  That said one of the biggest issues with rail electrification is that you need to close sections of line for days or weeks at a time to do the work and unlike the road network, the rail network in this country has very little redundancy, so it might be the case that it's just so much more expensive to do the upgrades that batteries make sense, at least in the medium term.

Also I would have thought if hydrogen did have an application then train power would be a pretty good one - size of batteries vs a large hydrogen tank in place of diesel engine - but tank then needs to be sufficient to run for at least a significant part of the journey if the assumption is refilling hydrogen at a train station is not safe enough or too inconvenient.  (Diesel trains aren't refuelled at stations, either.) 

[tggzzz]

Also I would have thought if hydrogen did have an application then train power would be a pretty good one - size of batteries vs a large hydrogen tank in place of diesel engine - but tank then needs to be sufficient to run for at least a significant part of the journey if the assumption is refilling hydrogen at a train station is not safe enough or too inconvenient.  (Diesel trains aren't refuelled at stations, either.)

Liquid hydrogen being transported on trains through towns? Of course that's nothing like vinyl chloride and phosgene in Ohio or (more photogenically) the Hindenberg, is it?
https://cen.acs.org/safety/Safety-questions-remain-Ohio-train/101/i6?PageSpeed=noscript

The optics matter.

[Marco]

Diesel burns too, I doubt people would care that much. They're used to it.

Now Ammonia, those accidents are something special.

[Ice-Tea]

Have you checked how easy it is to get hydrogen going vs diesel?

Not even remotely comparable.

[tggzzz]

Diesel burns too, I doubt people would care that much. They're used to it.

Now Ammonia, those accidents are something special.

Phosgene from vinyl chloride has been used as a weapon. Diesel combustion products, not so much.

[TimFox]

Vinyl chloride is not very toxic, but it is a known carcinogen (even outside of California).

[Marco]

Phosgene

Inactivates pretty fast though.

My point was that I doubt a train full of hydrogen would remind people of the Ohio media frenzy. Hindenberg isn't huge in public consciousness, yes people will know it's flammable ... so is petrol and diesel.

[SiliconWizard]

Diesel burns too, I doubt people would care that much. They're used to it.

Gasoline does burn pretty easily, but diesel fuel is actually very hard to set on fire at least in normal conditions.

[Marco]

Gasoline does burn pretty easily, but diesel fuel is actually very hard to set on fire at least in normal conditions.

Train crashes are pretty violent.

As long as it just burns and doesn't explode, a hydrogen fire might be preferable to a diesel spill too.

[nctnico]

Also I would have thought if hydrogen did have an application then train power would be a pretty good one - size of batteries vs a large hydrogen tank in place of diesel engine - but tank then needs to be sufficient to run for at least a significant part of the journey if the assumption is refilling hydrogen at a train station is not safe enough or too inconvenient.  (Diesel trains aren't refuelled at stations, either.)

Liquid hydrogen being transported on trains through towns?

Again: hydrogen isn't transported in liquid form. Only in gas form under high pressure. But it is not unsafer compared to any other fuel as it will also require oxygen to burn.

I see people mentioning the Hindenburg: if you read a bit more about that accident you'll learn that the outer hull was made from extremely flammable material. Like a piece of cloth drenched in gasoline. It is not the hydrogen that caught fire, but the outer hull.

There is so much nitwitting going around. Last week I watched a documentary about Chernobyl. One of the interesting conclusions was that the huge increase of life threatening cancers (as predicted by Greenpeace et al) didn't happen.

[TimFox]

One theory about the Hindenburg's construction is that the outer coating was actually thermite--incredibly flammable.

[tautech]

Diesel burns too, I doubt people would care that much. They're used to it.

Gasoline does burn pretty easily, but diesel fuel is actually very hard to set on fire at least in normal conditions.

You certainly don't want to mix it with some fertilizers ! 

[TimFox]

Nitromethane ("nitro" fuel at drag races) and ammonium nitrate fertilizer is used commercially as a high explosive, and was the explosive used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
Fuel oil is often used for legitimate high-explosive mixtures.