What excuses will be used to increase electric car tax?

[snorri]

However he is correct;

Yes, I agree but is private motoring as cheap in mainland Europe as in UK? It is difficult to get data.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Yes, I agree but is private motoring as cheap in mainland Europe as in UK? It is difficult to get data.

If you listen to most motorists the cost of driving a car is so ruinous that they will soon have to mortgage their firstborn child to finance their continued mobility, but they still seem to manage to afford holidays every year. Unfortunately I have always been a tree hugging hippy and didn't own a car in the UK or Germany, so I can't comment, sorry.

I think Germany taxes fuel a bit more aggressively than the UK, and I know trucks have to pay a toll to use Autobahns.

 

[Andy in Germany]

If you listen to most motorists the cost of driving a car is so ruinous that they will soon have to mortgage their firstborn child to finance their continued mobility, but they still seem to manage to afford holidays never year. Unfortunately I have always been a tree hugging hippy and didn't own a car in the UK or Germany, so I can't comment, sorry.

I think Germany taxes fuel a bit more aggressively than the UK, and I know trucks have to pay a toll to use Autobahns.

Perhaps it's relevant to add that public transport is definitely cheaper and better organised so I can use one ticket to travel through Stuttgart even though I could be using half a dozen different modes and service providers. This doesn't just apply to cities either, I could travel through several regions of rural Germany on area day tickets, using trains and buses, in fact the service in some rural towns is markedly more convenient than it is where I live now.

 

[Edwardoka]

Just looked how much it would cost to visit Exeter from Glasgow. £240 return by train, £80 by plane, £60 by National Express, the latter is a journey I made several times when I lived in Devon and I would not wish on my worst enemy. 3 times more expensive by train than by plane and then we wonder why the climate is farked

100 mile trip on Trenitalia bought in person, on the day: €8.

 

[Electric_Andy]

we wonder why the climate is farked.

True. My colleague used to pay £70/month to get the bus to work and back. They were unreliable. He had the option to arrive 1 hour early for work, or risk it and get in at 9 by the skin of his teeth. And the journey took an hour. He now drives in and does the journey in 20-25 mins. There really needs to be a strong motivation for people to ditch their cars (I know, they pollute, but that is often not a strong enough motivator for most people). I still think 1000W electric bicycles (limited to 15mph but able to maintain that up a hill) is the answer, if only they were legal, or at least easy to register as a powered vehicle.

 

[johnblack]

True. My colleague used to pay £70/month to get the bus to work and back. They were unreliable. He had the option to arrive 1 hour early for work, or risk it and get in at 9 by the skin of his teeth. And the journey took an hour. He now drives in and does the journey in 20-25 mins. There really needs to be a strong motivation for people to ditch their cars (I know, they pollute, but that is often not a strong enough motivator for most people). I still think 1000W electric bicycles (limited to 15mph but able to maintain that up a hill) is the answer, if only they were legal, or at least easy to register as a powered vehicle.

They would be the answer for a minority of people living within easy reach of their work with decent routes, that do not have to first drop kids off at school or pick them up after and don't have to take much in with them and don't have to go to other places after work before they go home. But the vast majority of people will not be converted. It would be great if they could but I just can't see it happening.

 

[Cavalol]

Another thing that really annoys me about this 'green' side of things and banging on about recycling is that scrappage scheme the government started that time. Take perfectly good, useable cars (as I believe 90% of them would have been) and trade them in for a new one. A new one made in some environmentally polluting factory and lobbed on an environmentally polluting ship to be loaded onto environmentally pullting lorries and taken to your nearest car dealership.

Then those old cars are scrapped (or rather left on an airfield) when REAL recycling would have been to let them carry on driving using recycled parts from scrap yards etc. Pretty sure there ain't that much difference to the atmosphere from an old petrol car and some new diesel that runs on 'bio fuel' comprising some stuff from the sewers and abattoirs., and breaks down every five minutes because it is absolutely clogged to the eyeballs from DPF problems and whatnot.

 

[Electric_Andy]

Yeah, almost as if selling new cars was more of a priority! We've lost the make do and mend mentality with everything, including cars with some people

 

[DRM]

This is true, but if the cost of travel was raised then employers would soon find ways of reducing the mileage of employees who were required to drive "a heck of a lot". The ridiculously low cost of motorised travel on our roads is what has led to the present problems of pollution and congestion.

How can they do that, you have to go and see what your selling/repairing, a salesman can’t just guess the spec of an item, it has to be right, how can a service engineer repair/service something from an office, in my case how on earth could I use public transport armed with a heavy tool box, various filters, engine & transmission oil, spray lubes & a grease gun, it’s not possible, it has to go in a van, as I said it’s a pipe dream to go car free or electric

 

[snorri]

How can they do that, you have to go and see what your selling/repairing, a salesman can’t just guess the spec of an item, it has to be right, how can a service engineer repair/service something from an office, in my case how on earth could I use public transport armed with a heavy tool box, various filters, engine & transmission oil, spray lubes & a grease gun, it’s not possible, it has to go in a van, as I said it’s a pipe dream to go car free or electric

Of course it can be done, changes can be made, but no one is calling for an outright ban on 4 wheeled powered vehicles.

 

[Andy in Germany]

I lived in Devon and I would not wish on my worst enemy

Devon isn't that bad...

