DVLA is screwing us again

Joe_Horner

Don't judge my car by other old ones you see running around, please. I don't have visible soot because I keep it running properly. In fact, I've seen far more clouds of soot on acceleration from modern diesels that onlder ones because, when they do go wrong, they go very expensively wrong and people don't fix them.

As for the question of what people can be encouraged to do - you took on a new car, with depreciation that will FAR outweigh any road tax or fuel saving because they plugged it.

No reason they couldn't advertise the "save money and the environment by driving sensibly" angle like they did with the bogus "new cars make less CO2" claims. Only, then there'd be an element of truth in it.

Trebor16

Joe_Horner wrote: »

Don't judge my car by other old ones you see running around, please. I don't have visible soot because I keep it running properly. In fact, I've seen far more clouds of soot on acceleration from modern diesels that onlder ones because, when they do go wrong, they go very expensively wrong and people don't fix them.

You may think your car isn't pushing out soot but the facts are a car of that age will be far more polluting than a modern one.

Joe_Horner wrote:

As for the question of what people can be encouraged to do - you took on a new car, with depreciation that will FAR outweigh any road tax or fuel saving because they plugged it.

You should be careful when making assumptions Joe. I didn't buy my car new.

Joe_Horner wrote:

No reason they couldn't advertise the "save money and the environment by driving sensibly" angle like they did with the bogus "new cars make less CO2" claims. Only, then there'd be an element of truth in it.

The facts are that newer cars do produce less CO2 than older ones. My current car is 20% more fuel efficient than its predecessor, so the claims are hardly bogus. As for a campaign, it would be as effective as all the previous campaigns, which is not very effective.

Joe_Horner

Trebor16 wrote: »

You may think your car isn't pushing out soot but the facts are a car of that age will be far more polluting than a modern one.



You should be careful when making assumptions Joe. I didn't buy my car new.



The facts are that newer cars do produce less CO2 than older ones. My current car is 20% more fuel efficient than its predecessor, so the claims are hardly bogus. As for a campaign, it would be as effective as all the previous campaigns, which is not very effective.

Dealing with your second point first, if it's in band C for tax then it's still going to be new enough to be depreciating. You may have missed the initial "off the forecourt" hit but, if it's losing more than £195 a year in value, then the saving on tax will be less than the depreciation compared to mine which is no longer depreciating at all.

If it's losing £500 a year in value, then you need to be getting over 66mpg average out of it (assuming 10k miles / year) to break even with mine, including the difference in tax AND the fuel saving.

So I stand by my original post.


As for pollution and CO2. Tax bands aren't based on "pollution", they're based on CO2 emissions. While it may be true that my old car is throwing out more nasty stuff than a modern, it's not true that it's producing any more CO2 than a modern giving the same (real life) MPG.

Fuel consumption of 50mpg will produce 148.7 grams of CO2 for every kilometer driven (for diesel - the figures are slightly different for petrol), regardless of whether it's in a modern car, a 1990's Pug or a 1930 Austin 7 (if they'd made a diesel version).

So, from the point of view of CO2 emissions, which is the ONLY factor considered for road tax bands, my '90s Pug (driven as I drive it) is exactly the same as any more modern diesel that gives a real life consumption of 50mpg average.

Ultrasonic

Trebor16 wrote: »

I already drive a band C car with road tax at £30 so at my current mileage level I would be paying an extra £82.50 a year so therefore worse off.

Yes I understood that you have a band C car - I wrote post #37 specifically with this in mind. Although I'm not quite sure where your £82.50 figure comes from now that I think about it as this doesn't correspond to any current difference between VED bands.

Trebor16 wrote:

If you think that by abolishing road tax and increasing the fuel duty will encourage all drivers to drive more economically then you really are naïve. It won't happen.

Then why are there so many posts on this forum from people looking for economical cars to reduce their fuel (not VED) costs? I'd be interested if there have been any studies done on this, but I strongly suspect that as fuel prices have risen that on average people are driving more economically as a result. I'd be curious if for instance average motorway speeds had dropped - I suspect they have.

Trebor16 wrote:

As for your point about cars producing low emissions when driven in an economical manner, that has always been the case with any vehicle, not just the newer ones.

True, but the difference between official and real world mpg figures is growing (see e.g. this report) and it is the official figures that are used to determine VED. Many cars with the best official economy ratings also have auto stop-start systems. These can and are switched off by drivers, but they don't hand back any of their VED saving when the do, just as they don't if they choose to drive uneconomically. As Joe Horner has said, tax on fuel useage most reliably rewards those who use the least fuel driving (by driving economically and by limiting how far they drive).

I won't get dragged into an argument about it here, but for the record I do believe that climate change is a very real problem and that limiting vehicle CO2 emissions is one of the many avenues that need to be persued to address this.