News: 1591621273

So the PM wants us to buy more cars but his transport secretary wants us to [1]drive them less .

OK, maybe this isn't completely contradictory. Climate control, surround sound, wi-fi, ergonomic seat - just leave them permanently on the drive, plugged in, as the perfect home office.

[1] https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1259139865901518849

That's why the rebate is on electric cars. With their typical range and charging time you WILL be driving less!

To be equivalent, everyone would need a petrol station on their drives that fulls their car up overnight.

To be equivalent, everyone would need a petrol station on their drives that fulls their car up overnight.

To make your petrol-station equivalent drive, you need a drive.

People who live in flats, shared accommodation, even houses that aren't set back from the street by at least a car length etc are going to have a bit of a problem. A great many people don't even have adjacent on-street parking. Maybe they could use a very long electrical extension lead?

The number of vehicles on the roads today that exceed even 100 miles a day is pretty low. With reasonably affordable EVs having ranges of 200-300 miles I can only think of one journey I make which would need a pitstop; and that journey needs one anyway....

We bought one last August. Our mileage doubled overnight because it was just such a more pleasant experience than the old oil guzzler. That include a trip to Scotlnd & back (from London).

Mind you it's dropped to near zero since March 16th. My little app shows I've run on just one recharge since then. Range hasn't been a problem but then I didn't need to check my eyesight. YMMV.

It sounds like sales of leccy cars are doing quite well enough. So you propose to add an extra incentive to a market that needs no help? But you've leaked that it'll happen in a month or so. Anybody with half a brain that can wait, will. Why buy now when I can get a rebate if I wait?

The only way this would help is to reduce the queue.

I have absolutely no idea how subsidising £6k on ev car purchases helps uk business. Last I looked the UK doesn't manufacture many ev cars. Except maybe the Nissan Leaf. Although Nissan isn't a UK company...

I don't remember paying my taxes to subsidise foreign business.

That'll really help people commute to the jobs they lost.

I thought that the problem was that the UK economy is now largely service based, and that nobody is currently using the services because we aren't allowed out of our houses.

Buying cars from foreign companies appears unlikely to jump start the UK economy because they are all foreign owned, and so the profits leave the UK with the only benefits being the wages paid to the people nailing the bits together which recirculate, but mostly only to go on rent/mortgages and food. (and any sub components that are made by british firms with british owners)

Buying cars from foreign companies appears unlikely to jump start the UK economy because they are all foreign owned

I expect the idea is that people who've just bought a new car will want to drive it, thereby encouraging them to go places, which means they'll spend money. I'm not suggesting its the best use of a £6k tax cut mind, only that it's not just about the car, it's about the services the new owner uses.

Companies are no longer owned where they're headquartered, at least not exclusively. In terms of car companies, I own bits of several, but none are headquartered in the UK nor I where they are based.

There are several factors to consider:

a) the profits on the car sales (which definitely goes overseas),

b) the service-based UK car jobs (dealerships/showrooms, garages, logistics, etc),

c) the car financing profits (may/may not go overseas, depending on source),

d) avoiding reintroducing the pollution from cars (the air quality has improved massively during lockdown)

I'm not sure where the overall balance would sit, and how (or whether) you can actually value (d).

b) If everybody started buying new electric cars, this would harm the market for second hand cars in their dealerships and showrooms, so gains at the EV showrooms would be offset by losses everywhere else. Garages and logistics would remain unchanged, assuming that electric cars will still need mechanical servicing.

c) My bet is that the majority of companies set up to do complex hire purchase stuff or other financing will have an army of accountants who will be quietly vanishing all of the profits.

d) Simple. The cost of near zero emissions from cars for 3 months is shown in the government projected borrowing; about three hundred billion pounds this year.

Tax receipts are ~700 billion a year, so we'd need to basically increase our tax take by ~50%, or reduce our expenditures by around half. The NHS budget is £120 billion a year for general reference, education is about the same, and defense is about £50 billion. Cutting all of those three major expenses to zero would be nearly enough, but we'd have to go a bit further with cuts.

Funny that, a few days ago we heard that Tesla was contemplating opening a factory in Bristol (or thereabouts!) ...

Could that be part of the deal? Hmmm, let me think ....

" Mop-haired Brit Prime Minister Boris Johnson "

This comparison is offensive to mops. At least they're useful.

