The hell you say! Let’s consider that a Kia Niro hybrid starts at $24690. The EV version? $39090. That’s not an insignificant chunk of change. The VW ID4 starts at $39995. The Tiguan, about the same size, starts at $2545. Oh, and then there’s this little tidbit from Jolly Old England
Don’t kid yourself: electric cars won’t save you money
Does anyone really believe that owning an electric car will end up saving them money? If you have fallen for the claims that lower running costs will more than make up for the higher purchase price of an electric car then you haven’t spotted something rather large that is barrelling down the middle of the road straight towards you: road pricing.
It would be easy to write off today’s report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change — which calls for road-pricing — as the work of a powerless and frustrated man trying to re-live his glory days as Prime Minister. Blair, you might just remember, attempted to lumber road-pricing upon us in the dying days of his premiership but was beaten back by public opposition. But he has a point. The switch to electric cars is going to cost the Treasury so much — £30 billion a year or the equivalent of six pence on income tax by 2040 according to Blair’s institute – that it is simply going to have to try to recoup that cost somehow. If it isn’t in the form of jacking up taxes on electricity – a political impossibility given that the government will be simultaneously trying to persuade us to dump our gas boilers for heat pumps – it is likely to come in the form of charging us for every mile we drive on the roads.
Yes, owners of electric cars currently pay less for their energy than do drivers of petrol and diesel cars, but it is not a fair comparison because it ignores the tax differential. For every pound you spend on petrol or diesel, around 60 pence goes to the Exchequer in tax. Charge your electric vehicle at home, on the other hand, and you pay just five percent VAT. Take into account that pure electric vehicles pay zero Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) and, according to the calculations by Blair’s institute, electric vehicle-owners pay just two percent of the motoring taxes paid by drivers of petrol and diesel cars.
Just wait, then, until the government tries to make up its losses. You won’t be so impressed with your electric vehicle then, not when the whole of Britain is peppered with London congestion charge-style levies. It is a precondition of road pricing schemes that all vehicles are monitored constantly. We will have to be followed around, either through an enhanced network of number plate recognition cameras or by GPS devices fixed in our cars. Every journey we make will logged and the data stored. Given how DVLA already co-operates with private parking companies by flogging them our home addresses, don’t be surprised if it assumes the right to start selling our mobility data to all kinds of marketing organisations who can then target us with ads tailored to which places we frequent.
Oh, but that’s England. They wouldn’t do something like that here, right? In fact, this has already been discussed as Surrender Joe and Gavin Newsome have pushed to replace all fossil fueled vehicles, even regular hybrids, with EVs. Think back to when Obama was raising the CAFE standards, and gas tax revenue was dropping (people like better fuel economy, in most cases), so they were talking about raising the gas taxes, at both the state and federal levels. And implementing “road pricing”, meaning charging you for how many miles you drove. Hybrid owners were incensed. And this would have been on top of a gas tax.
But, at least it would have been simple, simply charging for miles driving. The Blair Institute goes further
It is suggested motorists could be charged a flat rate for every mile they travel, with each driver allowed a number of free miles per year.
But it warns that such a system would be unlikely to have much of an impact on congestion.
Another suggestion is to bring charges based on geography similar to London’s congestion zone or to apply a sliding scale of cost based on how long each journey takes.
The final proposal is to bring in a dynamic road user charging system, similar to one in Singapore, where higher costs are applied to the most congested routes at the busiest times of day.
So, figuring out ways to charge people forced into EVs they cannot afford no matter the situation. Think the Modern Socialists/Warmists in the U.S. aren’t paying attention?
And then there’s the notion of tracking you, because you can bet that what happens is not a simple sending of how many miles you drive to the government.
A car salesman who actually knows what he’s talking about wrote:
Let’s see, doing the math — and yes, I know, math is raaaaacist — $39,090 – $24,690 = $14,400. That’s money that most buyers will have to finance, which means they will be paying interest on it. Perhaps Elwood P Dowd can plunk down an extra $14,400 in cash, but most Americans cannot.
I’m assuming that our esteemed host simply missed a trailing zero, but $39,995 – $25,450 = $14,545.
That’s something that real people have to factor it, but it rarely happens.
The trick is to buy a used EV. They don’t hold their resale value very well. I’ve seen used Nissan Leafs (Leaves?) locally for 7-12 kilobucks. I like the idea of EVs in theory, lower maintenance costs, lower operating costs, but the battery technology is not really ready for Prime Time.
