All change 2025.

[WelshGas]

Introduction of Vehicle Excise Duty for zero emission cars, vans and motorcycles from 2025

www.gov.uk

 

[soulstyledevon]

I’m not sure this is a smart move. The transition to EV is still painfully slow. There should be more to entice people away from ICE.
Although, the car makers need to do more. By that, I mean reduce new EV vehicle pricing…

 

[BerndRos]

It was bound to happen…..

 

[dspuk]

Everything that can be taxed will eventually be…

 

[Azteccamper]

I’m not sure this is a smart move. The transition to EV is still painfully slow. There should be more to entice people away from ICE.
Although, the car makers need to do more. By that, I mean reduce new EV vehicle pricing…

I’m not sure they want to entice us away from ICE to EV tbh, they want people to stop using cars and one day it will only be the wealthy who can afford to run a vehicle. Only the wealthy will be able to afford flying or houses.
A different world awaits!
(Bit dramatic I know )

 

[bullibuskombi]

Was the 'expensive' car tax not the 'luxury' car tax?
Also, it's been £40,000 for years with the average new car price now over that.

 

[Borris]

IMO, the drive to convert us all to EVs is much more about making money than reducing air pollution or saving the planet. If Governments, industry and other interested parties were serious about either issue they would instead be urging us to keep our current cars for much longer. Inducements such as zero VED were only ever offered to pump prime that drive to replace the entire UK passenger car fleet with a new form of cash cow. No goverment would/could ever allow that sort of zero tax advantage to prevail for very long accross a growing EV fleet.

As for trying to stop us using our cars, if that were their genuine long term aim then how would the truely collosal revenue take milked from every thing to do with our use of the motor car be replaced? Perhaps, that has all been worked out but frankly I some how doubt that.

No, the drive to mass adoption of EVs will create new opportunities to generate tax. Swapping to EV use for environmental reasons is one contentious thing but anyone who thought they were onto a long term financial winner by switching to an EV was/is deluded.

 

[sidepod]

Oooh goody, another EV thread.

 

[soulstyledevon]

IMO, the drive to convert us all to EVs is much more about making money than reducing air pollution or saving the planet. If Governments, industry and other interested parties were serious about either issue they would instead be urging us to keep our current cars for much longer. Inducements such as zero VED were only ever offered to pump prime that drive to replace the entire UK passenger car fleet with a new form of cash cow. No goverment would/could ever allow that sort of zero tax advantage to prevail for very long accross a growing EV fleet.

As for trying to stop us using our cars, if that were their genuine long term aim then how would the truely collosal revenue take milked from every thing to do with our use of the motor car be replaced? Perhaps, that has all been worked out but frankly I some how doubt that.

No, the drive to mass adoption of EVs will create new opportunities to generate tax. Swapping to EV use for environmental reasons is one contentious thing but anyone who thought they were onto a long term financial winner by switching to an EV was/is deluded.

Your current car won’t last forever. Anything with a micro chip has a limited lifespan.
At some point it will need replacing and EV is the right choice for many.

As for taxation. It will at some point in the not to distant future, pay per mile for all. It’s the only fair and reasonable way to tax vehicle use.

 

[Defender90]

Your current car won’t last forever. Anything with a micro chip has a limited lifespan.
At some point it will need replacing and EV is the right choice for many.

As for taxation. It will at some point in the not to distant future, pay per mile for all. It’s the only fair and reasonable way to tax vehicle use.

Unless you own a car without any microchips/ecu’s etc like my old Land Rover lol

 

[GreatResigner]

As long as the real objective is to squeeze more out of us and make more money for big business, then the policies that are meant to protect the environment will be nothing but “greenwash”.

 

[Borris]

Your current car won’t last forever. Anything with a micro chip has a limited lifespan.
At some point it will need replacing and EV is the right choice for many.

As for taxation. It will at some point in the not to distant future, pay per mile for all. It’s the only fair and reasonable way to tax vehicle use.

