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Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

His Cayenne is compliant unless it’s a very old one and doesn’t comply with Euro 4 standard.

Any petrol car that is compliant with Euro 4 and any diesel car that is compliant with Euro 6 is ULEZ compliant.

The big impact would be on diesel vehicles since due to the NOx emissions cap they need Euro 6 which isn’t only stricter but newer so older diesel cars aren’t compliant whilst pretty much every petrol car from 2007 or so would be.

So tradesmen vans and other work vehicles would likely to be severely impacted by this which will increase the prices to the end consumer since they’ll just roll over the daily ULEZ charge.

Your plumber isn’t going to buy a new van especially since the enlargement of ULEZ is going to crash its value they will however pass the ~£20 charge onto you the next time you call them like they already do with the inner London ULEZ.

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Just checked it. You're right. It is compliant! Colour me surprised. I still stand by my point about wanting something not being enough. He's single and drives a 4.8L vehicle to shopping and golf and back and that's about it. That's the hallmark of conspicuous consumption and I dislike that entirely. There is no outward responsibility at all.

I don't mind costs being passed down. My plumber has an electric van and his rates are far more reasonable than most in the area. Delivery vehicles in this part of London are moving over to electric as well.

> He's single and drives a 4.8L vehicle to shopping and golf and back and that's about it.

So then he's sparingly using the inefficient vehicle in a way that he enjoys? Seems legit.

I mean, one could always demand that others do marginally more efficient things at the expense of their marginal happiness. But there's no limiting principle. The logical conclusion of this particular line of thinking is that we all must ride electric scooters with studded tires in the dead of winter.

The logical conclusion IMHO is that we should all be using public transport. And if we don’t find that appealing we should consider it a public administration failure. No one should need a car. I’d take it that it might be necessary for rural areas but definitely not in a city.

Then what matters about the guy's car being a Porsche?

(I looked into buying a car when I lived in Manhattan for particular sorts of trips. This was after using a car share for a couple of years. Then the pandemic happened and I really wished that I had a car. Point being: the densest public transit in America and car sharing currently does not do away with the compelling convenience of private vehicles).

I live in a rural village. There's a bus, which I take in the morning when I get the train somewhere, it doesn't run in the evening though, nor does it go in the right direction to do things like after school clubs.

It would really be helpful to have a second car for those rare occasions, and I can get a second hand Micra with 12 months MOT for under £1k. I'd drive it about 400 miles a year, which would use say 60 litres of petrol a year and cause about 90 tons of CO2, costing about £30 in petrol tax for the pollution it causes. Fair enough.

However I'd have to pay vehicle excise duty of £180 a year, meaning the actual tax per mile is about 50p/mile rather than 8p/mile.

But this is where it gets bad. If I ignore the sunk cost of the car and the VED, the per-mile cost becomes lower than the bus, thus it is far more sensible to drive than take the bus.

In my opinion VED should be rolled into petrol pricing, or just road mileage pricing -- take an odometer reading at the MOT and charge 5p/mile, 10p/mile, 50p/mile, whatever. It's crazy that the tax per mile is an order of magnitude higher for a car used once a week to go 5 miles than a car driven 100 miles a day.

You only have one life. If you want to spend it using public transport, going through places you aren't visiting and stopping at stops you are not leaving at, then go right ahead (by the way, these are the main reasons why using public transport is slower almost everywhere). I'd rather spend that time doing something I enjoy.

> He's single and drives a 4.8L vehicle to shopping and golf and back and that's about it.

It sounds like he drives significantly less than the average family of 4. Isn't he therefore consuming less than them, in a 20 year old Kia Carnival?

The article mentions a £110 million fund which, in part, will be used to help van owners retrofit their vehicles to make them compliant.

Perhaps that will help?

I can't comment in any more detail as I don't know how much engineering work is required for these types of changes.

Even some older petrol cars are compliant - my son has a 2002 Seat Leon that is compliant.

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