Over 25% of the deposits on the new Ford EV f150 came from fleet owners who care only that they will be saving money on 5 year ownership costs
They don’t have any political agenda like Teach or myself
It is just numbers to them and the numbers say that EVs over 5years of ownership save you money
A tesla model 3 is cheaper to own and operate for 5 years than a Toyota camry
EVs are rapidly improving probably on 5 years lithium batteries in cars will be obsolete archaic tech
It is just numbers to them and the numbers say that EVs over 5years of ownership save you money
You keep saying this as if it has validity in the real world.
The average length of ownership of a car is 9.8 years in the US. That’s nearly twice as much as your random “5 year” sampling.
Of course, you choose 5 years because at 6-8 years the Tesla will need a new battery pack at the cost of $12,000 – $16,000 which makes them more expensive to own. Furthermore, the cooling part of the battery pack is so weak that the cooling connection breaks off and Tesla requires the entire battery be replaced or the warranty is voided. That breakage is reported happening somewhere in the 4th – 5th year. Which means that you have to think somehow the $568 dollars per year for the cost of owning a Tesla will is greater than the $2400 – $3200.
You never were really good with math.
Fun fact: one in five EV owners say they will not buy them again.
Once again, this is another case of you hating facts.
After all, all the left has is hate.
I have no problem with EVs paying their fair share fir using the roads
Our highways are a mess
When I worked in construction on the 60s on interstates they were the best on the planet
Now we are kije a 3rd world country
Have you seen the Chinese highways ?
16 lanes in each direction
Of course you don’t. The fact that people will be paying 3 times as much for using roads than they do now doesn’t bother you at all. The fact that it is a regressive tax that will hurt the middle and lower class more doesn’t bother you because you hate the lower and middle class.
Which goes to show that the US governments at every level have squandered road taxes. Instead of fixing that issue, you want to tax more because that is the leftist solution to everything – more taxes.
If you like China so much, please move there. You’ll be moving to a land where woman are hated and the pay gap is much worse than the fake pay gap that those on the left scream about here in the US.
You won’t move because that would mean standing by your convictions and you hate that thought.
All the left has is hate.
PS – New York has the 4th worst roads in the country. At the same time, New York has the 5th highest gas tax in the country.
You can’t even fix your own state yet want to tell people how to fix theirs.
Well, I know back in the 60’s in Philly the roads still sucked just like they do all over the Commonwealth of PA today. In Philly they are/were supposed to be using parking fees , gas taxes and such for street repairs and maintenance. But like everything else the democrat fascists do it never happened. It’s a one party city with the demofascists in perpetual unchecked power so all their friends and relatives are on the gravy train. I figure there are numbered accounts in the Caymans where every time you park, buy gas or cross a fukin bridge around here goes “Cha-ching” and some dem pol gets his cut.
Are we the only city where almost all the cops, meter maids and trash men have summer homes at the shore and own boats? I wonder????
Yes, road use taxes and gasoline taxes are regressive. Perhaps it’s time to use general revenues to support US infrastructure! That way the wealthy can pay their FAIR share and take some of the burden off the working class!
Yet, in the same vein we need to cut gasoline use to reduce CO2 emissions. Perhaps a gasoline tax that is rebated or even prebated to working class folks.
The move to hybrid and EVs will be helped too, without the added expense of a road use tax.
Don’t underestimate the ingenuity of American entrepreneurs – fleets of EV delivery vans (and/or electric drones) powered by solar as they drive and renewable sources when they recharge at night.
The “wealthy” (whatever that means) do pair their “fair share.” Gasoline is a commodity, just like anything else. People that you consider wealthy pay the same rate for a gallon of gas and the same taxes on that gallon.
That’s fair.
You wouldn’t (well, maybe you would) demand that the “wealthy” (whatever that means) pay more for a can of corn, would you?
What you and Hairy consider “fair” is not fair. Your suggestion is based on jealousy and hatred of those who earn more.
(And for the record, it is not that the gas tax doesn’t generate enough revenues to pay for roads and road maintenance. It is that cities, states and even the federal government squander the money on other things and there is no accountability for that.)
I have never understood the left’s hatred of people that are successful. I have never understood the left’s desire to keep the lower and middle class from succeeding.
Then again, all the left has is hate.