When was the last time you visited a breakers yard?

Years ago vehicles were there because they were riddled with rust or had genuinely reached the end of their economic life. Not so today. Many vehicles are there not because they are beyond economical repair or have become dangerous but because of a consumer driven society that has been conditioned to think that they have to replace their vehicles every three years. Once over that three year mark these vehicles are considered to be on the slippery slope to the scrapper and the sooner the better as far as goverments and industry are concerned.

Older cars don't rust much any more so why not encourage owners to service them properly and if necessary require them to have them reconditioned. Chips or ECUs were produced in the first place so can be again. An alternative industry could flourish with the entirely green purpose of prolonging the life of an object which has already been produced and has therefore long since created it's own manufacturing carbon footprint. Why create even more pollution by first scrapping it and then making another even more resource hungry "environmentally friendly" EV that requires an entirely new world wide infrastructure to support it and it's like? Instead we have incentives like the moronic car scrappage scheme that gets trotted out from time to time. A scheme that has seen hundreds of thousands of serviceable cars scrapped at enormous cost to the tax payer. Why? Because it supports the drive to replace them with vehicles which are apparently so much more environmentally friendly!

As for my current car not lasting forever, well you are right, everything returns to the earth eventually. However, in the mean time I own six vehicles, they are 114, 111, 100, 19, 4 and 4 years old respectively and are all in full working order. The one that gets used the most is my late father's 19 year old Skoda Fabia 1.4 tdi diesel hatch. It has long since paid it's carbon dues, doesn't depreciate, costs very little to run, averages 60+ mpg and fulfills the same function as any other car EV or ICE on a daily basis. Parts are plentiful and ridiculously cheap and it runs like a dream. There is no reason why it can't continue to run for many years/decades to come and yet this is the very sort of vehicle that Governments want us to scrap and replace with new EVs. I sincerely believe that there is a place for EVs but IMO the drive to phase out ICE vehicles in order to replace them with an alternative EV fleet and infrastructure will prove both short sighted and extremely costly to the environment and our pockets.

As for taxing by the mile, yes I have to agree, that will eventually happen. However, if anyone is naïve enough to think that it will replace VED then they should think again. Instead, it will likely be reincarnated as a nominal annual registration fee. That fee will be minimal at first but will steadily climb year by year thus creating another healthy income stream for the exchequer.

 

[WelshGas]

Pay per Mile will be the replacement for Fuel Duty + Fuel VAT not VED.

 

[Velma's Dad]

As usual lots of implied accusations that all green policies are, fundamentally, thinly disguised plots to raise more tax. I think that's nonsense. Of course governments need to adjust their tax bases as economic activity shifts. In this case the shift towards EVs has been encouraged by successive governments (although not instigated by them - governments just aren't that powerful actually). Many, probably most, politicians are quite sincere in their appreciation of the climate crisis. The problem is that they collude with us, unconsciously on both sides, in the pretence that we're prepared to bear the costs and disruption of actually doing anything really effective about it.

Net Zero by 20XX (pick your preferred date) is a politically devised but also popularly accepted fiction. The target date is always sufficiently far down the line to accommodate a 'reverse hockey stick' of emissions, so allowing successive governments to announce a few token carbon reduction measures while not actually expecting us, the public, to bear any real/substantial pain or even inconvenience within electoral timescales.

(ULEZ expansion, although actually about local air quality rather than CO2, illustrates perfectly how the public is heavily in favour of environmental policies in principle, but not in practice if they involve any actual expense, wither individually or collectively.)

And anyway Net Zero targets in consumer economies like ours conveniently ignore the carbon inputs to the goods/products we import from around the world - while we can conveniently then also whinge about coal and oil burning in China etc where the stuff is made - another excuse to do nothing at home.

GDP growth requires selling more and more large scale consumer products, and no government gets elected during or after a recession.

That's a long way of saying that we are facing the 21st century global challenge of climate change with the political institutions of the 19th century.

