Tax by weight?

[DrFfybes]

I was reading this from the BBC..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66481761

Fuel duty should be increased to fund pothole repairs, the group representing councils in England and Wales has said.

...and pondering that BEVs tend to be 30% heavier than the equivalent ICE and that the heavier vehicles do the damage. Coupled with the fact that 16% of new cars sold last month were BEVs, then it seems to me the ones being charged are less and less responsible for the damage (excluding HGV/PSV which have their own VED regime).

Which made me wonder whether the whole VED thing could have a simple makeover. Get rid of the caveats, the new car supplement, the expensive car supplement, and tax them simply on weight. It would even be trivial to backdate it to 1983

Heavier vehicles use more resources to make, tend to cost more anyway (yes, I know there are exceptions, and cause more wear to the roads. Potentially their weight reduces efficiency (not weight per se as regen will recover much of the additional energy required to accelerate, but more that the heavier cars tend to be large cubes with bigger frontal area and more drag).

It would be simple to administer, no clever tricks to spoof any tests, no PHEVs with 15 mile range to sneak into 'hybrid' category, buy a heavier car, cause more damage, pay more to use the road. You could have a surcharge if the vehicle also had a ICE of some sort, just to please the green lobby, but other than that is appears wuite simple.

Now sure there will things I've overlooked over my morning muesli (don't worry, it is bacon butties for lunch) so come along folks, have a think, see what pros and cons there are with this.

Paul

[bungeejumper]

...and pondering that BEVs tend to be 30% heavier than the equivalent ICE and that the heavier vehicles do the damage. Coupled with the fact that 16% of new cars sold last month were BEVs, then it seems to me the ones being charged are less and less responsible for the damage (excluding HGV/PSV which have their own VED regime).

The Telegraph recently tried to put some hard figures to this theory, and it didn't take them very long. If you've got a subscription (or know a workaround), it's at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/0 ... to%20roads. Alternatively, there's a summary at https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/06/ ... y-reveals/ .

Pedant warning: dodgy/lazy mathematical terminology. When the Telegraph says that "the average electric car puts 2.24 times more stress on roads than its petrol equivalent, and 1.95 more than diesel", it means 1.24 and 0.95 times more. But if a car that's 30% heavier causes 124% more wear on the roads than an average ICE, we can be sure we're onto some kind of an exponential curve. I wonder what the new EV Hummer (4.5 tonnes, 0-60 in three seconds) would cost to run if the road fund licence were properly costed?

And that's before we ask how all this impacts on tyres? No great surprise to find that EVs have twice the tyre failure rate because of wear. Still, I suppose it'll all work out OK once the economy's back in shape and we can re-lay all those roads and rebuild all those weak bridges in readiness for the new wave?

BJ

[XFool]

...Perhaps similar thinking could solve the "obesity crisis"?

[Tedx]

I was reading this from the BBC..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66481761

Fuel duty should be increased to fund pothole repairs, the group representing councils in England and Wales has said.

...and pondering that BEVs tend to be 30% heavier than the equivalent ICE and that the heavier vehicles do the damage. Coupled with the fact that 16% of new cars sold last month were BEVs, then it seems to me the ones being charged are less and less responsible for the damage (excluding HGV/PSV which have their own VED regime).

Which made me wonder whether the whole VED thing could have a simple makeover. Get rid of the caveats, the new car supplement, the expensive car supplement, and tax them simply on weight. It would even be trivial to backdate it to 1983

Heavier vehicles use more resources to make, tend to cost more anyway (yes, I know there are exceptions, and cause more wear to the roads. Potentially their weight reduces efficiency (not weight per se as regen will recover much of the additional energy required to accelerate, but more that the heavier cars tend to be large cubes with bigger frontal area and more drag).

It would be simple to administer, no clever tricks to spoof any tests, no PHEVs with 15 mile range to sneak into 'hybrid' category, buy a heavier car, cause more damage, pay more to use the road. You could have a surcharge if the vehicle also had a ICE of some sort, just to please the green lobby, but other than that is appears wuite simple.

Now sure there will things I've overlooked over my morning muesli (don't worry, it is bacon butties for lunch) so come along folks, have a think, see what pros and cons there are with this.

Paul

A 2 stroke engine in a lightweight carbon fibre chassis....?

Now yer talkin'...

Incidentally, a YouTube channel called Fortnine recently covered why 2 strokes were killed off by the bike industry.

They said it was emissions.....but really it was to reap the eye wateringly expensive serving costs of yer typical 16 valve, multi cylinder miniaturized motor.

[Urbandreamer]

A 2 stroke engine in a lightweight carbon fibre chassis....?

Now yer talkin'...

Incidentally, a YouTube channel called Fortnine recently covered why 2 strokes were killed off by the bike industry.

They said it was emissions.....but really it was to reap the eye wateringly expensive serving costs of yer typical 16 valve, multi cylinder miniaturized motor.

I'd be very careful about what you believe from the internet. Always apply some logic.

Lightweight two strokes rely upon crank case compression. This means that lubricating oil from the crank will pass through the engine and likely not be burnt.

Here is an animation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNLE8G3pC0k

Hence any regulation reducing allowed hydrocarbon emissions may make it difficult to fit such engines.
https://www.infineuminsight.com/en-gb/a ... torcycles/

This is mainly because 2T engine design allows some of the unburnt fuel/oil mixture to pass direct into the exhaust, producing high HC and PM emissions.

Now as I said, this is a direct result of using the crank case to provide air compression. So does anyone build two strokes that don't work that way. Well yes they do. Here is a video of one, the air cycle being shown from 4:27.

They are, and can not be, simple or lightweight.

