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Comment by Pet_Ant | Hacker News Reader

An article shared recently said that road damage is weight^4. Make a car tax based on vehicle weight and the market takes care of itself. For the right classes (such as wheelchair accessible) it can be a tax write-off.

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Larger vehicles makes less efficient use of precious space. Vehicle size needs to be addressed as well as weight.

This is a great idea and would handily deal with the escalating “momentum war” between selfish drivers who buy the biggest, heaviest vehicle they can afford in order to be safer than their counterparts in a collision.

I’d propose we make the tax highly non-linear too…

As a friend od mine recently discovered, Range Rovers have an airbag under the bonnet that pops up in case of frontal collision, presumably to protect pedestrians.

They hit a deer on a country road and that airbag caused £6,000 of damage to the car...

Who's laughing now? ;)

I hope the deer had survived the encounter.

You're right on the money. I've heard it a few times from my associates (in UK), who don't feel comfortable driving. They want to go for the big car so they can be safe. But what about other road users?

You can also notice how pushy all these Range Rover drivers are on our very narrow roads.

Safety is a reason why many people claim to purchase these cars but frankly I’m not convinced. These cars are comfortable and luxurious - appealing to safety is a way to tell themselves their purchase is practical and not frivolous.

In any case I agree; these vehicles do not in fact make us more safe, overall.

UK car tax is currently based on vehicle type- but it's based on CO2 emissions https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables

typically this is related to weight/size - except in the case of electric vehicles which are heavier than their ICE counterparts

This (and tax subsidies) is the reason behind the proliferation of large plug-in-hybrid SUVs - being a plug-in hybrid lowers CO2 emissions (at least on paper), but in practice many/most owners will never actually charge the car, so the CO2 emissions will be even more unrealistic than they already are.

This doesn’t address needlessly large EVs that damage roads and are a threat to pedestrians and bicyclists. These larger EVs are also inefficient use of battery cells than they’d be in smaller vehicles. Would love to see more Mini/Smart car EVs

A Tesla is heavier than a petrol Range Rover. All EVs are heavy.

The weight difference of comparable ICE cars and EVs is sometimes surprisingly small when you look at the variant of the EV model with the smaller battery.

For example, the BMW X3 is 1670 kg. The Tesla Model Y (SR RWD) is 1778 kg.

That's only for big cars.

The smallest Tesla is a D-segment car, cars around 4.7m: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-segment

There are 3 different car categories smaller than the smallest Tesla.

For smaller cars, EVs are a mess, they're between 25 and 40% heavier than equivalent ICEs, that's a humongous difference.

Well, they did say this:

> Would love to see more Mini/Smart car EVs

Teslas are big cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-segment, they're not Minis. The smallest Tesla is 4.7m long.

There are 3 car categories smaller than the smaller Tesla.

But yeah, EVs are heavy.

The larger an EV is the less efficient it is because it has to carry the unloaded battery with it, and it needs more battery for the same function. I don't have the number but I would bet that the energy need is a square of the vehicle weight. It's the same problem rockets have where they have to expend fuel just to carry fuel.

> Would love to see more Mini/Smart car EVs

The Renault Zoe was a best seller in some countries because it's a great city car. Sadly Renault have cut back production due to diminishing margins due to supply chain issues (official version), which is a shame. There's also the Fiat 500 EV.

It's sad that MINI/Smart are no longer small.

Also, there was an article recently that (at least in US) the CO2 emission norms are not absolute but relative to car size; to the absurd point that to fit into the norms, it's easier to make the car bigger, rather than to lower the emissions of a smaller car. Hence, SUVs.

Absolute in the UK

I'm not sure I have seen many large plug-in hybrids on UK roads

Seeing more Volvo SUV PHEVs recently, big ones too.

PHEV shouldn't be sold to who don't have slow charging equipment at home. It's one of the best solution with home charger.

It’s my understanding that personal vehicles are irrelevant compared to large trucks for this very reason.

Where even the most innocuous residential street will have a garbage truck that damages the road far more than cars do.

Not that their aren’t many more problems with large cars in terms of pedestrian safety, congestion, waste of parking space, etc.

France is doing this (albeit with a carveout for electric cars).

Yes let the rich have the big cars, us peasants will kneel to the taxes as always...

I mean, I'd rather no one have large cars and the need by addressed by business but that opens up loop-holes and other abuses. For those who are truly waste, let's at least get some other money for other uses. Both McMansions and pavement-boats are grostesque excesses... but policing morality never ends well so taxes are the gentler stick.

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