I came to the belief a while back that, while like many of us I'm strongly in favour of bold carbon emission strategies (and even prepared to pay for them... up to a point of course ), we also need to accept and plan for the near certainty that the two-degree Paris target will be abandoned as unworkable and we'd better start planning for a mid-century in which the habitability of large parts of the planet will change radically. Our kids will need to work that out. I hope they have more vision and willingness to act than we do.

 

[Viktorgeorge]

As usual lots of implied accusations that all green policies are, fundamentally, thinly disguised plots to raise more tax. I think that's nonsense. Of course governments need to adjust their tax bases as economic activity shifts. In this case the shift towards EVs has been encouraged by successive governments (although not instigated by them - governments just aren't that powerful actually). Many, probably most, politicians are quite sincere in their appreciation of the climate crisis. The problem is that they collude with us, unconsciously on both sides, in the pretence that we're prepared to bear the costs and disruption of actually doing anything really effective about it.

Net Zero by 20XX (pick your preferred date) is a politically devised but also popularly accepted fiction. The target date is always sufficiently far down the line to accommodate a 'reverse hockey stick' of emissions, so allowing successive governments to announce a few token carbon reduction measures while not actually expecting us, the public, to bear any real/substantial pain or even inconvenience within electoral timescales.

(ULEZ expansion, although actually about local air quality rather than CO2, illustrates perfectly how the public is heavily in favour of environmental policies in principle, but not in practice if they involve any actual expense, wither individually or collectively.)

And anyway Net Zero targets in consumer economies like ours conveniently ignore the carbon inputs to the goods/products we import from around the world - while we can conveniently then also whinge about coal and oil burning in China etc where the stuff is made - another excuse to do nothing at home.

GDP growth requires selling more and more large scale consumer products, and no government gets elected during or after a recession.

That's a long way of saying that we are facing the 21st century global challenge of climate change with the political institutions of the 19th century.

I came to the belief a while back that, while like many of us I'm strongly in favour of bold carbon emission strategies (and even prepared to pay for them... up to a point of course ), we also need to accept and plan for the near certainty that the two-degree Paris target will be abandoned as unworkable and we'd better start planning for a mid-century in which the habitability of large parts of the planet will change radically. Our kids will need to work that out. I hope they have more vision and willingness to act than we do.

When you say ‘carbon’ do you mean carbon dioxide.

I assume you do, in which case what is wrong with carbon dioxide anyway?

I understand carbon dioxide is currently 0.04% of the atmosphere and that this is more than 175 years ago but significantly lower proportion if you go back for example 2000 years.

Also, carbon dioxide is essential to all plant growth and is pumped into commercial greenhouses, so what is the problem?

Do you sometimes perhaps wonder if ‘climate change’ is a hoax?

Personally, I don’t think ULEZ is about air quality, though the BBC and the Mayor may say it is.

 

[GrumpyGranddad]

Not an original thought but I reckon the roads just outside the ULEZ (including the M25 in places) might well become more congested with people wanting to avoid the £12.50 charge. The emissions from the volume of additional stop/start traffic outside the zone might negate any ULEZ savings. Of course, Mr Khan won’t measure pollution outside the zone. It’s only the lung health of London children he campaigns on.

 

[flying banana]

When you say ‘carbon’ do you mean carbon dioxide.

I assume you do, in which case what is wrong with carbon dioxide anyway?

I understand carbon dioxide is currently 0.04% of the atmosphere and that this is more than 175 years ago but significantly lower proportion if you go back for example 2000 years.

Also, carbon dioxide is essential to all plant growth and is pumped into commercial greenhouses, so what is the problem?

Do you sometimes perhaps wonder if ‘climate change’ is a hoax?

Personally, I don’t think ULEZ is about air quality, though the BBC and the Mayor may say it is.

Finally,someone gets it. We are carbon based life forms ourselves. Co2 is a trace gas essential for all life on earth and fizzy beer. Why do we want rid of it? If it drops to 0.02 percent plant life dies off. Baffles me. Remember the co2 shortage after those daft lockdowns? Almost shut down society all over again.

