The point is that they are pushing the sales of electric cars.
Andy
Does that make them heavier than SUVs or Tesco vans, then?
Vehicle road tax
- Thread starter Burnerman
- Start date
Does that make them heavier than SUVs or Tesco vans, then?
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To be honest, if it improves air quality and reduces CO2 emissions, I don't really mind getting "hooked"!
I'll still stick with my old French, diesel tractor. Okay it's £300+ a year in tax, but it'll do 800 mile+ to a tank and requires so few consumable materials to keep going.
Nobody should be penalised for maintaining an older car, so long as it is safe and roadworthy.
Nobody should be penalised for maintaining an older car, so long as it is safe and roadworthy.
From a CO2 point of view, I think that's fair. From an air quality point of view, however, we're killing about 10x more people each year, simply by driving our cars, than we are by running them over! It's just that you don't get the corpse bouncing up your bonnet, so it's not quite as graphic! And yes, there are other sources of air pollution besides cars, but in urban areas, I do think we need to do something.
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I couldn't agree more, but then I am bias having recently spent £1200 having the front struts/springs plus new discs/pads all round replaced on my 25 yo BMW.
Sooner spend that on a car designed by engineers than put the money towards a new car .. aka box-of-plastic bits-on-wheels designed by accountants.
nb: interesting article in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph .. apparently Khan tried to discredit scientists whilst suppressing their reports stating that the ULEZ made little difference to the levels of pollution. Not the sort of publicity you want whilst spending £70 million on equipment to enforce the proposed extended ULEZ.
Just goes to prove that revenue trumps environment every time
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In truth, I find driving into cities a pain and always use the train or bus, so hopefully that counts.
I think the real issue is car addiction. There was a recent spate of roadworks and people were moaning on FB about how long it was taking them to get to work -- a high number were commuting from the outskirts of town to the centre, covering a distance of a mile or less each way! No wonder the roads are clogged.
My 2001 diesel is still 'clean' (much more so than my 60-year-old petrol!). I think there has to be a point where we accept that not everybody is buying cars with the latest euro standards. Cars made in 2001 were far cleaner than those made just ten years before.
I couldn't agree more, but then I am bias having recently spent £1200 on having the front struts/springs replaced plus new discs/pads all round on my 25 yo BMW.
Sooner spend that on a car designed by engineers than put the money towards a new car .. aka box-of-plastic bits-on-wheels designed by accountants
Agreed! Did the timing belt, camshaft and seal, water pump and starter motor on mine this year, all on the driveway. Cost me £180 and a garage wanted £800 something.
I couldn't agree more, but then I am bias having recently spent £1200 having the front struts/springs plus new discs/pads all round replaced on my 25 yo BMW.
Sooner spend that on a car designed by engineers than put the money towards a new car .. aka box-of-plastic bits-on-wheels designed by accountants.
nb: interesting article in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph .. apparently Khan tried to discredit scientists whilst suppressing their reports stating that the ULEZ made little difference to the levels of pollution. Not the sort of publicity you want whilst spending £70 million on equipment to enforce the proposed extended ULEZ.
Just goes to prove that revenue trumps environment every time
This is the Telegraph we're talking about! Famously reactionary and just publishing what they think their readers want to read. Nothing, in any newspaper, ever "proved" anything!
I'm sure I could find you a Guardian article, telling us how good and necessary the ULEZ is, but I wouldn't claim that as "proof" either!The reality, of course, is that London (and many major cities') air quality does drop below WHO standards, quite frequently. In fact, the government is under a High Court order to do something about it.
Yes of course it counts! That's even better than driving there in an EV!
It's always been the way. "traffic" is always other people, never us! If I lived a mile from work, I wouldn't want to drive, as much as anything else, because that's an incredibly cruel thing to do do a car with an internal combustion engine! However, we have plenty of motorway traffic congestion, and I very much doubt that any of that will be made up of people who are only traveling 1 mile, so don't get your hopes up too much...
It will be pretty filthy compared to a current diesel, I'm afraid. You could also say your 60 year old car was much better than a steam wagon, but that still doesn't make it "clean" in absolute terms! (And I speak as someone who has a 34 year old petrol car with no cat, but I do try to use it sparingly)!
You could be killing 10 people right there. Not a good show for a propagandist like you. I was wondering why I was coughing only yesterday.
It is nothing to do with polluting. It’s ALL to do with raising money.
Pollution from cars can’t be that bad otherwise they would ban it and fine you for polluting, not charge you for the privilege. I mean, can you pay extra to smoke on public transport, in restaurant’s, in cinemas, in pubs etc etc?
Pollution from cars can’t be that bad otherwise they would ban it and fine you for polluting, not charge you for the privilege. I mean, can you pay extra to smoke on public transport, in restaurant’s, in cinemas, in pubs etc etc?
I could, but I doubt it, as it never really goes anywhere near city centres and at least it's petrol, rather than diesel.
Now... how many have you killed today?
I was just about to say "Oh, you mean like if smoking was bad they'd just ban it outright, instead of whacking more tax on fags"?
The problem is, you'd get all the libertarians riled-up and then they wouldn't vote for you. You'd get all the conspiracy theorist whackjobs riled-up, because they actually believe smoking is good for you, so they wouldn't vote for you, either. You'd also get the tobacco companies riled up and they'd stop donating to your political party. And, of course, you'd get the people whose jobs depended on the existence of the industry not voting for you, because they just lost their jobs...
None of which means that smoking is actually good for you, by the way!
And no, they've got as far as only banning it in public places so far. If I weer you. I'd be careful hat I wish for - unless, of course, your house it big enough for you to drive your car round inside...
