Vehicle Excise Duty
- Thread starter [TW]Fox
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It is more that people don't look at the 'full life cycle' of the car. For arguments sake we could say a certain metal is used in the engine which allows for 3kg of mass to be saved on the car, but this metal could be mined in Mexico from a valley killing wildlife, shipped to china for processing, then shipped to the UK for manufacture. It is just that we all focus on the use phase of the vehicle.
You are correct, but for all we know one change to improve weight may have have an environmental effect 100 times worse than if the weight was not saved in the first place.
There is absolutely no point improving one part of the life cycle of the car i.e. the use phase, to just shift all the environmental damage into another phase i.e manufacture, resource extraction, end-of-life.
This is my view on electric cars - People are saying OMG THEY RELEASE NO CO2!!! When they are getting charged up from a coal fired power plant. Not quite as clean as they are made out to be!
I completely agree, but I'm thinking more about products like carbon fibre. It is not a particularly eco-damaging product as far as I know*, but mass production for the automotive market seems limited by a lack of demand. Stimulating this demand through a tax on heavy vehicles might make it much viable and encourage it's use both for vehicles and elsewhere.
RE: Electric vehicles; again, I agree, although it's unfair to disregard them using the coal plant analogy when power can also be generated through clean and renewable sources. I know that's a whole other argument, but for the sake of balance I think it should be highlighted.
*Would welcome anyone who can correct me on this.
Because they don't retrospectively introduce new bands, as the influence on the original purchasing decision wasn't there at the time and it's considered a little unfair to 'punish' after the fact.If it's emissions based... Why?
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
Except they don't, do they?
What causes the most environmental damage? An Audi A3 1.6 TDI driven 35,000 a years or a Mercedes S320 driven once a week to the Golf Club? The answer is the Audi - it drives much more and emits much more CO2.
Yet even if you leave the Mercedes parked up on the road emitting zero CO2 you still pay more duty than the driver of the more environmentally damaging Audi.
I said quite clearly in my OP I have no issue with the level of road tax I pay. I just... hang on, I explained my point clearly, with figures, in my first post. Why didnt you read it?
By the amount of fuel used? A car driven 1 mile a year has almost no impact. A car driven 50,000 miles a year has much impact. Yet VED takes no account of this.
Thats not really whats going on here at all.
Do you not think it would be a good idea to quickly read through what you've typed before hitting submit
Yes, because it's ridiculous. Any car has the potential to either pollute not much or quite a lot - it depends how its used.
CO2 emissions are variable. If they are to be taxed, they should be taxed in a way which takes this into account.
Do you think its acceptable that somebody doing 40k a year repping pays £35 a year road tax whereas somebody who does 3k a year pays £200+?
CO2 emissions are variable. If they are to be taxed, they should be taxed in a way which takes this into account.
Do you think its acceptable that somebody doing 40k a year repping pays £35 a year road tax whereas somebody who does 3k a year pays £200+?
Wait, taxing people on the basis of potential instead of actual?!?
To influence buying decisions, yes.
I'm not justifying it, just explaining how it works and what it's designed to do.
Well yes.
It's a clear upfront cost, which people take into account when buying. Fuel on the other hand far less so.
It also means more economic cars in the chain, so when resold over and over, you have a more economical fleet. Which is just as important for fuel security as it is for "green" reasons. In every way it's better of the country to have an effecient fleet.
Still should just lump it on to fuel. And have a one of cost at purchase.
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Well then you could argue that VED, as it works at the moment, encourages people to buy low co2 emitting cars.
...not that it really does though as if you are that worried about a few hundred quid extra a year, you wouldnt be buying a high performance/high co2 emitting car anyway.
it doesn't work like that, plenty of threads on here show this. People are happy to spend thousands/10s of thousands but explicitly state low VED.
Does go to show how moronic a lot of people are.
That's humans for you, we aren't a logical race.
As I've said in other threads just wait untill we get close to the EU deadlines for energy reduction.
It won't just be normal bulbs being banned from sale. They are going to have to, introduce wide hitting laws, which people won't like.
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Indeed.
The one-off cost at purchase is actually kind-of there already. For high-emission vehicles, the first year VED is almost double the normal annual fee.