Hacker News Reader

Comment by storus | Hacker News Reader

Soon UK will start taxing EVs by distance driven which might offset many EV advantages and make their disadvantages more pronounced.

View on HN

Vehicles incur costs on the infrastructure as a function of their weight and usage. Petrol engines pay taxes at the pump. There is no tax hypothication in this, it goes to general revenue, but as EV rise, general tax revenue falls. The government has an obligation of sorts, to try and normalise tax collection to the model, and the model is now breaking so they need to implement something, doing nothing is not an option.

It MAY make their disadvantages more pronounced, it MAY off set the specific EV advantage of operational cost compared to ICE. But, ICE are not some ground zero untaxed state, and other tax choices will alter the relative preferences and advantages AT THE TIME.

You can't compare tax now to tax "then" and argue "then" was fairer, if the tax then was on Horses.

In other words, EVs are used in a bait-and-switch scheme. First promising lower operating costs and negative externalities, then moving to new taxes possibly progressively increasing over time past the ICE taxation, and mandatory built-in surveillance and remote control.

Thats a very specific take on things. Nobody promised negative externalities as I understand it, I believe it was pretty clear the component of government taxation in fuel was going to have to exist somehow in this.

Your "possibly increasing over time past the ICE indexation" is very cynical but I would be in the worlds of ad hom if I carried on. I don't think you are here argung in good faith, if thats your basis of reasoning.

The surveillance and remote control is frankly unrelated to ICE/EV because pretty much all high end ICE cars have a SIM these days.

An 11 month out account with low karma posting inflammatory responses, I would be tempted to say you're karma farming for some other outcome.

"promising lower ... negative externalities..."

I drop my HN accounts when they reach certain karma threshold so that I am not surfing on my past successes but keep relevant in the present. I think you have the collector approach instead and use it as a weapon.

"use it as a weapon" I do indeed filter inputs which behave like noise, on other attributes which can indicate noise. You took an adversarial and argumentative approach to an otherwise rational discussion. Asserting what I consider unfounded, and unrelated consequences in a thread. I don't expect you to consider this a negative in your own assessment of your own behaviour, I do, and I think an implied lack of introspection on your own behaviour is telling. I also take on board that my behaviour reflects on what I see and respond to, and I understand (perhaps wrongly) that you impute this to a negative outcome. We differ on that, but I admit the possibility I'm wrong and you're right. Do you do me the same charity?

Obviously; the whole point of discussing on HN is to get exposed to variety of opinions and attitudes regardless of whether I mesh with them well or not; expressing IMO founded concerns about new tech is one of the reasons for commenting.

Founded, not well-founded I think. I can't see the evidence of intent for what you allege. I can see stupid policy. I can see failure to deploy. But to suggest the intent is remote control or track and trace, demands a basis. Whats your reasoning beyond supposition?

Why don't they e.g. do this with the BMW ICE cars which carry a SIM card?

Remember its the deploying state we're talking about, not the specific risk of BYD being under control of the CCP. Your response implied all EV in the UK, are part of a plan to supervise/monitor use of EV cars, not the foreign actor risk as I understand it.

Tell me more about this scheme. If there's someone who imagines they can tax EV's more than ICE vehicles what exactly is keeping them from just making the same increase (now) on ICE vehicles? If their secret goal is to raise transportation taxes how does switching their target from ICE vehicles to EV's make that any easier? And who exactly is doing the scheming? Is it construction firms who build roads (which is my neck of the woods is where most of the gax tax ends up going). Are they the ones hatching this scheme? You'd think they'd be lobbying harder for more trucks (heavily vehicles -> more wear on the roads ->profit!). But the more big trucks people seem mostly to be the opposite of the EV people. How confusing.

Step changes are often opportunities to introduce new unwanted features by default; see how countries switching to Euro experienced significant price increases on day 1. Policy makers often optimize to introduce new things the old market (in this case ICE) doesn't want as defaults after the change (e.g. EVs). This is like 101 of public policy.

Vehicles have road taxes. It’s a very clumbsy and annoying way the UK have planned this new tax. I hope other countries do not copy it.

A similar debate is happening in Australia, with the added complexities of federal vs state taxation models, and a nationally collected GST tax (VAT like) which is distributed to the states. Petrol (gas) taxation to consumers is a confusing topic with many people believing in lots of economies its a hypothicated tax, dedicated to roads and related costs. Well, it's not. It's not defined in legislation in the two economies I know of, which do this stuff. It may or may not meet road costs, or exceed road costs, or be less than road costs. In australia the only hypothicated tax, and there are disagreements about if it meets the bar or not, is the medicare levy. Everything else is consolidated revenue, no matter what you think they do with it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com