 

[OGII]

Pay per Mile will be the replacement for Fuel Duty + Fuel VAT not VED.

I would change "will" to "should". That way we encourage fuel efficient vehicles and people thinking about unnecessary journeys or alternatives.

All the old cars that have paid their carbon dues continue without penalty, the oap driving an old clunker isn't priced out for the few miles they do each week whilst the hypermilage EV driving Tesla person contributes fairly

 

[Velma's Dad]

Do you sometimes perhaps wonder if ‘climate change’ is a hoax?

No, the evidence that rising anthropogenic CO2 (and methane) concentrations are driving rapid atmospheric/oceanic heating is not a hoax. The theory of such effects was first proposed more than a hundred years ago and by the time I first studied it as an undergraduate student in the early 1980s (at UEA - yes, that UEA) the supporting evidence was already becoming conclusive.

I understand carbon dioxide is currently 0.04% of the atmosphere and that this is more than 175 years ago but significantly lower proportion if you go back for example 2000 years.

No, that's wrong. Over the past two millennia atmospheric CO2 concentrations were fairly stable at around 280 ppm (0.028 percent), until about 1850. It had reached 335 ppm when I was a student, and has now gone past 420 ppm and rising fast. In terms of atmospheric impact this is a massive change.

You can of course look at global temperatures against the context of longer-run cycles of heating/cooling (not necessarily CO2-driven), including fluctuations within a range of maybe 0.25 degrees at various times in the past two thousand years (including the 'medieval warm period' and the 'little ice age' in the 1700s). But the new, CO2-driven, 'take-off' of global warming since the mid-19th century is of a different scale - about 1.2 degrees already - and the evidence clearly supports that it is accelerating.

We could debate the specifics but if your starting point is that you honestly think that it's all some kind of hoax you'd have to be some kind of unhinged conspiracy theorist. But that's just my opinion.

 

[Viktorgeorge]

No, the evidence that rising anthropogenic CO2 (and methane) concentrations are driving rapid atmospheric/oceanic heating is not a hoax. The theory of such effects was first proposed more than a hundred years ago and by the time I first studied it as an undergraduate student in the early 1980s (at UEA - yes, that UEA) the supporting evidence was already becoming conclusive.


No, that's wrong. Over the past two millennia atmospheric CO2 concentrations were fairly stable at around 280 ppm (0.028 percent), until about 1850. It had reached 335 ppm when I was a student, and has now gone past 420 ppm and rising fast. In terms of atmospheric impact this is a massive change.

You can of course look at global temperatures against the context of longer-run cycles of heating/cooling (not necessarily CO2-driven), including fluctuations within a range of maybe 0.25 degrees at various times in the past two thousand years (including the 'medieval warm period' and the 'little ice age' in the 1700s). But the new, CO2-driven, 'take-off' of global warming since the mid-19th century is of a different scale - about 1.2 degrees already - and the evidence clearly supports that it is accelerating.

We could debate the specifics but if your starting point is that you honestly think that it's all some kind of hoax you'd have to be some kind of unhinged conspiracy theorist. But that's just my opinion.

I think we are going to have to agree to differ. I am a fan of Patrick Moore's take on C02 and alleged man made climate change:

Sensible Environmentalism—Patrick Moore

Extremism and political leftism now dominate the environmental movement. But it was not always like this; it actually used to be about the environment. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore joins David to discuss.

www.ukcolumn.org

I think that Climate change follows Ukraine which followed Covid - all of them tools to manipulate people with associated lies and propaganda.

 

[flying banana]

I think we are going to have to agree to differ. I am a fan of Patrick Moore's take on C02 and alleged man made climate change:

Sensible Environmentalism—Patrick Moore

Extremism and political leftism now dominate the environmental movement. But it was not always like this; it actually used to be about the environment. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore joins David to discuss.

www.ukcolumn.org

I think that Climate change follows Ukraine which followed Covid - all of them tools to manipulate people with associated lies and propaganda.