I have only seen press pieces, not any thing with real numbers so I have no idea how serious a concern it is.I'm certainly not a fan of EV's, but I think the suggestion that they causing excessive road damage is another example of anti-EV brigade propaganda, like the dangers of multi-story car parks collapsing
I really can't see an extra two or three hundred kilos per EV making that much difference to either road surfaces or the multi-story's .. are 'they' really suggesting that if you filled such a structure with full-fat SUV's it would cause it to collapse?
AFAIUI, the argument is as follows, BTW all the numbers are illustrative.
Many MS car parks were designed / built decades ago when the average saloon/hatchback family car was 1,400kg, the average saloon/hatchback is now 1,600kg but (b/c of SUVs, etc) the average car is now 1,7500kg. So in, say, 10 years time, with lots of BEVs the average car will be up to 2,000kg, so the load will be almost 50% more than when the car park was designed / built.
I am sure that the engineers will designed for a greater load than was contemporaneously expected but will they have allowed enough? And is the car park in as strong a condition as when it was built?
Of course it doesn't, but when SUVs started becoming common there was a concern that they would do more road damage b/c of their weight. And if putting one group of heavier than average cars on the road is a bad thing then putting another group of heavier than average cars on the road must also be a bad thing.
Road tax based on weight has, at least IMO, quite a bit of merit. IIRC the impact (and hence damage) is related to the fourth power of the weight. So a 2t car does 16 times as much damage as a 1t one.
That is, to some extent, ameliorated by the number of wheels, as having more spreads the load over more area. Hence lorries with more axles are allowed to be heavier.
No. At most, ten times more statistical people have their lives reduced than are killed by RTAs.
Analyses of large populations calculate that some number of people die sooner than they would if the air was cleaner. But by sooner we are talking about a few months when they are at the end of their life anyway. So comparing that to someone being killed in an RTA is a bit silly.
There is a one person to have air pollution on their death certificate. That is a child with very severe asthma who lived on a busy road, possibly the South Circular.
Doesn't make it wrong. And the report I read (not in the Sunday Telegraph) quoted the emails which were released under FOI. No it is not just the opinion piece you are characterising it as.
Absolutely. The air on the Tube is disgusting, the levels of PM2.5 particles is miles higher than anywhere on London's streets, but nothing is being done about that.
What I find even more concerning is that the PM2.5s in the Tube are mostly iron oxide which is not something that our bodies have evolved with and so (probably) have less ability to deal with than things like carbon particles from fires.
All completely reasonable, IMO, but it is only ever used (a bit like the arguments about African children mining cobalt) as an anti-EV argument, when in fact, it should be an "anti-heavy vehicle" argument in general. (My wife's diesel SUV weighs within a few kilos of my EV and, of course, cobalt is used by the oil industry in the refining process for ICE fuels).
Fair cop. I was of course, being a bit facetious there! However, as above, this is being touted as an anti-EV argument, whereas it should be an anti-heavy vehicle argument too. For one thing, those of our roads that were designed to cope with 40 tonne artics, aren't likely to suffer anything as badly as residential streets, but even on those, nobody is complaining about the massive increase in 2-3 tonne Amazon or Tesco delivery vans! (Or indeed, the ubiquitous "Chelsea Tractor"). At least EVs deliver a measurable environmental benefit over the latter! The more pressing problem right now, is climate change (and to a lesser extent, air quality and energy security), rather than the state of our residential roads (which, I accept, is poor, but that's been the case for many years now). If you were to tax on weight, you would erode the incentive to make the transition to EVs and (in effect) reward the use of diesel SUVs instead. That's hardly what you'd call a "progressive" taxation policy!
So... what you're saying, is that it doesn't matter if we bump them off a bit early because they didn't have long to live anyway? I'm wondering how far I'd get with my defence, in court, if I ran over and killed some old dear, and then tried to use the: "Well, your Honour, she wasn't long for this world anyway" defence? Now that would be something quite a bit worse than "a bit silly"...
Aside from that, whilst many of that number might only have "a few months" there will be plenty of others whohad longer - or indeed, who might not have even developed their conditions had they had access to cleaner air, earlier in life.
Doesn't that rather undermine your previous argument? It's probably truer to say that there's one person as young as she was, to have air pollution on their death certificate, so far.... Because the truth, of course, is that it's a condition that can be both developed and exacerbated at any stage in a person's life. Even then, it leaves you with the very tricky dilemma of having to decide that if you think one girl's death is acceptable, what number you pick to draw the line at, beyond which you regard it as a problem?
London's street level air quality changes all the time. You can look at the output from the various sensors in real time here:
Right now, it's pretty good, but there's a nice Westerly wind blowing across the city and taking it all away towards Holland at the minute. It isn't always like that. Far from it, the government is under a High Court order to actually do something about it, because it can be shockingly bad at times - way worse than agreed WHO limits - and that's not just London, either!
High Court rules UK air pollution plan is ‘unlawful’ | Financial Times
Government says it will take a firmer line in 45 local authorities where pollution levels breached
www.ft.com
Your comments about the Tube are classic "whataboutism", if you'll forgive me. It's the argument that something else is bad, so that justifies not doing anything about the original thing that was bad. That's pretty much exactly your position on heavy cars, is it not? "...putting one group of heavier than average cars on the road is a bad thing then putting another group of heavier than average cars on the road must also be a bad thing". What's needed, is not to give up on improving street level air quality, but to tackle underground air quality as well. If you have an suggestions there, I'm sure TfL would be grateful?
And yes, our bodies have evolved with carbon particles for many thousands of years and they STILL can't cope with them! More recently, oxides of nitrogen too - and tyre and brake particulates - none of which, are good for us!
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