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Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

no, its because in a higher tax braket you pay more tax

its the sane in britain - if you earn $200,000 income-tax-free means 50% off, but if you earn $20,000. it means like 5% off

Also in Uk id you want to buy a e car, you get a grant of a few grand, if you want an e motorbike you get like $300, and if you want an ebike, the most wco friwndly option, you fuck right off

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>>and if you want an ebike, the most wco friwndly option, you fuck right off

That's absolutely not correct, the tax subsidy for buying bikes and ebikes in this country is bonkers and better than pretty much anywhere else. If you have any job you can always buy any bike(including an ebike) through the cycle to work scheme meaning it's deducted from your salary pre-tax (meaning that effectively it's a deduction from your own income tax).

Exactly, with no benefit in kind (unlike an EV which attracts 2% at the moment and increases by 1%/year from 2025).

> That's absolutely not correct, the tax subsidy for buying bikes and ebikes in this country is bonkers and better than pretty much anywhere else.

Have you actually tried using it? Four problems:

1 - The bicycle belongs to your employer, and when it's ownership is formally transferred to you, you have to pay tax on it.

2 - The 'cycle Scheme' is implemented separately by each major bike shop running their own scheme, Halfords runs Cycle2Work, Evans runs Ride to work. Your employer signs up to one or the other. If you are on Cycle2Work you can't but from Halfords

3 - If you want something that's not in Halfords, like a specific seat you like or a Bafang Conversion kit, then you have to go to independent shops that are 'in network'. Halfords charges 15% commission, and Evans charges 10%

4 - Employers set random limits, for example my employer does not allow over 1K spend, so you can't buy a decent ebike

I have. We have an ebike that was £2200 brand new, and it was effectively a 100% tax deduction. And yes there are some restrictions around it but they are easy to work with. I have no comment about employers setting their own limits, that's just dumb.

Props to you, I also use the scheme but I had to get a bicycle one year, then wait, and get motor next year and install it myself. Because of the limit.

Most people would not even realise that there are little shops besides halfords on the scheme, and attempt DIY.

Basically I think it would be much simpler, and cheaper to administer if we did away with all the employer nonsence and just removed all taxes from bicycles, like VAT.

Should it be a refund (instead of a tax break)?

I'm leaning towards the refund since it effectively gives everyone the "same final price"

Probably, but this is Australia we are talking about. It's a literal boomer welfare state.

Ok maybe a little bit of hyperbole but not that far off the mark, fiscal policy in Australia is dominated by preferential treatment for the boomer generations finances.

Ideally we would provide incentives in the form of a refund for all vehicles below a net carbon value per km (so including plugin hybrids, etc) that are priced below a given value, say $40k AUD or something, whatever is actually affordable mid-range car (not sure about specific numbers).

The idea is that hybrids are probably going to be at a disadvantage unless they are insanely efficient, BEVs will need to bring prices down to qualify for the incentive and generally speaking we end up with drastically more efficient -and- cheaper cars as a result.

However it's also not a great look if all the boomers are buying 911s instead of Model S/X etc so may as well drop the luxury car tax for full BEV vehicles so gas guzzlers are at a disadvantage across the spectrum.

In Norway we simply removed all taxes from battery EVs. Last year 80% of new cars sold were pure EVs. The plan is to ban new ICE car sales in 2025 but the law has not been passed yet as far as I know. But because the market is already so dominated by BEVs there is probably no need to rush.

Not for the goal in the UK. The UK doesn't have a tax break for buying electric cars as regular people at home, it's for companies. The important tax break more specifically is around providing them to workers under what's called a "salary sacrifice" scheme where you forgo some of your income in return for a benefit in kind. The BIK rate for EVs is very low, meaning they're almost tax free. This is targeting people who get new cars under hire agreements, drive them for a few years then get a new one - the goal is to increase the second hand market.

also

> its the sane in britain - if you earn $200,000 income-tax-free means 50% off, but if you earn $20,000. it means like 5% off

For SS schemes the person earning £20k would be paying a marginal rate of 32%. Most people earning more than this have a marginal rate of 42%, then frankly the figures get complicated to explain but it's a very small minority of people that hit those levels.

> *"The UK doesn't have a tax break for buying electric cars as regular people at home"

Not exactly true. Besides company car tax (BIK) benefits, electric vehicles are exempt from vehicle excise duty, which can save up to £4000 over the first 5 years of vehicle ownership. They are also exempt from congestion charges, low emission zone charges, etc, which can save thousands more. There's also no fuel duty on charging an EV, you only pay 5% VAT on electricity if charging at home, many local councils offer discounted parking and/or charging, and there is a grant available that pays 75% of the cost of installing a home charger.

