250k Economics Prize winner is wrong?

bugslet

vivatifosi wrote: »

Interesting point re electric cars.

The one concern I have is with unintended consequences. If this is rolled out, then the heaviest costs will be borne by haulage companies.

I recall.bugs some time ago mentioning foreign hauliers filling their tanks before getting to the UK, making UK truckers less competitive. This feels like a further detrimental effect.

If the cost of delivery of goods goes up, that would feed into inflation which is already high. Would this penalise the poorest, who can't afford to run a car and therefore gets no beneficial offset, the most?

If there is an equal playing field, then it never concerns me if they move to a different taxation method. If everyone's costs increase in the same way, then we all have to put up our costs by X%.

The toll/ mileage based system could have some advantages. The EU allows it, so I have various boxes for Austria and France etc, same at the Polish and the Spanish truck.

System

Herzlos wrote: »

No reason electric cars can't pay some form of RFL.

They presumably make the same use of the road infrastructure as a petrol car of equal weight? Use the same bridges, flyovers, traffic lights, etc?
The lower tax is only a temporary thing to encourage their uptake - obviously there is no long-term justification for subsidising them.

bugslet

ilovehouses wrote: »

That's pretty much what I thought. People in logistics like working nights as much as the rest of us.

I think it's pretty off that we expect wealth creators to have their efficiency reduced because of traffic jams caused by a service that is meant to be supporting them.

Maybe driverless vehicles will offer a part solution. It does seem crazy that that so much overnight road capacity is wasted.

Driverless, certainly in the immediate future, are going to be viable only for some very basic deliveries - in a few decades as the technology develops, then we can start looking further along that line.

As I said, it's not just not wanting to work at night ( I've done my share I feel:p), it's the amount of other people that have to be involved. For example, on Wednesday I had two drivers and a truck stuck because a piece of paper was missing, it then got political and they had to hang around. If that had happened at night, they would have had to wait for the relevant office at the customers to open the following morning and then not move.

I think we should split office workers so that half of them work during the night:rotfl:, maybe go by alphabet so long as it isn't names beginning with 'b';).

antrobus

Herzlos wrote: »

No reason electric cars can't pay some form of RFL.

How can you tell where the electricity is going when it comes out of the socket?:)

GreatApe

antrobus wrote: »

Plus, of course, all these electric cars will increase demand for electricity. Someone will need to build some more power stations and upgrade the grid.

This probably won't be necessary for two reasons, lots of spare capacity outside of peak periods and importantly UK electricity consumption has been falling for two decades.

It went from 397.3 TWh in 2006 to 338.6 TWh last year.
That is a huge drop in electricity usage. Sufficient to fuel some 26 million EVs or about 81% of the total UK car fleet just from the savings in electricity over a decade!

But even if new power stations were needed it would not be too much of a problem. Its roughly 1 power stations = 4 million cars. So we do not need many additional power stations. Probably none they will just charge outside of non peak hours.

Upgrading the grid. Possibly depending on who and where the charging is done. My guess is that computer driven fleets of EV taxis will charge up at car parks. 20 min fast charging avoiding the peak 4 hours would mean each charging point could charge 60 vehicles a day. A single car park with 1,000 spaces could keep 60,000 EVs fueled up. 60,000 EVs would serve a town of 300,000 people. It would need a dedicated 120 MW connection.

This car park could do the charging and act as maintenance and cleaning for the vehicles.
Even a city as big as London would only need 30 such car parks so its not going to be too difficult on the grid

antrobus

GreatApe wrote: »

This probably won't be necessary for two reasons, lots of spare capacity outside of peak periods and importantly UK electricity consumption has been falling for two decades....

The National Grid says otherwise.

Electric cars will fuel huge demand for power, says National Grid
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/13/electric-car-boom-power-demand-national-grid-hinkley-point-c

I suggest you read their Future Energy Scenarios report rather than relying on your own arithmetic.

GreatApe

antrobus wrote: »

The National Grid says otherwise.

Electric cars will fuel huge demand for power, says National Grid
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/13/electric-car-boom-power-demand-national-grid-hinkley-point-c

I suggest you read their Future Energy Scenarios report rather than relying on your own arithmetic.

I am confident the EVs of the future will have tablet computer screen. The EVs will give their owners 2 options.

1 Smart Charge, charge smartly at affordable rates and optimum battery heath
2 Fast Charge, charge rapidly irrespective of price and battery degrade

Default setting 1
# of users who move over to Fast charge 0.0001% and only once they hit the ok button for 'are you sure this can cost 10 x as much as option 1'

zagubov

As for a fuel tax, I'd save us the cost of all the TV license prosecutions clogging up the courts (10% of crimiinal court cases according to FullFacts) by doing what Israel did. They merged it with a "radio tax" which was already paid via fuel tax on cars, as almost all cars have radios.

GreatApe

ilovehouses wrote: »

Don't forget technology will be marching on even as new technology is being introduced.

The scope for solar increases is massive. You could have central reservations that are covered in solar panels. On the M1 you could have two panels wide by a few hundred miles. Inductive charging technologies could charge as you drive.

Charging parks for robo cars will probably be outdated before the tarmac has dried.

Inductive charging is a silly idea and wont work

Charging parks for robo cars will work because they utilize infrastructure much better than having 30 million individual charging points

These charging car parks would do more than just charging they will employ people to clean and hoover the robo taxis. They will do MOTs and maintenance and repair too. But their primary function would be to fast charge robo cars.

I can see a future where a car might be fast charged to 90% within 6 minutes.
These car parks would be small with as little as 10 spaces and 10 super chargers. they could recharge 15,000 cars a week which would be sufficient to keep a fleet of EVs that could constantly serve a town of ~100,000 people. The capital cost and running cost to maintain a car park with 10 spaces and 10 superchargers would be very small. Compare that to trying to lay hundreds of miles of induction rigs across all roads in a town that would be horrific.

It might even be fully automated. A single super charger but it is utilized fully 20 hours a day charging 200 cars up each day. Smart software schedules it so as one car is finished charging the next one just arrives. Just 10 such super chargers dotted around town would be sufficient for a town of 100,000

steampowered

The reasons given by the Op are not particularly good reasons for dismissing the suggestion out of hand.

Obviously there are pros and cons with what this person is suggesting, but I'm sure there was a lot of very detailed work done to support his findings. If you aren't prepared to listen to new ideas and challenge old ones, nothing is going to improve.