Greener car discounts to be removed to pay for new road-building fund

gzoom

Joe_Horner wrote: »

If Ford can't sell us petrol engines, they'll sell us electric motors instead. If BP can't sell us oil, they'll sell us wind- or solar- or nuclear power. In fact, the current drive to be "green"* presents them with enormous possibilities for expansion and new markets.

For Ford/VW/GM etc, it is very ture they will just sell us a car with a eletricy motor - Incidently I cannot wait for that to happen.

BUT for BP/Shell a transition to electric power coupled with the drive for more solar/wind generation is a killer. The Sun comes out every day, it's a 100% fact/certaintly of living on this planet, and for 99.9% of the planet (apart from polar caps) it's a 'FREE' energy source. Unlike fossel fuels, it doens't need to dug up, processed, transported.

Before I got an electric car, I didnt realise even a moderate size solar panel on the roof of my house can produce enough electricty to cover our entire domestic needs!! Solar panels are also getting more efficent, pair solar energy up with local energey storage via a battery pack (The same technology as found in electric cars), and all of a sudden you have a situation where after an initial captial investment in solar panels + batteries, your have totally FREE access to electricty, for as long as the Sun comes up every moroning....Aparently in the UK the wind farms are so good at generating power they are often switched OFF because they are generating TOO much power at the wrong time. So battery storage + renewable generation may well be more than good enough to meet the power demands for every one.

Your right about expansion, the isle of Skye is now been sold as advert to countires around the world where a combination of renewable energy, and changes in the way the grid is setup is the way fowards for energy generation - IE: Localised power generation rather than the current centralised model.

Just remeber Renewable energy = FREE energy, in the long run there is no way gas/coal/nuclear can compete interms of ecnomic cost, because all the tradtional ways of power generation requires fuel - which costs money, renewable by definition requires nothing more than sun/sea/wind. So fundlementally speaking which ever country can transfer power generation into renewable sources the quickets will have a HUGH financial advantage over everyone else. £££ and $$$ is going to drive the development of renewable energy generation, not neccessarly enviormental concerns.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/12/renewable-energy-wind-changed-fortunes-lewis-islanders

http://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/article/orenda-energy-signs-major-trade-agreement-with-20150616

So Shell/BP etc have an active interest to kill electic cars dead, because if the mass market move away from the internal combustion engine, and the energy compaines start moving towards solar/wind power generation + battery storage, the demand for fossill fuels WILL drop, and significently so.

This is one of the reasons the like of Shell are really keen for hydrogen fuel cell cars to take over from battery electric cars....So that they can keep on selling us 'V power Hydrogen'



Ofcourse BP/Shell could really start taking an interest in helping to protect us from UV radiation.....;)

tberry6686

I for one am glad that they are finally going to hit the not so green cars with tax.

How many people realise that these electric (and hybrid) cars are amongst the most polluting vehicles on the market (when you take into account lifetime pollution).

cepheus

peter_the_piper wrote: »

Your link Author:Peter Thomas
Date Updated:10th Mar 2015

Any up to date info Ceph?

There are two links, the first provides the current bands, the second link labelled £140 provides the new data which were announced in the budget. It's very difficult to find a single page with both, unless you wan't the MSE version with most of the bands missed out. Unfortunately the tables from the two links can't be copied out.

The point is that from 2017 if people wan't a smaller car which emits less pollution and uses less fuel they will be paying the same rate as a large dirty gas guzzler unless they go electric, change to a brand new car every year, or choose to drive a progressively older car registered before 2017. This might seem innocuous since it seems well into the future, but it sends the wrong signal for when our children start driving.

AdrianC

cepheus wrote: »

The point is that in the future if people wan't a smaller car which emits less pollution and uses less fuel they will be paying the same rate as a large dirty gas guzzler.

No, not quite.

Year 1 figures are still CO2 related, starting at £10/yr for <50g/km, and £25 for 51-100g; going to £2,000 for 255g+. That's before the £310/yr premium for five years for everything with a £40k+ list price.

So some people will pay £10 the first year, others will pay £2,310. Some people will pay £140/yr for the next four years, others will pay £450.