I also think this. Along with the red pizza maps on the weather forecast. Also remember Al gore. Inconvenient truth. How long ago was that? Do you know where he now lives? On the coast in a beach front mansion.not too worried about sea levels. Co2 increases with temperature. Not the other way around. Why is it one theory is correct but another theory is instantly wrong? Science should ALWAYS be questioned. Especially after these last few years of following THE science. Einstein and galileo are turning in their graves

 

[Amarillo]

IMO, the drive to convert us all to EVs is much more about making money than reducing air pollution or saving the planet. If Governments, industry and other interested parties were serious about either issue they would instead be urging us to keep our current cars for much longer. Inducements such as zero VED were only ever offered to pump prime that drive to replace the entire UK passenger car fleet with a new form of cash cow. No goverment would/could ever allow that sort of zero tax advantage to prevail for very long accross a growing EV fleet.

As for trying to stop us using our cars, if that were their genuine long term aim then how would the truely collosal revenue take milked from every thing to do with our use of the motor car be replaced? Perhaps, that has all been worked out but frankly I some how doubt that.

No, the drive to mass adoption of EVs will create new opportunities to generate tax. Swapping to EV use for environmental reasons is one contentious thing but anyone who thought they were onto a long term financial winner by switching to an EV was/is deluded.

I expect there were those in the 1890s and well beyond who were convinced the transition from horse to ICE would never last.

The Blackwall Tunnel which opened in 1897 was designed and built specifically for horse traffic. I find it ironic that crossing the Thames by horse is no longer possible downstream of Tower Bridge, with the exception of the intermittently running Woolwich Ferry.

 

[Amarillo]

When you say ‘carbon’ do you mean carbon dioxide.

I assume you do, in which case what is wrong with carbon dioxide anyway?

I understand carbon dioxide is currently 0.04% of the atmosphere and that this is more than 175 years ago but significantly lower proportion if you go back for example 2000 years.

Also, carbon dioxide is essential to all plant growth and is pumped into commercial greenhouses, so what is the problem?

Do you sometimes perhaps wonder if ‘climate change’ is a hoax?

Personally, I don’t think ULEZ is about air quality, though the BBC and the Mayor may say it is.

Climate change caused by human activity is not a hoax. It is very real.

The ULEZ expansion is all about getting those who use London’s roads to pay for them. I wish the mayor would be honest about this and target ALL motorists not just those who can’t afford a modern engine.

About 50% of London households have no car. Why should those 50% be subsidising those who drive on London’s roads and contribute little or nothing extra for London’s roads?

 

[Amarillo]

Not an original thought but I reckon the roads just outside the ULEZ (including the M25 in places) might well become more congested with people wanting to avoid the £12.50 charge. The emissions from the volume of additional stop/start traffic outside the zone might negate any ULEZ savings. Of course, Mr Khan won’t measure pollution outside the zone. It’s only the lung health of London children he campaigns on.

It is not a matter for the London Mayor to dictate to counties surrounding London their health policies.

It is likely that traffic moving at 49-70mph produces significantly less pollutants than traffic dawdling on London’s crowded streets. If more traffic is pushed onto the M25 I expect there will be a net reduction in pollutants.

If I were charged £12.50 per day for using a car or £25 per day for using both cars, my car use would drop significantly and my bicycle use rise significantly. That would be a good thing.

 

[Amarillo]

I think we are going to have to agree to differ. I am a fan of Patrick Moore's take on C02 and alleged man made climate change:

Sensible Environmentalism—Patrick Moore

Extremism and political leftism now dominate the environmental movement. But it was not always like this; it actually used to be about the environment. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore joins David to discuss.

www.ukcolumn.org

I think that Climate change follows Ukraine which followed Covid - all of them tools to manipulate people with associated lies and propaganda.

Do you also believe that David Ike is sane?