Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Electric Cars- collecting Tax

I was talking to my mates in the Pub last night, and the subject of electric cars came up. The problem that all governments of the world have/will have is collecting a new tax to replace the vast amounts made by the selling of patrol. I said that I believe that it is a con by the people in power that we are being pushed into electric, ie once Electric start selling in numbers - the price of electric has to go up. also why is all this extra power coming from. I believe the last count we have about 40 million cars on the road in the UK. Someone said it must now be possible to have a flexible solar panel that can be put on top of cars that charge the car during daylight hours. But of course what Government wants that!

It be good to see what the Talk Morgan community think of this.

I am working with a company at the moment and they have software that is modelling the roof of a city alongside the power consumption in a dynamic model. It is incredible the brain power and effort going into resolving the grid block in this space. Solar panel car roofs have been possible for quite some time. Imagine if the government offered a benefit if you had your house roof MADE out of solar panels instead of tiles with an overlay. Might be interesting.

Being a bit of a sad nerd, I did do some calculations along the lines of what you were discussing in the pub a couple of years ago. Based on a worse case scenario of everyone with a Tesla P80 which is a powerful electric guzzling yank tank and based on best figures I could find for miles driven per workday by all vehicles, I estimated that to charge all the cars over an eight hour night, would still need less demand on the electric grid than the grid currently supplies during the day.

All it would need is reasonable “smart” scheduling of the charging which could be done either automated or through pricing incentives just as economy7 tariffs work.

Of course majority of electric generation is still fossil fuel which in relative terms is easy to control and schedule compared to wind and solar in our climate.

Oh and in terms of solar cells on car bodywork that is not possible. Sunlight at peak is approximately 1kW per metre square. So assuming max surface area for car in plan view of 2 x 4 metres gives 8kW. But solar panels after lots of research still only 15 to 20%efficient. So we are down to roughly 1.5kW per car. Using Nissans figures for their Leaf car it needs 40kW/hr for 160miles. (Probably optimistic)

So one hour in the sun at midday in full sunlight will get us 6 miles down the road. This will decrease with time of day and weather and of course don’t park in a multi storey car park.

Years ago there was a guy driving around Australia in an old Diesel van painted with pictures of vegetables on it and the words "VegeVan". in the back he had some equipment for making BioDiesel from the left over oil from takeaway/ Fish and chip shops. He would pull over in shopping centres, go into takeaway shops collecting the used cooking oil from anyone that would give it to him. Then try show anyone interested his setup saying this is how we save the planet. I saw it a few times while riding my bike to work and it smelt like old fish and chips, not great but better than the typical old diesel van blowing black smoke.

I googled BioDiesel back then and couldn't find much about it apart from on article in a newspaper that the UK had just banned the backyard manufacture of BioDiesel until they work out a way to tax it. So not sure how that went.

Now BioDiesel is available for sale in Australia but not much cheaper than regular, i think there are hardly any people making it themselves and the commercial places selling it are probably paying taxes just like regular diesel. Not sure if that is because it is banned or just not worth doing. As a petrol car owner I never really looked into it.

I did read that the tax collected on petrol has reduced over the years, we are driving more than ever but in cars that are now doing say 7L/100km compared to 12L/100km, My 1968 mini 998 back in 1985 used about 9L/100km and even more on a trip as it struggled to keep up with the speed limit, my wife's Skoda Octavia uses 7L/100km around town and goes down to 5L/100km on a trip. In 2000 excise taxes made up 44% of the government revenue, in 2013 39% due to better engines and with electric cars chances are it will keep dropping even more.

So yes it is a huge chuck of government revenue and somehow it will have to be collected, raising taxes on income is not popular and recently we have had some small tax cuts so the public expects cuts not increases.

I have noticed both my electricity bills and gas bills have gone up recently which I initially attributed to my son spending longer in the shower but I expect it is more taxes on the supply companies being passed on by higher prices to the end consumers. Maybe that is how it will be collected?

Years ago when we built the house we got gas cooking, gas heating and gas hot water. Now in my state (ACT) they want to end up 100% renewal energy so trying to phase out gas, I guess that is probably why the gas has gone up more than the electricity.

In summary for Australia
1, I don't expect petrol excise rates to be increased by the government - it was frozen in 2000 to shut up some whingers when the price went up significantly. But I do expect the price of crude to go down as demand is reduced, so possibly cheaper petrol for a while.
2, I don't expect personal income tax rate increases as that is too politically unacceptable. But I expect any cuts will be less than any increase due to people wages being higher so we will get bracket creep.
3, More taxes on energy supply companies so they put up their prices accordingly.

What if the government paid you to have a roof of solar panels, and paid to maintain then. Then the poor folk could could afford to stay in their homes.

To claw back the the lost income from tax on liquid/gas fuels, they simply have to fit the car with a device that records the distances you travel, send it back to a central server and mail a bill out you, just like existing utilities

There are plenty of reasons for governments to promote the use of electric vehicles including lower end-use pollution and more flexibility in the power source for the electricity they need. Nobody in government thinks they are the answer to the environmental problems we face. I don’t think this is a government « con » in any way, shape or form. Taxes are important in any civilised society and I have no doubt as revenue from fossil fuels decreases another method of taxation will emerge - probably similar to the one Uther has outlined above.

I think Dave and his mates should have stared into their beer glasses for a second more to see where extra tax revenues are going to come from.

The nice thing about putting solar onto your roof is avoiding supplier taxes. But expect governments to start taxing your roof power generation eventually!

When all UK homes have "smart" meters they are likely to have a function that can tell if a car is connected to a charger. I think if you take the grant for a home charger you have to have a smart meter. To tax public chargers would be relatively easy.