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Who couldn’t guess this was coming?

Electric cars face being fitted with tracking devices under proposals for a pay-per-mile road taxation system put forward by the Government’s own climate advisers.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) says the Government needs to find ways to cover the “significant hole” in the public finances left by the loss of fuel duty and other taxes when petrol and diesel cars are replaced by electric models.

An interesting thing here being that of course electric cars will no longer be cheaper to run….

26 thoughts on “Who couldn’t guess this was coming?”

  1. The UK has 39 million road vehicles currently using fossil fuel. I am still waiting for someone to tell me where the electricity is going to come from for the EV’s which will (baring a humiliating volte face by TPTB, which I am fully expecting – see regs for coal fired power stations being relaxed as we speak) replace them.

    Also, on costs. During the February 2021 cold snap in Texas, electricity prices shot up so high it was estimated it would cost $900 to fully charge a Tesla: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Texas-Freeze-Raises-Cost-Of-Charging-A-Tesla-To-900.html.

  2. Germany has shelved the 2035 ban on ICE vehicles – as long as they then run on carbon nutral fuel !

    Neat !

  3. You need to be an ignoramus to think that electric cars are less harmful to the environment than ICE cars. The problem is that there is certainly no shortage of ignorami out there.

  4. The new report also calls for the cost of renewable projects to be shifted from electricity bills into general taxation, a move it says could cut energy bills by £90.

    I suggest this greatly underestimates the effect of green levies on energy bills. I’m also slightly unclear why shifting the cost of something which is both unnecessary and ineffective from utility bills to tax bills accomplishes anything other than a sound-bite showing how much the government feels our pain.

  5. LR: that would be fun if the Eavis’s said “No more Glasto. We would have to cover the whole farm with solar cells to meet our Green target for the power it needs on a rainy day”.

  6. I firmly believe that over the course of the next few months we will see a softening of ‘the planet is dying / burning up / oceans boiling’ nonsense ‘cos if things get too bad the peeps will start to rebel and outright reject the net zero bollocks (which the elites definitely do not want that) so I expect some, “it’s a problem but not as bad as we thought”, ‘science’ to begin appearing.

    I filled the bike up yesterday, Esso Synergy Supreme, £2.06 per litre. Twenty Nine fucking quid!!!! Oh, for the good old days – 1978, 3 1/2 gallons in the RD for £2.78 (£12 in todays’ money).

  7. ‘The new report also calls for the cost of renewable projects to be shifted from electricity bills into general taxation, a move it says could cut energy bills by £90.’

    So they’ll then be able to claim that renewables are REALLY cheaper than other methods of power generation!!!

  8. Bloke in North Dorset

    @Addolff – this has been solved by the Glastonbury crowd. Diesel generators apparently.

    Yep and IIRC £80 to charge a car.

  9. There an easy way round this, no need for tracking etc. Make them pay road tax – I think they are exempt – and cover the fuel duty costs by estimating based on manufacturers quoted range.

    Would also account for increased emissions involved in manufacturing the battery.

  10. John:

    > I’m also slightly unclear why shifting the cost of something which is both unnecessary and ineffective from utility bills to tax bills accomplishes anything other than a sound-bite showing how much the government feels our pain.

    Because:

    It’s less regressive
    Puts costs on the government books
    Prevents government pretending these costs are due to utilities overcharging

    They should move all energy decarbonisation costs to general taxation, that way the government will actually have to consider how to deal with them rather than dumping on customers / citizens

  11. “I am still waiting for someone to tell me where the electricity is going to come from for the EV’s…”

    It’s only a problem if as many people have cars in the brave new world, as have them now.

    And I don’t think that is what they are planning.

  12. Bloke in North Dorset

    I’m fairly sure we identified this problem on here 15+ years ago. Good to see the State reacting to the issue in a timely manner.

  13. “…There an easy way round this, no need for tracking etc….”

    Gary, the tracking is a feature, not a bug.

    They’ve been wanting to do it for ages, this is just a handy excuse to hang it on.

  14. How to Fix Climate Change

    Step 1: Make gas-guzzlers more expensive
    Step 2: Encourage more electric vehicles
    Step 3: Make gas more expensive
    Step 4: Mandate electric vehicles (in 2030 or so)
    Step 5: Watch as citizens buy more electric cars, take public transport, ride bikes to work, work from home
    Step 6: Fuck over your citizens anyway

  15. I haven’t yet had to pay 2 quid a litre but the local supermarket is 199.9p/litre for diesel now, so it’s only a matter of time ☹️

  16. Yet Another Chris

    Addolff at 7:54 am: I filled up my 10L jerry can last week. I use it to fuel my lawnmower, generator, chainsaw and strimmer/hedge cutter (big garden!). It cost GBP18.28. The irony is the jerry can cost GBP15 – the content is more valuable than the jerry can.

    As for EVs, it ain’t going to happen. As one comment notes: where is the electricity going to come from? To add to this, only forty per cent of households have offstreet parking. How, for example, is someone on the tenth floor of a block of flats going to charge an EV?

    There are many other problems with EVs: price; range; sourcing materials to make them (China/Russia); taxing EVs; recycling problems; fire problems; hauling round a ton of batteries ….. I could go on but suffice to say there are no upsides to EVs – just downsides.

    And all this for what? Three percent of CO2 emissions caused by mankind of which the UK is responsible for less than one per cent. Really!? Does anyone with half a brain believe that an increase in CO2 from three molecules per 10,000 of air to four over a couple of decades can have any effect? You might be suspicious that there is another agenda.

  17. Yet another Chris

    I would tend to agree but look at what Peter Mcfarlane is saying. People don’t know how bad things are going to get.

    – Substantial food shortages will be encountered as early as next year – deliberately induced by our inept governments.

    – You will own nothing and be happy. Additionally you will not be able to travel. If you need to travel for a job you will lose that job and starve to death, which will cause a reduced carbon footprint.

    – Elecric cars (Such as exist) will be the preserve initially of the very rich and as that group grows smaller the WEF elite. Ordinary people will take their holidays in the Metaverse.

    This is what almost every single political party in the UK (Anyone backing Net Zero) is committed to

  18. It is getting serious.

    I can’t afford petrol for the chainsaw
    Diesel for the generator to power the chest freezer to keep the body parts
    And have you seen the prices of ice hockey masks ?

  19. Oh, for the good old days

    1959 4 gallons of petrol, 20 fags and a pint and still have change out of a quid.

  20. Electric cars face being fitted with tracking devices

    They don’t need fitted, it’s built in. It’s Turn On tracking monitoring

  21. Not really. There is a necessary conflation of several things here.
    * taxation
    * road use metering
    * actual cost of motoring

    Governments need tax so they will tax cars.

    Economists rightly say that the use of resources is optimised when prices reflect demand. Road use metering (and congestion charging) is more efficient than a flat rate annual charge that charges granny for her weekly trip to Tescos as much as a white van driver.

    The actual cost of electric motoring will be less than the cost of ICE motoring. The benefits will come from,
    * lower construction costs because there are fewer components
    * lower fuel costs because electricity
    * lower service costs (simpler with fewer parts)

  22. @JB
    The actual cost of electric motoring will be less than the cost of ICE motoring. The benefits will come from

    Three succesive lies there

    Prior is arguably distortion

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