New road tax rules...

RaymondLin

I think the whole VED tax is a weird idea, there is already tax in fuel, so by logic the more fuel you use, the more tax you are paying.  The bigger the engine typical the more thirsty it is and you are paying for that privilege.

Sporky

ICBM said:

The only sensible thing you can do is to reverse the incentivisation in a way that encourages less people to buy diesels and those that have them already to try to use them less and/or consider getting rid of them sooner.

There's ways of going about it though. This is the equivalent of slamming the gearbox into reverse at motorway speeds.

blobb

Diesel particulates are more damaging than petrol. I was told this over twenty years ago by my professor at college, specialist in combustion and energy stuff. He also told me that diesel will be championed as a 'Green' option, politicians will jump on the bandwagon, diesels will become prolific as a result of misguided incentivisation of fuel tax and when the penny drops we will have a chaotic backtracking against diesel engines.

So, what happened then?

This is why I have always bought petrol.

Before Eco-politics became popular, no politician wanted to go anywhere near this sort of stuff but now it's everywhere. You can throw recycling on that same pile, along with all the other energy / environmental / transport strategies.

 

ICBM

Bidley said:

ICBM said:

The government can't afford to pay to scrap every diesel car sold in the last fifteen years.

Just as fucking well! They'd have to replace the cars like-for-like - unless you think the government coming to your house, taking your car and destroying it is acceptable

No… scrappage is when you want to replace your car, they pay you the market value of your car and scrap it - so it doesn't get back into the secondhand car market. You then go and buy the one you were going to anyway. They did the same thing a few years ago, I forget why now - the car industry was in bad shape or something.

RaymondLin said:

I think the whole VED tax is a weird idea, there is already tax in fuel, so by logic the more fuel you use, the more tax you are paying.  The bigger the engine typical the more thirsty it is and you are paying for that privilege.

Exactly, which is why I think it's fairer to do it by taxing diesel at least at the correct rate to reflect its carbon content. But they don't seem to like that idea so they're doing it by a more complicated and less effective means. I'm actually surprised that the VED difference makes that much difference to most people anyway, it's a very small part of your annual transport cost. It didn't make me think about getting a diesel, and it wouldn't have done even if diesels paid no VED at all… I'm not sure how much the financial difference would have needed to be, there would presumably have been some point at which I wouldn't have been able to justify resisting it.

But essentially diesel owners have been unfairly subsidised for the last fifteen years compared to petrol owners - and are still being, on the fuel tax - so I'm sorry if I don't have much sympathy now that costs are going to have to go up slightly. Go and find Gordon Brown and complain to him .

Nitefly

DiscoStu said:

My current tax is £20, which was one of the persuading factors when buying my car. It would now be £140. 

@DiscoStu - the new rules only apply to cars registered on or after 1st April 2017, so your existing car won't be affected - carry on at £20 per year.

RaymondLin

I think the incentive to save £100 a year on VED to drive a more "boring" car seems just illogical.

Everyday we spend money on things we enjoy.  Another £100 or another £200 on something that I enjoy getting into is worth every penny.  Not to mention it costs like £80 to fill up every 400 miles or so and that happens like every other week for me so in the grand scheme of things, when you divide that £100 or £200 over the course of the year, it's not something that would impact the bottomline.*  

disclaimer - people who don't like driving and people who £100 means the difference between having a roof or not need not reply.

I pay £290 or so for VED, last car was £215, I didn't even think about how much the VED was when buying the car because given the choice say....pay £300 to drive a turbo petrol or keep £280 to drive a diesel?

Errrrrrrrrrrrr that's a no brainer surely.

sweepy

Just as a little aside, my Wife, who is disabled and therefore gets a Motability vehicle has to pay a higher upfront charge of usually £1000 for the petrol option over the diesel for a particular model. Once again, joined up thinking does not exist in the DLA and DVLC, 

DiscoStu

Nitefly said:

DiscoStu said:

My current tax is £20, which was one of the persuading factors when buying my car. It would now be £140. 

@DiscoStu - the new rules only apply to cars registered on or after 1st April 2017, so your existing car won't be affected - carry on at £20 per year.

Aye I realise that. What I was trying to say (badly) is that if it was this year that I was buying a new car instead of last year then the new charges would probably make me pick something different. 