How can they do that, you have to go and see what your selling/repairing, a salesman can’t just guess the spec of an item, it has to be right, how can a service engineer repair/service something from an office, in my case how on earth could I use public transport armed with a heavy tool box, various filters, engine & transmission oil, spray lubes & a grease gun, it’s not possible, it has to go in a van, as I said it’s a pipe dream to go car free or electric

This is the problem with a lot of these discussions: people assume that we are talking about a full ban on any vehicle. As @snorri pointed out, this isn't the case. Motorised vehicles aren't of themselves a bad thing, the problem is the sheer numbers of them and their use in inappropriate situations like cities. We also tend to assume that everything else that we do will stay the same, but if you think about it, everything else is as dependent on oil as cars are. And as @DRM says, replacing the current vehicle fleet with electric vehicles is impossible; even if we had enough lithium we don't have the generating capacity, we never will, and any attempt to build the systems or power stations to achieve this will be met with massive public resistance.

What I suspect will happen is that the economics and organisation of how we move things and skills around will change. Salespersons won't be able to cover vast areas economically, so it will alter to having more people each covering a smaller area. I know the UK is extreme in the "one person to cover half the country" stakes. Germany tends to be more localised so will make this transition more readily.

The same would apply to repair and service; if fuel and transport costs increase then companies may adapt by employing more repair staff locally to customers. This assumes of course that the current highly complex systems we have can be made to work in a more localised world, I personally think that we'll see a lot of simplification with a trend toward less complex systems with parts that can be changed easily or even made locally by a certified agent.

Certainly the age of the 500km commute by car will come to an end. We'll rely on rail transport to move a lot of freight, and local transport will be by bus, bike or rail. On the other hand, people who need to move things and people about will still be using motorised transport, and think how much easier it will be to move things about if there aren't hundreds of people driving oversized cars around for the school run...

 

[Archie_tect]

A private car is a benefit to the person using it which means they are taxed like every other benefit in kind... public transport gets a subsidy from taxation which seems fair to me.

 

[DRM]

Devon isn't that bad...



This is the problem with a lot of these discussions: people assume that we are talking about a full ban on any vehicle. As @snorri pointed out, this isn't the case. Motorised vehicles aren't of themselves a bad thing, the problem is the sheer numbers of them and their use in inappropriate situations like cities. We also tend to assume that everything else that we do will stay the same, but if you think about it, everything else is as dependent on oil as cars are. And as @DRM says, replacing the current vehicle fleet with electric vehicles is impossible; even if we had enough lithium we don't have the generating capacity, we never will, and any attempt to build the systems or power stations to achieve this will be met with massive public resistance.

What I suspect will happen is that the economics and organisation of how we move things and skills around will change. Salespersons won't be able to cover vast areas economically, so it will alter to having more people each covering a smaller area. I know the UK is extreme in the "one person to cover half the country" stakes. Germany tends to be more localised so will make this transition more readily.

The same would apply to repair and service; if fuel and transport costs increase then companies may adapt by employing more repair staff locally to customers. This assumes of course that the current highly complex systems we have can be made to work in a more localised world, I personally think that we'll see a lot of simplification with a trend toward less complex systems with parts that can be changed easily or even made locally by a certified agent.

Certainly the age of the 500km commute by car will come to an end. We'll rely on rail transport to move a lot of freight, and local transport will be by bus, bike or rail. On the other hand, people who need to move things and people about will still be using motorised transport, and think how much easier it will be to move things about if there aren't hundreds of people driving oversized cars around for the school run...

I know we aren’t discussing the complete banning of motorised vehicles, but the problem with a lot of companies now is that they run lean on everything, staff included, to the point where during holiday season the staff are barely able to cover the work out there, then someone goes off sick & the whole thing goes totally to rats with too much to do & not enough people to do it, this then leads to staff having enough & leaving making the situation even worse, the management are incapable of seeing that this causes fed up staff & customers.
To have more local staff will need a complete rethink, the Japanese have a lot to answer for with their just in time/waste removal/efficiency ideas which if we have to improve our environment will have to be confined to history, and a new way of working will have to take over.
I also believe that public transport needs to be taken back under government control with lower prices, and more regular routes, my son pays in excess of £80 a month for a bus pass to get to work, when the buses will regularly miss, and he has to leave home ridiculously early to guarantee being at work on time, by catching a bus that gets him there an hour early, the next bus gets him there in the nick of time, & has regularly been late.

 

[Andy in Germany]

To have more local staff will need a complete rethink, the Japanese have a lot to answer for with their just in time/waste removal/efficiency ideas which if we have to improve our environment will have to be confined to history, and a new way of working will have to take over.

Japanese businesses aren't generally operated as you describe; they tend to have much more slack built into the system and into their workforce to avoid exactly those problems. this is why Japanese trains tend to be much more punctual than British (or for that matter, German) trains: there's lots of duplication in the system.

If British businesses and politicians decided to take the ideas and interpret them differently, we can't blame the Japanese for that.

Germany operates on a much more local basis: even our bank is owned by the county, and our public transport is run band financed by the town, county and the state.

 

[DRM]

Japanese businesses aren't generally operated as you describe; they tend to have much more slack built into the system and into their workforce to avoid exactly those problems. this is why Japanese trains tend to be much more punctual than British (or for that matter, German) trains: there's lots of duplication in the system.

If British businesses and politicians decided to take the ideas and interpret them differently, we can't blame the Japanese for that.

Germany operates on a much more local basis: even our bank is owned by the county, and our public transport is run band financed by the town, county and the state.

I work for a Japanese firm & believe me there is no slack in the system, indeed everything is pared down so far now that we don't have enough staff, new starters don't last, they can't cope & everyone nationwide is just frazzled, if I meet staff from anywhere in the UK the story is the same, we are just run ragged.
Genuinely Japanese firms work on Genchi Genbutsu (Go & See to get to the bottom of an issue) Kaizen (Continuous improvement) Challenge, Respect & Teamwork, basically Team Sky's marginal gains, but basically it all points to efficiencies, in other word if you can save 2p thats what you do regardless of the consequences