I reckon doing what Norway does and just tax them by the weight of the vehicle to to discourage people buying them while alps making those that do pay for the extra wear and tear in the roads they cause.
Road damage goes up proportionally to the 4th power of vehicle weight: double the weight, 16 times the damage. Vehicle tax should include that as a component. That also indicates that we massively subsidise the use of huge lorries to transport goods.
The roads don’t care about whether the car is ICE or EV. There are plenty of gigantic SUV’s that are hybrids or even electric. Eventually we will see electric 18 wheelers.
There should be an additional tax on ICE’s for their emissions as well to capture that higher externality. But remember EV’s are not emission-free. Anything with tires is a source of pollution.
Personal vehicles cause a lot of problems for humanity, and only some of those are exclusive to ICE’s.
If you tax them the same as gasoline, sure. In the Netherlands, there are so many huge EVs, and I think that’s partially because all EVs, large or small, weren’t taxed.
We made a distinction between gasoline and diesel for tax, no reason we can’t do that with EVs.
I reckon doing what Norway does and just tax them by the weight of the vehicle to to discourage people buying them while alps making those that do pay for the extra wear and tear in the roads they cause.
Road damage goes up proportionally to the 4th power of vehicle weight: double the weight, 16 times the damage. Vehicle tax should include that as a component. That also indicates that we massively subsidise the use of huge lorries to transport goods.
Sadly this does discourage EV growth which I do think still should continue instead of having fuel cars. I’d love if air quality would go up again.
The roads don’t care about whether the car is ICE or EV. There are plenty of gigantic SUV’s that are hybrids or even electric. Eventually we will see electric 18 wheelers.
There should be an additional tax on ICE’s for their emissions as well to capture that higher externality. But remember EV’s are not emission-free. Anything with tires is a source of pollution.
Personal vehicles cause a lot of problems for humanity, and only some of those are exclusive to ICE’s.
A large percentage of microplastics come from car tyres.
Just stagger the classes not just by size and/or weight but also by motor type. For instance, a tax class for ultracompact cars could look like this:
(I basically went with Japan’s current definition of kei cars and replaced the displacement restriction with a weight restriction.)
If you tax them the same as gasoline, sure. In the Netherlands, there are so many huge EVs, and I think that’s partially because all EVs, large or small, weren’t taxed. We made a distinction between gasoline and diesel for tax, no reason we can’t do that with EVs.
Not all EVs are bloated SUVs.
Small EVs generally have more weight tho