Bidley

VED isn't the only incentive for driving a diesel. 9 times out of 10 it's more economical, fuel-wise. My VED is only £20 a year cheaper, but it's £50 a month cheaper to fuel.

Why the bitterness over diesel, @ICBM? Genuine question. If petrol cars were the cheaper of the two, I'd use them. Neither of the two are great for environment.

Sporky

Bidley said:

Neither of the two are great for environment.

And you can bet that once the government's taxed everyone into petrols there'll be plenty of evidence that they don't, actually, pump out nothing but sunshine and happiness (as the anti-diesel brigade like to pretend). The government will, of course, respond by increasing VED to get us into electric cars, at which the cycle will start again.

Nitefly

DiscoStu said:

Nitefly said:

DiscoStu said:

My current tax is £20, which was one of the persuading factors when buying my car. It would now be £140. 

@DiscoStu - the new rules only apply to cars registered on or after 1st April 2017, so your existing car won't be affected - carry on at £20 per year.

Aye I realise that. What I was trying to say (badly) is that if it was this year that I was buying a new car instead of last year then the new charges would probably make me pick something different. 

Aha, got it - sorry!

Although, under the new rules, it seems most cars you or I might look at will be £140, so < £3 per week; as @RaymondLin suggested above, might not be such a big deal...

I wonder what impact the current rules are having on company cars, where fleet managers will be doing their damnedest to keep costs down?

Majorscale

I bet the German manufacturers are concerned as the 40k barrier for the £310 supplement includes options and only deals with list prices. 

ICBM

Bidley said:

VED isn't the only incentive for driving a diesel. 9 times out of 10 it's more economical, fuel-wise. My VED is only £20 a year cheaper, but it's £50 a month cheaper to fuel.

Why the bitterness over diesel, @ICBM? Genuine question. If petrol cars were the cheaper of the two, I'd use them. Neither of the two are great for environment.

No bitterness - just pointing out that those who have had the benefit of an unjustified subsidy - which I admit was not their doing, but which they chose to take advantage of - on top of another unjustified subsidy in the fuel tax, are now moaning that they're being unfairly penalised, which in my opinion is untrue. You are not even paying a fair price for the fuel, compared to petrol.

I did choose intentionally to not take advantage of the subsidy, yes - that was my decision and I'm not asking you to pay me back the extra cost of petrol and VED I've spent over the last fifteen years driving a petrol car when I could have been driving a diesel. So don't ask me to agree that it's unfair if your VED or fuel price is going to go up, even if it's not your fault that they were too cheap.

I have always known that diesel is more pollutive than petrol - it doesn't take a genius to know that. What's less obvious is that although it is actually slightly more efficient than petrol, the raw fuel consumption figures - which is what a lot of people base this on - are misleading because a large part of that 'greater mpg' is simply down to the greater amount of carbon per gallon that diesel contains - about 16%, which is why diesel should automatically be that much more expensive. In fact, once you take that into account, for the least efficient types of driving - stop-start in town - diesel can work out *less* efficient than petrol, in some cars. Not only that, the type of pollution it produces is far more dangerous.

Given that Gordon Brown made an extremely stupid mistake in encouraging people to move to diesel, and what we now know (or more accurately, was known all along, although not in as much detail as we now have) about how pollutive it is, what are you proposing should be done about it, if you don't want road tax to go up and you don't want diesel prices to go up? We can't go back and fix Brown's mistake now, but we have to fix the problem it caused somehow.

Stevepage

Increasing the tax on diesel fuel will have a knock on effect and you'll see price increases for even simple things like food.

Haulage companies will struggle to keep paying to fill up their trucks while trying to stay competitive. The same goes for buses.

ICBM

There would need to be tax rebates for hauliers and bus operators, which would be fairly easy to arrange since they're all businesses. I know they're a pollution problem as well - worse than diesel cars - but there are no easy alternatives, unlike with cars.

There aren't any good options to fix this mess, only bad ones and worse ones, but that doesn't mean we can throw up our hands and do nothing about it. We have to start somewhere - the evidence about how harmful diesel particulates are is only going to grow.

The simplest of all options would be just to ban the sale of new diesel cars, starting say in 2019 to give the manufacturers time to replace their existing models. But we don't like to do things like that in this country for some reason, we rely on market forces to persuade people to make 'informed' choices.

