Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year

Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by anigbrowl on Wednesday October 06, 2021 @08:59PM (#28780451)

I mean, I think it's OK to charge vehicle owners some kinda usage fee to reflect the cost of congestion, road wear, traffic accidents etc., but it's very poorly implemented as is. An obvious solution seems to be to tax tires which are the dirtiest part of an electric car, need to be replaced moderately regularly but not too often, and which wear down in proportion to the amount and and intensity of use. Offroaders and people who want to do donuts or drive like speed racer will need to replace their tires more often, but taxing tires avoids bureaucratic/administrative overhead.

There are already taxes on tires, but they seem pretty nominal. I think you could hike them substantially (eg to $10 or $20 per tire) without upsetting too many people if you scrapped or reduced some other fee or abolished the necessity for a piece of paperwork.

Edit: as some pointe dout the real wear comes from trucks an dother big commercial vehicles. Tires are already taxed by vehicle weight class, but I'm proposing increasing the fees for that in order to simplify bureaucracy elsewhere.

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by yuliyp on Thursday October 07, 2021 @12:21AM (#28781863)

Tires last too long to make this practical, I think. Let's say a set of tires lasts 30,000 miles. California's current gas tax is 67c/gallon. Let's assume a very efficient 40 mpg. That's 1.6 cents / mile. You'd need a $500 tax on a set of tires to compensate. if you did that, though, you'd need to prevent people from importing tires from other states, which is tricky to do.

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by londons_explore on Thursday October 07, 2021 @02:12AM (#28782778)

You could have a special "California tyre" which has a state approved logo on the side, and require all cars registered in the state use them.

They could be designed to last however many miles the state likes by putting more or less tread on them. And have a very obvious marker they are worn out so police can easily give tickets for people driving on worn out tyres.

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by stubish on Saturday October 09, 2021 @11:51PM (#28815607)

It would have to be a per-year or per-mile tax, or else you will end up with safety issues when people avoid buying new tires (as you say, $500 more)

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by belorn on Thursday October 07, 2021 @03:57AM (#28783429)

The way Sweden and other countries do this is through a car ownership tax, where things like address road usage, traffic accidents, state own parking and other aspects get funded. Gasoline is then taxed independently, so when people buy a electric car they still pay the car ownership tax. On top of those are congestion and road tolls.

Last time someone on HN discussed the Australia law I asked if Australia had a car ownership tax. It seems that they do, but that the money isn't enough to support road maintenance. Seems the easy answer to the new Australia law would be to increase the car ownership tax, lower the gasoline tax to match the increase, and then you don't need a special law for electric cars. No need to reinvent the wheel.

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by rich_sasha on Thursday October 07, 2021 @04:20AM (#28783539)

UK is similar, except roads are upkept from general taxes, for all road users, including cyclists, pedestrians, and of course horses (it’s the UK after all). Plus car ownership tax, and petrol tax.

It’s the common erroneous argument of angry drivers against cyclists: get off my road, you’re not paying for it.

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by belorn on Thursday October 07, 2021 @04:56AM (#28783824)

General taxes is the big alternative. When the sum from petrol tax goes down you need to fill in the missing difference in the budget. Electric car owners don't feel targeted by general taxes. Taxing the fuel was a decent way in the past to move the taxation closer to the party that utilized the roads, but in the future we will need to find a different way.

As a side note about angry drivers, I actively try to avoid being angry with cyclists. They have to be outside in the rain and cold, while inside the car it's pretty nice. I can wait.

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by rich_sasha on Thursday October 07, 2021 @05:08AM (#28783913)

> As a side note about angry drivers, I actively try to avoid being angry with cyclists. They have to be outside in the rain and cold, while inside the car its pretty nice. I can wait.

Thank you!

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by Spivak on Wednesday October 06, 2021 @11:19PM (#28781443)

Honestly I think it should be collected by insurance companies. You’re legally required to have it in basically all states so they’re effectively an arm of the gov’t, (and the BMV can collect it if you go the self-insurance route since you have to put up a cash deposit) plus your insurance company needs to know roughly how much you drive your car and so can charge proportionally.

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by boznz on Thursday October 07, 2021 @12:45AM (#28782062)

car insurance is optional in some countries like NZ

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by nswest23 on Thursday October 07, 2021 @07:05AM (#28784706)

I was under that impression that it _might_ be the case that tire/brake dust pollution was misdirection started by the oil/gas industry? Anyone more informed than me know the real answer to this?

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by rich_sasha on Thursday October 07, 2021 @04:17AM (#28783526)

In the UK tax is paid explicitly per car, in tiers of engine size (for passenger cars) and I should assume emissions / weight for commercial vehicles. Petrol is heavily taxed (by US standards), but that’s everywhere in the continent.

I like the idea of taxing tyres, as it explicitly taxes mileage and pollution. Would it create weird incentives? People running on tyres too long to avoid the tax? Reusing old, more polluting tyres?

Maybe we should just tax on mileage. In fact why not at the pump/charging station...

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Re:Norway to hit 100% electric vehicle sales by early next year by oh_sigh on Thursday October 07, 2021 @12:14AM (#28781798)

You could have something similar to dyed diesel for tires, where, say, orange tires are untaxed and can only be used on private property/off-road, and regular tires can be used on public roadways.

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