[88V8]

I was reading this from the BBC.....tax them simply on weight.

Yes, or better still a combination of weight and footprint given that modern cars are not only too heavy but also too large.

...Perhaps similar thinking could solve the "obesity crisis"?

As this is the Transport board I'll wheel out my pet scheme for weighing in air passengers along with their luggage and applying a hefty surcharge to anyone with a BMI exceeding, say, 25.
Or should that be Hefties surcharge...

V8

[JohnB]

One claim is that road wear is proportional to the 4th power of the axle loading, but that's clearly not the whole story as pothole erosion is related to the number of times the side of the pothole is struck. But with such a steep exponential, wear depends a lot on how many passengers or luggage is carried. You can go too far in apportioning blame!

[bungeejumper]

As this is the Transport board I'll wheel out my pet scheme for weighing in air passengers along with their luggage and applying a hefty surcharge to anyone with a BMI exceeding, say, 25.
Or should that be Hefties surcharge...

As it's a quiet Saturday I'll take gentle issue with that idea. As we know, BMI is a cross-calculation between body weight and height. And neither the roads nor the airlines could give a stuff about how tall their users are - it's the weight, and only the weight, that matters.

And another thing. If we used BMI, we'd be allowing six foot sixers to be much heavier than five foot sixers, which would be a pointless sort of discrimination from a passenger-transport point of view. Admittedly, things might be different on RyanAir, where the shorter customers could be packed into the overhead lockers, just as long as the higher-level weight distribution in the fuselage didn't tip the plane over.

Nurse, is it time for my medication?

BJ

[Gerry557]

Maybe if they built cars that fit insidr an average uk garage.........

Opps they are called bicycles

[swill453]

I was reading this from the BBC.....tax them simply on weight.

Yes, or better still a combination of weight and footprint given that modern cars are not only too heavy but also too large.

Yes, someone on Twitter posted a picture of an old Jaguar, which in its day was a "big" car, next to a Tesla.


https://twitter.com/archer_rs/status/1689166281528729600

Scott.

[Tedx]

Yes, or better still a combination of weight and footprint given that modern cars are not only too heavy but also too large.

Yes, someone on Twitter posted a picture of an old Jaguar, which in its day was a "big" car, next to a Tesla.


https://twitter.com/archer_rs/status/1689166281528729600

Scott.

'Green' option my ass eh?

[scrumpyjack]

But electric cars have much wider tyres to distribute the weight.

Presumably the weight of the ICE engine should be that when the tank is full? A BEV car weighs the same fully charged and empty!

[mark88man]

But electric cars have much wider tyres to distribute the weight.

Presumably the weight of the ICE engine should be that when the tank is full? A BEV car weighs the same fully charged and empty!

My emphasis in quote - but not quite true - E=mc^2 therefore an empty battery is E/(c^2) lighter at rest.

[Arborbridge]

Tangential comment: why can't they just mend the potholes properly?
It seems that they shove some tarmac in without properly preparing the ground or finishing off the job, for around our way the same potholes reappear within weeks and need mending again. They are not even flat when they've finished filling them, so the erosion just starts all over again. In the spring, fair enough they were running to catch up, but now with months of good weather, there is no excuse.

Expediency reigns! If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well - an adage our highways people seem to have forgotten.

As regards tax and EVs - IO thought the idea was to encourage people to buy them as they were a less pollutive option, so why would any government trying to do that do the opposite of encouraging them?

Interestingly, my VED charge on an EV come 2025 will be higher than any ICE I have owned in the past 20 years. On my diesel, I'm paying £20 pa yet it is more highly polluting, so they say.


Arb.

[DrFfybes]

Incidentally, a YouTube channel called Fortnine recently covered why 2 strokes were killed off by the bike industry.

They said it was emissions.....but really it was to reap the eye wateringly expensive serving costs of yer typical 16 valve, multi cylinder miniaturized motor.

They're talking rubbish.

Firstly, the manufacturers don't really care about the service side of their business, they're in it to shift units. Secondly 2 strokes were still available in other markets long after we lost them. And thirdly, as someone who has owned a reasonable number of 2 and 4 stroke bikes, I can tell you that the 4 strokes need a LOT less maintenance over the 60k+ I put on most of them than any of the 2 strokes. Sure you need to spend a few hours checking valve clearances every 30,000 miles, but that is no worse than a complete rebuild most 2 strokes seemed to need by then.

Paul

[Tedx]

Whatever. I still mourn the passing of the 2 stroke motorcycle.

[DrFfybes]

But electric cars have much wider tyres to distribute the weight.

Presumably the weight of the ICE engine should be that when the tank is full? A BEV car weighs the same fully charged and empty!

Tyre width doesn't reduce the wear on the road, and even a full tank is only circa 60kg for most large sedan cars, less than a passenger, and a lot less than a battery. Volts do weigh something, just not very much

Whatever. I still mourn the passing of the 2 stroke motorcycle.

I do miss the smell, especially at a racetrack, although I probably wouldn't feel the same had I grown up in Delhi .

[swill453]

Whatever. I still mourn the passing of the 2 stroke motorcycle.

Yeah, the Yamaha FS1E was much cooler than the Honda SS50.

Scott.

[DrFfybes]

Yes, someone on Twitter posted a picture of an old Jaguar, which in its day was a "big" car, next to a Tesla.



Scott.

That's a Daimler Double six

[Tedx]

Whatever. I still mourn the passing of the 2 stroke motorcycle.

Yeah, the Yamaha FS1E was much cooler than the Honda SS50.

Scott.

Similarly, Yamaha RD250LC v Honda Superdream <shudder>.

and I owned both. The Dream was reliable though....