But unless we do something, drastic measures like that are going to become necessary anyway - already, several major cities are proposing outright diesel bans.

Although it hasn't been mentioned yet, it wouldn't surprise me if London is one of those before too long.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/london-toxic-smog-alert-issued-for-next-three-days-in-public-health-emergency-a3443381.html

EricTheWeary

Lots of knickers in a twist on the camper/ motorhome forums, with people misreading this, as they are mostly diesel vehicles.
Would be a huge hike in tax on a brand new vehicle but if you can afford £40k and up then it's probably not a deal breaker. 

Sporky

ICBM said:

What's less obvious is that although it is actually slightly more efficient than petrol, the raw fuel consumption figures - which is what a lot of people base this on - are misleading because a large part of that 'greater mpg' is simply down to the greater amount of carbon per gallon that diesel contains - about 16%, which is why diesel should automatically be that much more expensive.

But the price of fuel is much more complex than simply the amount of energy it contains. And as you say, diesel engines are more efficient - whether you look at the official figures or the real mpg on Fuelly or similar, a diesel is a lot more than 16% more efficient than a petrol with equivalent performance.

The manufacturers are also working - and have been for some time - on the issues with diesels, hence particulate filters and adblue etc.

I'd say a bit more nuance would be helpful; diesels that are mostly used for longer trips and mostly on the motorways and A-roads (and there are lots of them) aren't causing enormous damage. It's the diesel superminis and similar that trundle around town on short journeys with cold DPFs that are harming people.

I'd suggest that the way to get people over to hybrid and electric and so on is to bring in - on an announced timetable - fees and restrictions for in-town and in-city use based on which Euro regulations the car meets. That way people who drive in town will sell their cars to people who don't (the latter not being penalised) and buy something that meets the current advice (which, no doubt, will change if the government's coffers get low). That cleans up the towns and cities without punishing anyone. You could also offer scrapage on any non-DPF diesel that's traded against a hybrid or electric car, which would get the worst polluters off the roads.

You also need a shift from the manufacturers - we've discussed this before. There's just not a lot of petrol choice for some car types. I know my tastes aren't mainstream, but I don't think anyone came up with a small, AWD petrol estate with some ground clearance and a bit of go.

As I said, there are ways to go about encouraging change that don't punish people for doing what they were told to do.

ICBM

That's all true, but you can't simply say that because the problem is complex we must carry on with the market distortion which is causing a large part of it in the first place. It's not even as if we need to introduce a new market distortion - simply cancel the existing one. But it appears that anyone who is going to have to pay more to drive exactly the car they want is up in arms about it, which is sadly typical.

I'm a bit in the same boat with car choice too - we have two cars which will both need replacing in the next few years, a MPV - which are very hard to find a good choice of in petrol now - and a small 4WD. The choice for the 4WD looks like either a Suzuki SX4 (don't know if that's big enough for you) or that Subaru (which looks nice, but I can't afford). Not sure what I'm going to do about the MPV, but I will not buy a diesel.

Sporky

ICBM said:

That's all true, but you can't simply say that because the problem is complex we must carry on with the market distortion which is causing a large part of it in the first place.

I didn't say that, though.

I offered a simple way to get the diesels out of city centres without anyone being punished. It'd lead to diesels becoming less desirable in city centres, which would reduce the supply to the second hand market. You could also restrict sales of new diesels because there'd be enough coming through the market to sustain the short term needs of the used market.

It doesn't punish anyone for doing what they were encouraged to do, and it gets rid of diesels quickly in city centres and at a sensible rate elsewhere. What's not to like?

ICBM

I agree with what you're suggesting, but I don't think it goes far enough - there is still an incentive to buy and use diesels, and you're still paying too little for the fuel relative to petrol - even if diesel was taxed to correctly reflect the carbon content it would *still* be cheaper to drive a diesel, just not as much. You'd still be punishing people who have already bought a diesel and need to use it in the city anyway. There's no way of doing this without someone having to pay more, since the government doesn't have the money to subsidise everyone else. And I honestly do not agree that taking away a subsidy that should never have existed in the first place and which people have benefitted from considerably over many years is the same as penalising them.

But as with all things related to cars, any increase in cost whatever for any reason is unfair .