So, after five years, some cars will have paid £570 total. Others will have paid £4,110.

Johnmcl7

cepheus wrote: »

The point is that in the future if people wan't a smaller car which emits less pollution and uses less fuel they will be paying the same rate as a large dirty gas guzzler.

They may be paying the same VED rate but they're not going to be paying the same amount for fuel, an inefficient car is still going to be far more expensive on diesel/petrol than an efficient car and the current VED difference is small compared to the difference in fuel costs over any reasonable sort of mileage.

It's also questionable to call low CO2 cars 'green' since many of the diesels are producing high figures of nitrous oxide (at times higher than the official euro limits because during DPF regens the engine produces higher levels of nitrous oxide) which can be considerably worse for air quality and the CO2/mpg figures are not accurate either as the manufacturers are able to produce highly misleading figures. The government is in trouble with the EU for high Nitrous Oxide emissions and the new VED rates seem the first step in reducing the number of diesels being purchased.

John

Joe_Horner

gzoom wrote: »

[...]

BUT for BP/Shell a transition to electric power coupled with the drive for more solar/wind generation is a killer [...]

No it's not. The capital investment you mention for "going renewable" is (a) unaffordable for the vast majority of the world's population (b) WILL remain so regardless of economies of scale because of the materials etc required for anything like efficiency, and (c) isn't a one-off payment. Solar cells, turbines, and (especially) batteries have finite lives. In many cases these are proving to be FAR shorter than anticipated by their proponents.

That's why "local" renewable simply won't work - the costs are too high for anybody below "comfortable western middle class" (funnily enough, the socio-economic group that seems to be most in favour...) to even consider buying in on an individual scale, so centralised generation and distribution will continue.

The likes of BP, Shell and so on have more than enough economic muscle to own the supply of the very-much non renewable hardware needed for renewable generation, and also to do very nicely thank you from the generation / distribution side.

Are you really naive enough to believe that they've been digging up all these finite resources with no plan or idea for how they'll continue when they do eventually run out?

almillar

NI does car tax separately to GB, so ignore them.

Nope, our system has been merged with the DVA system, so it's administered under the same system. We do have our own road budget though, like Scotland and Wales.

It was absolutely inevitable that excise duty for "green" cars would have to rise

'Green' cars does not include petrol and diesel cars under the new rules. And yes, the Chancellor did say that the current system is unsustainable.
Car emissions have fallen massively, and won't be going up any time soon. So if it was meant to make consumers think about it, it's worked.

The point is that from 2017 if people wan't a smaller car which emits less pollution and uses less fuel they will be paying the same rate as a large dirty gas guzzler unless they go electric, change to a brand new car every year, or choose to drive a progressively older car registered before 2017

I do see your point, but remember that if it's the environment you're concerned about, the 2017 car will emit the same as the 2016 one. And if it's financial, the economical cars (largely, the ones that emit the least CO2) will cost far less to run, and give the Gov far less tax, through VAT and Fuel Duty.
No-one is being rewarded for running gas guzzlers, and the rewards for running economical cars have got £140 per year less, but they're still there.

Oh yes, and diesel. It gets rewarded for being low CO2, whilst spewing soot into the air (or into a DPF). Not clean and unfairly incentivised under the CO2 bands.

andrewf75

tberry6686 wrote: »

I for one am glad that they are finally going to hit the not so green cars with tax.

How many people realise that these electric (and hybrid) cars are amongst the most polluting vehicles on the market (when you take into account lifetime pollution).

interesting point

I remember ages ago reading something that claimed the greenest car in the world was a Land Rover.

Is a Toyota Prius going to be still going in 30 years even 20?

almillar

interesting point

But with absolutely no backup. Nissan Leaf for example is mostly recyclable (and in the case of the batteries, re-usable) so, at least for pure electrics (with far fewer parts), where's the evidence?
Not compared to old Landies, but compared to buying any other car. Please include the transport and production of the fuel for each car.

molerat

All new cars should have a CO2 cost at the showroom, cost to build and transport to the point of sale. It won't happen because the "newer car is greener" myth would be blown apart.