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Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.7%

  • Yes - preferred over petrol car if price/power/convenience similar

    Votes: 78 39.4%

  • Maybe - preference for neither, only concerned with costs etc

    Votes: 38 19.2%

  • No - prefer petrol car even if electric car has same price, power and convenience

    Votes: 25 12.6%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    198
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Value Collector said:
3, if you are going to say the fuel tax has nothing to do with roads I am happy, because it means the government has no reason to increase taxes on electric cars to compensate for us not buying fuel.
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LOL. The government, who ever is in , will say what they like and the public has to wear it.
 
With regard the Age Pension, here is the story behind it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05...ical-time-bomb-70-years-in-the-making/5480154
From the article:
As the historian Rob Watts points out in his book The Foundations of the National Welfare State, what looks like groundbreaking Chifley welfare reform was really just a smokescreen for unpopular wartime tax rises on lower income earners.

The Menzies government folded the National Welfare Fund money into general revenue a few years later. (It is good budget practice not to hypothecate specific revenues to specific programs). But the fund remained in name until the 1980s .

From memory, the last of the funds actually attributed to the scheme were removed by Fraser.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/super-...mised-a-pension-for-life-20161111-gsn07y.html

The Hawke/Keating Government removed the National Welfare Fund from the statutes in the 1980's. Then started the superannuation guarantee scheme.
 

NASA ?
 
SirRumpole said:
LOL. The government, who ever is in , will say what they like and the public has to wear it.
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I am just pointing out a little hypocrisy.

eg. It's been mentioned here before that Electric Vehicles owners might be "free loading" by using roads while also avoiding the fuel Excise.

but, if that is true then it would be wrong to expect non road users to pay the fuel excise.

Fuel Excise is either related to roads (in which case miners etc should be exempt other wise we are freeloading off them), or its got nothing to do with roads (in which case the complaints about EV's freeloading are irrelevant).
 
One answer to the roads funding issue is to accept that roads (and rail and every other bit of public infrastructure) are genuine public goods - ie everyone benefits whether they use them or not (which is probably the case). If so, there is a good argument for full public funding from consolidated revenue.

If not, there are options like tolls and congestion charging and direct taxing of vehicles (rego). Or perhaps we can do both like we do now?
 

If EV's reach a critical mass I can see the government requiring that they be fitted with meters reporting how far they travel, and the owners getting a bill at the end of the month in lieu of fuel excise.
 

Well whatever the way you argue, if revenue is depleted by EV's not paying fuel excise it has to be made up some other way, never stand between a government and a bucket of money.
 
SirRumpole said:
Well whatever the way you argue, if revenue is depleted by EV's not paying fuel excise it has to be made up some other way, never stand between a government and a bucket of money.
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Maybe an excise on Tyres ??? or maybe we tax animal products like we do cigarettes, I would be happy with that hahaha
 
SirRumpole said:
Reducing company and personal tax avoidance would be a good start.
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As would work avoidance and welfare dependence.
But getting back to electric cars, the Hyundai Kona seems like it has a good range, but the price and no ability to feed back into the grid is a stumbling block. IMO
 
I think electric cars are the future of engineering. I am sure that all equipment will switch to electricity, as it is cheap. As a student, it is very convenient for me to travel by electric car.
 
Pedal cyclists need 2000 hours steering experience, yearly traffic rule exams with zero tolerance, citizen arrest and solitary prison in worst cases.
 
IFocus said:
Don't want to start a bun fight but governments do subsidise mining fuel excise is rather large alone see link which will likely to be biased but still valid.
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If failing to tax fuel used in mining amounts to a subsidy of mining then rationally any failure to tax electricity used for EV charging represents a subsidy of EV's.

I thought it was the case that most business inputs are untaxed? Businesses claim back GST right? Not much different to not taxing fuel used to run a mine.

Personally I'm confident enough of the future viability of EV's that I see no need to force their adoption by means of taxes or anything else. Same as we didn't tax typewriter ribbons in order to bring about mass adoption of computers. Etc.
 
Smurf1976 said:
I thought it was the case that most business inputs are untaxed? Businesses claim back GST right? Not much different to not taxing fuel used to run a mine.
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I don't think that's quite the point.

A mine can claim the full cost of fuel as a tax deduction, PLUS they get back the excise that they pay on diesel fuel, the reason for that is (they say) that diesel fuel excise is allegedly going towards roads which the miners don't use, but as has been discussed that is nonsense as the diesel fuel excise just goes to general revenue from which everyone benefits.
 

The issue surely is to ponder why diesel etc is taxed at a higher rate than pretty much any other product except alcohol and tobacco?

That's the real issue. No other normal business input has a special high tax applied to it and of direct relevance there's no comparable rate of tax on other energy sources including other fossil fuels. Given that diesel as a means of generating power is cleaner than coal, and integrates far better with renewables, it seems a tad odd.

The only rational explanation I've ever been able to see is that it's effectively an import tax given that coal and gas are locally produced but oil is substantially imported. Fair enough, I can see some logic in that, but then we've dropped tariffs on everything else so it's rather inconsistent to retain that approach only with petroleum fuels and then not all such fuels but only some.

Go forward to sometime in the 2030's and fuel excise ends up as, in practice, a tax on the poor. Once EV's become half the vehicle fleet, those paying that excise will mostly be the poorer half of society. A few exceptions but in general that will be the case. That'll give politicians an interesting dilemma........
 
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