His hair is decidedly thinner now. He will be even less use

I work at an educational institution where staff have to buy parking permits which are several hundred pounds per year.

They offer heavily discounted - to the point of virtually being free of charge - permits for anyone driving in electric car. This is supposed to incentivise people to want to ditch their non-electric vehicle.

Some quick maths:

* Cost of a new electric car

* Minus money obtained from selling my petrol car

* Factor in relative difference in running costs, including this permit price difference...

...does not equal a "saving" of any description. Or anything else beneficial to me.

Public transport? Not viable for my journey, or any other journeys I make routinely.

So, I simply carry on driving my petrol car. Nobody (including Bojo and this scheme) has ever provided any incentive that makes doing this worthwhile for the average person.

> the average person

That's rather the point.

No need to help the plebs, what have they ever done for us cabinet members ?

Removing the cost of using the existing infrastructure from electric vehicles is ultimately self-defeating (the country cannot afford to give up those forms of income in the long-term).

Plus, such discounts are generally regressive, as the current price differential between petrol/diesel cars and the EV equivalent is such that EV purchases are mostly made by the wealthiest (ie those who can most afford to pay for the infrastructure are the ones least in need of such discounts).

>Plus, such discounts are generally regressive,

Remind me which party is in power ?

EV purchases are mostly made by the wealthiest

I don't have the exact numbers but if you consider people who drive and fall into one of these 2 groups:

1. People who pay for cars on HP/PCP monthly. In the bracket of small-mini cars that cost (including running costs) under £150/month.

2. People who drive "runaround" cars that are worth under £2k that they buy outright.

That's a huge number of drivers. Neither of these groups can afford electric vehicles. Their petrol or diesel equivalents cost them far less, and often they need them to get to work as public transport isn't viable.

Unless someone is going to...

* tax groups 1 and 2 off the road - won't happen because these people then couldn't work (increasing the burden on welfare).

* give them a free electric vehicle (never going to happen) to essentially remove non-electric vehicles from society

...the vehicles and buying patterns in groups 1 & 2 will be around for a long time.

You forgot the "People that live in flats", "People that live in cheap shitty housing with no drive" and "People that can't afford two cars" communities.

If I was working I could afford two cars, using an electric for local trips and keeping the other for fun and trips to Manchester or Scotland. I can't however park anywhere near my house so charging the electric car would have to be done somewhere else, a frustrating and time consuming experience.

Unsurprisingly it's a Tory plan.

It would be interesting to know whether this is an additional £6K or is it £3k on top of the existing £3K (plug-in) EV incentive?

I'm not convinced that - following lockdown - people will be that keen to splurge on a new vehicle regardless of powerplant, until they have more clarity on their job status.

Even if furloughed, I'd imagine that anyone whose budget stretches to most EVs will need to replenish their savings for a while before committing to significant capital purchases (OK - ignoring leases/PCP here but the monthly payments are still significant on the more expensive EVs).

It may therefore be that people will stretch the usage of their existing (non-EV) vehicles for longer (unless their PCP deal is coming to an end).

Of course - like with the original £4.5k grant - the danger is that this simply becomes a subsidy for those who could afford it and were going to buy an EV anyway. Having said that, if it's an economic stimulus (with tinges of green policy-making) then they probably don't care who uses the grant anyway - a sale is a sale or rather part of the margin goes to a UK car dealer.

I have an old diesel car, used for local journeys, which I would normally be interested in swapping for an EV. But with the world economy in ruins there is no way I'm swapping for something that means I have to spend more. No new cars for me until the world recovers.

Diesel is the way to go. At least if the world ended and diesel supplies dried up, you could stick some chip fat in it and go all Mad Max on everyone.

That's what always confused me about Mad Max.

The oil has run out and yet everybody immediately switches to driving V8 muscle cars that run on premium petrol - rather than all riding bicycles and driving VW Polo diesels running on chip fat.

Actually, isn't chip fat what the diesel engine was originally invented for? Diesel's only really used as a byproduct of the oil industry, to help keep their precious profits up...

The problem with this half baked idea is it will only be useful to those who can afford a new car and are likely to have a reasonably new one to put into the scrappage scheme, the oldest potentially higher emmission cars are more often than not owned by people at the lower end of the income scale and unlikely to be able to trade up to a new low emission/electric car, as happened the last time this half naked idea was trotted out, it leads to a reduction in the availability of middle aged cars to “cascade” down to replace the oldest cars which remain in use.

