RichardW wrote:Mandrake wrote:That 120kWh at 13.7p/kWh would cost me £16 on my monthly electricity bill - at the moment I pay around £90 in petrol for the same distance. (OK I do drive a petrol V6...
) If I had dual rate electricity and charged the car on the night rate I could potentially halve that to £8 a month for 300 miles.
Works out about 18 mpg... Ouch!!
I must have got my numbers a bit wrong, according to fuelly, my average MPG over the last year is 21.3 - and the majority of that driving is the daily commute which is a lot of slow stop start driving. (Although it tells me my last fill up was only 19.6MPG
)
If we level the playing field, ie take out the Gov influence, then raw cost of electricity is £15.20. Petrol tax is currently 57.95p / l. Take this and VAT out and you get a raw cost of £31.54. Doesn't quite level the field, but getting closer! In my car, 300 miles only costs £36. Strip the Gov influence out of this, and you get a raw cost of £12.61. Not that a 110 BHP skip is really equivalent to a Sports car! When / if EV takes off mainstream, then expect HMG to impose costs on it somehow - secondary meters perhaps?
Yes good point about road tax (and 20% VAT) being included in petrol/diesel prices but not in electricity! That is not a completely fair comparison. Eventually something will have to be done about that (from the governments point of view) but for those early adopters of EV's they can take advantage of the fact that they're basically dodging the fuel component of road tax at the moment and take that as an added bonus but not something to rely on long term.
As for how to collect road usage tax on EV's, adding it to the cost of electricity or using "specially metered" electricity is not the solution, as you need to be able to charge your car anywhere, including on a standard 13A household socket, and if you bundled the charge with electricity it means those who charged their cars from the grid would be paying road user tax and those who charged their cars from their own solar panels would be dodging any road user charges! (As they currently are even when charging from the grid, while this loophole exists)
Some other countries already have a solution for this - unbundle the road user tax from the pump price and bill vehicles (regardless of method of fuelling, petrol, diesel, electricity) road user tax separately from filling up/charging, based on miles travelled and the class of vehicle. (Car, light truck, Lorry etc)
In New Zealand road user tax is bundled in petrol as it is here in the UK however it has never been bundled in the cost of Diesel in NZ. Diesel costs less than half that of petrol due to the road tax being paid separately on a yearly basis, based on the number of km/year you did and the category of vehicle.
It is done this way I believe because until the early 90's diesel cars in NZ were almost non-existent, Diesel was used for stationary engines and farm vehicles like tractors etc (neither of which should pay road tax as they don't use the roads) and commercial vehicles - which paid their road tax separately based on mileage and class of vehicle - which is a much fairer scheme because you are paying for the amount of damage you do the road, and the amount of congestion you cause. Obviously a big lorry travelling 1000 miles causes more road wear and tear and more road congestion (requiring upgraded motorways) than a car travelling the same distance, so it makes sense to have road tax bands for different classes of vehicles, based on their impact on the road system.
When road tax is bundled into the pump price those with lower MPG cars are at an unfair disadvantage where they not only pay for their increased fuel usage, they pay more than their fair share of road tax - my Xantia V6 pays a lot more road tax than a 2.0HDi Xantia per mile even though the effects on road wear and congestion are identical.
With a separate per mile road tax applied fairly between petrol/diesel/electric cars you then have a more level playing field, so I think what will happen is that EV's will be charged a mileage based road tax as Diesels in New Zealand currently are, and eventually road tax will be un-bundled from petrol and diesel pump prices and paid separately based on vehicle class and mileage. It's the only fair way to do it really, although the transition could be messy! At least it would get rid of the hassles of Red Diesel though...
I don't necessarily see a problem with this separate road user charge - I accept that money has to go towards maintaining the road network, and all road users should pay their fair share towards it...and it's hard to cheat the system when mileage figures are recorded at your yearly MOT. In fact I think in NZ (where cars need a warrant of fitness every year for new cars and every 6 months for cars older than 3 years) it is the mileage taken at the testing station and recorded on the national computer system that is used to allow the government to bill your road usage charges - they know exactly what your yearly mileage is...
We could even get into 'electricity credits trading' - a bit like carbon credits trading, only for the domestic market 