> and if you want an ebike, the most wco friwndly option, you fuck right off

The most eco friendly option is still a bike. Not an ebike.

is something not used the most eco friendly option?

What is and isn't used comes down to the person, so it's pretty hard to factor in. Certainly in my city most bikes I see people out and abouton are not electric.

Depends. If you ride a lot, ebikes are actually more eco-friendly, because electricity is more carbon friendly to produce than the extra calories you'd eat.

There's an interesting blog post about this topic: https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog/climate-impacts-biking-v...

Your theory is worth discussing.

While in an absolute instant sense energy use might win for the machine, you probably forgot to factor in the lifetime cost of the production of the machine's components. I do not blame you as such a task seems exhaustively daunting, and we only ignore it for the people because who would be heartless enough to think that way? (probably insurance agents, lawyers, and such...)

There are also pros and cons to the different elements. Exercise on a bike might have a hard to measure benefit compared to an e-bike. On the other hand adoption pressures and increased hygiene needs are more positive and negative side effects.

According to this article, ebikes do produce fewer carbon emissions than conventional bikes overall, while considering manufacturing costs:

https://www.bikeradar.com/features/long-reads/cycling-enviro...

Judging by people's waistlines they're already eating the extra needed for the cycling, they're just not cycling.

According to COVID-19 and Obesity: The 2021 Atlas[1], the figures for the UK are:

- 63.7% of adults are overweight i.e. BMI >25kg/m2 (2016)

- 27.8% of adults are obese i.e. BMI >30kg/m2 (2016)

[1] https://www.worldobesity.org/resources/resource-library/covi...

Obese people won't get on a bike, though, because it's too big of a step. An ebike is a decent gateway into weight loss.

Exercise is for health, diet is for weight loss. The overlap exists but is minimal. Exercise activity hermogenesis (often known as EAT, ironically) is usually estimated to be around 5% of total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).

I wouldn't be surprised if the obese people in question started to exercise and actually increased their food intake to match.

That's assuming you'd just eat less, instead of eating the same and burning it off at the gym. Or getting fat.

An ebike ridden 10,000 km a year beats a bike ridden 2000 though.

How are you making that comparison?

Do you mean an ebike ridden 2,000 km for errands and 8,000 km for fun; vs. the 2,000 km for the bike, for errands, but no biking for fun? That is, are you implying that the ebike is a lot more fun than a regular bike?

Or are you comparing 10,000 km on an ebike; vs. a bike ridden 2,00 km and some other personal vehicle used for 8,000 km? That is, are you implying that a human-powered bike means people will overall use worse forms of transport?

Or do you mean something else?

I think the implication is that commuting longer distances (20km+) is doable on an e-bike.

My commute is 10km (300m uphill) on a regular bike, but I have access to a shower. If I didn't, I don't think I could do it on a regular bike.

In general, it's able to displace longer trips (other than biking for fun) than a non-electric bike.

> In general, it's able to displace longer trips (other than biking for fun) than a non-electric bike.

Exactly.

Since converting to an e-bike, I am using it 4x as much. Especially in the summer, it changes from a sweaty trip to a pleasant one. Those tips would normally be public transport.

10K sounds a bit ambitious, but myself and a friend are on track to exceed 3K.

This whole discussion is splitting hairs -> out of a single electric car, you can make 150 ebikes.

A good ebike battery is 0.5 KWh, a an electric car is ~80 KWh. An electric car might weigh 1500 KG and an ebike like 15.

So really it seems the conclusion should be that the ebikes are overpriced and they should cost $500 if their productions was automated like production of cars is.

I think they mean that you could end up using an ebike in situations where normally you’d use a car or some other form of transportation.

What confuses me is the leadup is about getting an ebike, vs. an ecar or emotorbike. Not about getting both a(n e)bike AND some other more ecologically damaging form of transport.

10k km a year on a bike means riding it for more than an hour every workday. Not a lot of people willing to do that, i think. If that were truly the breakeven distance (i know you didn't really say that) ebikes would be screwed in terms of ecological impact.

That’s half an hour to work, half an hour back. Not outlandish, if you compare normal commutes.

Assuming 250 work days (50 weeks * 5 days), that's 40km/day.

I don't think most people bike at 40km/hour.

Across a year, that averages to 27.4 km per day, biking each and every day.

If done in an hour, that's rather faster than my average biking speed of about 16 kph.

I said more than an hour. I think an hour on a bike is something most people can stomach easily, but it gets annoying fast once you go above that.

I did 50 minutes each way in LA, from Santa Monica to El Segundo. I loved it, except for the parts with cars.

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