As happens so often, the ones at the bottom of the pile are ignored by politicians who have zero grasp of the realities of everyday life.

..it leads to a reduction in the availability of middle aged cars to “cascade” down to replace the oldest cars which remain in use.

That's part of the problem for car manufacturers. So back in the good'ol days and the era of Rover, you buy a new car every 3 years because after that it's rusting & falling apart. Or if it was a Range Rover, helping dealers buy their Ferrari collections through service costs.

Modern cars are a lot more reliable, and with average commuting patterns & proper servicing, can run fine for 10yrs or so.. Especially if they're simpler diesels. This is despite the best efforts of the EU to help deterioration via adulterating fuels with 'biofuels'.

But along side that, there was the conversion of manufacturers into finance companies, and pushing PCP/lease deals. Drivers get a new car regularly, but their lease cars get dumped onto the used market regularly, pushing down used car prices. Which is a good thing for drivers given they can get a nearly-new, well maintained car at a deep discount... Especially given the way the ECB has been printing money to lend to BMW/Merc/VAG Finance so they can buy cars from the manufacturing entities and prop up the German car industry.

Now there's the EU (and UK's) push to get people driving modern milk floats.. But they're a lot more expensive than ICE models, so subsidises those via scams like this.. Which I guess could allow savvy people to buy a cheap ICE to get the £6k bung, assuming they can afford £20k+ on the milk float. And like you say, that won't help people with less income, who could in theory benefit from the lower TCO of running an EV. And then there's the question of TCO for used EVs, ie what state the battery might be in if the previous owner's not been nice with their charging cycles. Especially given the battery pack is a substantial part of the total car's cost.

That's part of the problem for car manufacturers. So back in the good'ol days and the era of Rover, you buy a new car every 3 years because after that it's rusting & falling apart.

Can I just say at this point that my runaround is a Rover 75 made in 1999 which is neither rusty or falling apart?

Since about one tenth of the cars that they made are still on the roads after 20 years, i'd suggest that they aren't the best example. Unless you meant "British Leyland", in which case i'm right with you. ;)

Since about one tenth of the cars that they made are still on the roads after 20 years, i'd suggest that they aren't the best example. Unless you meant "British Leyland", in which case i'm right with you. ;)

Heh, those were the days. Popped out to the shops earlier and someone was working on an interesting looking '30s-ish roadster. Cars can last, if they're looked after. From watching some YT vids, the idea that EV's are simpler than ICE's seems a bit of a myth.. And one challenge for EVs will be training up mechanics to work on them. Assuming manufacturers will let them, give or take various bits of 'right to repair' legislation.

Also saw a Chinese battery manufacturer's announced a power pack with a 2,000,000km/16yr warranty. Suspect that's a 'commercial' rather than a technical warranty, ie caveats & internal costs to replace batteries that fail well before then. But potentially de-risks used EV buyers a little, assuming warranty is transferable.

Actually they're not being ignored - they're being priced out of freedom of movement.

A friend's small business crashed when his local council created a "low emission zone" that put a price of £100 per day on keeping his diesel van outside his house, and from the start of 2021 the entire area within the North and South Circular Roads in London will become such a zone with older cars charged around £12 per day to enter it (plus of course the existing congestion charge). That roughly trebles the cost of entering Central London from the M25.

>>>reasonably new one to put into the scrappage scheme<<<

No. Sell that one for cash and buy an MOT'd POS for £500 and use that for the trade-in.

...to us that have no where to plug it in.

It could have a 500 mile range, but after those 500 miles it will be a £20,000 roadside ornament.

How about VAT free electric bikes and motorbikes instead? At least those I can push close enough to sling a cable out of the window.

"...to us that have no where to plug it in."

Absolutely!

Give me a charging point, or at least a long bit of cable to run from my 3rd floor flat to the car park on the other side of the building, and I'd have an electric car tomorrow.

>my 3rd floor flat

Our demographics show that anyone living in a 3rd floor flat is unlikely to vote for us.

So we would just like to say "fsck off peasant"

Oh to live like a peasant, one can only dream.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/Islington/flats.html

Shit! Someone's put my flat on the market!

There is also ready a £1500 government grant on electric motorbikes. They have to meet certain criteria to qualify but my Zero FXS did.

My 2p...

1. Introduce a fossil fuel car VAT supplement, starting at 2%, ratcheting up by an additional 2 percentage points every year until it hits 20% - ie gradually double the VAT on any vehicle that is in any way powered by petrol or diesel.

2. Introduce an electric/AF car VAT discount, starting at 20%, ratcheting down by 2 percentage points every year until it's gone - ie remove the VAT for now, gradually reintroducing it. You could cap this at (say) £6k maximum if thought necessary.

3. Drop the existing EV grant.

4. Rework VED so that all vehicles are on the same scheme (there are currently 3 or 4 different ones running in parallel), such that:

a) all vehicles pay, b) those that pollute more pay more, and c) those that impose extra wear and tear on the network or consume extra capacity [think heavy and/or XL vehicles] pay even more. For example, a base VED of £50, plus a fossil fuel component tied to emissions [one element for each of CO2 and NOx, plus room to add others if we find further pollutants], plus a % "XL" levy (say, 50% extra for over 2 tonnes or L>4.5m or W>2m or H>1.5m, and 25% discount for "compact" cars [<1T or small enough to fit 2 in a standard parking space]). It's probably appropriate to implement this new VED with lower starting rates that are ratchetted up by fixed increments for a few years before switching to inflationary rises, to avoid huge overnight hikes for those currently enjoying negligible rate VED on older petrol/diesel vehicles.

Tinkering with VED really makes little difference at least at the upper end of the market - if somebody's going to spend around the £100k mark on a vehicle then they're not going to be bothered about the VED, unless you make it to high as to effectively outlaw them.

I like the rest of your idea about an automatically reducing/increasing allowance/surcharge for the two though.

Tinkering with VED really makes little difference at least at the upper end of the market - if somebody's going to spend around the £100k mark on a vehicle then they're not going to be bothered about the VED, unless you make it to high as to effectively outlaw them.

That's pretty much in hand, ie banning new ICE's after a certain date. Of course that means a massive hit to fuel duty & VAT. Governments already tinker with that, ie penalising diesel drivers via increases in fuel duty, with additional sneakiness, like 'biofuels', which reduce MPG.

But this leaves a bit of a hole in government finances, especially given cost of subsidies like this rebate. And the big elephant is the implications for the energy sector, ie cost of electrifying UK transport, which will lead to even more energy poverty as electricity prices rocket. It could be interesting to figure out a way to charge EV duty to reduce energy poverty, which I suspect will mean road charging ends up back on the table. EV's are/will be fitted with enough 'black box' functionaility to monitor both charging, and distance travelled.

Exactly. Fuel duty is going to dry up as a source of income. That's another reason that VED needs to be restructured (allowing EVs to pay nothing really is not a viable option).

If you want to encourage the switch from oil to EV, in a gradual way and not have a mad rush to switch at the last minute, forcing the price of ICE up and EV down is necessary. Doing so in a clearly defined manner that is affordable and doesn't simply introduce further problems down the road seems like the logical thing to do.

I agree that road charging is probably required, and that's not necessarily a bad thing if implemented sensibly (eg we ensure a contribution from foreign vehicles using our infrastructure that way).

If you want to encourage the switch from oil to EV, in a gradual way and not have a mad rush to switch at the last minute, forcing the price of ICE up and EV down is necessary.

Sure, provided you're comfortable with punishing the poorest who are least able to avoid your new taxes. I'm not completely sure I am.

I agree that road charging is probably required, and that's not necessarily a bad thing if implemented sensibly

And yet completely incompatible with privacy. It'll also be very difficult to check that a foreign registered vehicle is attributable to someone you can fine (ie they pay before they can depart the UK).

Passive tolling based on registration requires that everyone obey the law rather than use a cloned plate, that all vehicles are properly registered, and that everyone consents to tracking. Active tolling leads to queues at the barriers which leads to an increase in emissions.

"Sure, provided you're comfortable with punishing the poorest who are least able to avoid your new taxes. I'm not completely sure I am."

By and large, I would expect that the poorest are not actually buying new cars at all, so pushing up the cost of ICE isn't likely to affect them (at least, not directly).

[Road charging is] "completely incompatible with privacy."

Not necessarily. You could certainly make it so if you wanted to do so (and I can see that there are some who would like to do so). However, the EU countries using road charging seem to be doing so without major problems, and without (AFAIK) totally compromising privacy. I don't see why we could not do likewise (non-functional public bodies notwithstanding).

By and large, I would expect that the poorest are not actually buying new cars at all, so pushing up the cost of ICE isn't likely to affect them (at least, not directly).

Residual values are a percentage of purchase prices, so the more expensive the vehicle to buy new the more expensive the vehicle will be to buy second hand. With EVs currently the purchase price all but includes the fuel cost and road tax to run it. Sure, you have repairs and insurance to pay, but a newish vehicle will see few repairs (not none), leaving insurance your only real cost.

This will leave the less well off trapped on ICE, paying VED, VAT on fuel, Fuel Duty etc The residual value of their vehicles will fall away towards zero at a much faster rate too, once EVs begin to arrive in the second hand market.

Don't get me wrong, there are EVs I'd buy tomorrow (2nd hand as I view new cars to be a fools errand), and there are ICE cars I want to own before they disappear forever into the past. I'm not heavily invested in either way of looking at this.

However, the EU countries using road charging seem to be doing so without major problems, and without (AFAIK) totally compromising privacy.

The EU countries doing road tolling are doing active tolling rather than passive. You stop at the booth. That'd be fine, except they have much more space given over to roads resulting in fewer traffic jams - France for example has 3 times the road space that we do, creating lots of opportunities to travel from place to place by a range of roads where we typically have one realistic route. This reduces congestion at the tolls and provides plenty of untolled roads if you would rather reduce costs and have a longer trip.

The only way to ensure transport costs don't hit the poor hardest is to remove them. Either the state pulls in its belt and gets used to living on less, or move the taxes raised onto something else equally unavoidable - just be aware that may also then hit the poor harder.

Take sugar or fat tax as an example, given what I suspect will be a push towards more healthy living post Covid - I've literally no idea what a big mac costs and I've eaten a few of those over the years. One of my friends who is very much lower quartile income definitely knows tot he penny what his big mac meal costs when he buys one. Taxing it more won't really affect me.

Tax a punishment or for behaviour modification may work, but it works first on those with the smallest incomes.

And yet completely incompatible with privacy. It'll also be very difficult to check that a foreign registered vehicle is attributable to someone you can fine (ie they pay before they can depart the UK).

That ship has already err.. sailed given new vehicles have to be fitted with black boxes per EU Diktat. Floated as a 'safety' feature, where cars could phone for help in accidents, but strangely enough, also enables everything needed for road charging.. Excluding back-end. Expect tenders to follow, and think of the benefits if data's combined with track & trace! Automatically alert insurers.. I mean people because they've spent >15m <2m apart inside a tin box!

VED is such a mess right now (with multiple differing schemes) that it just seems sensible to bundle fixing it in with larger changes.

While I get your point about the seriously wealthy not caring one way or another (as you say, the VED is almost immaterial to them), you do want it overall to be as fair as possible, and to be constructively arranged (even if it's principally "virtue signalling").

At the moment, the effective message of the various schemes is "hang on to your old diesel"!

1. Introduce a fossil fuel car VAT supplement, starting at 2%, ratcheting up by an additional 2 percentage points every year until it hits 20% - ie gradually double the VAT on any vehicle that is in any way powered by petrol or diesel.

That's what triggered the "yellow vest" protests in France, and could well cause haulage strikes in the UK. Certainly, some government is going to have to tackle the road haulage industry at some point, but I think it will need a lot more carrot & less stick than this.

Introduce an electric/AF car VAT discount, starting at 20%, ratcheting down by 2 percentage points every year until it's gone - i.e. remove the VAT for now, gradually reintroducing it.

Still wouldn't encourage me to buy a battery electric car. Do it for plug-in hybrids and I might be interested, but then I'll probably buy one anyway, so it could become another subsidy for people who don't need it.

Those that impose extra wear and tear on the network or consume extra capacity [think heavy and/or XL vehicles] pay even more.

40+ tonne lorries do so much damage to the roads that the wear & tear from cars is insignificant. The labs that do road wear & tear measurement don't even consider light vehicles any more. Structuring car tax based on relative damage done by bigger cars is in the "rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic" category.