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Tyres… also roadside assistance.

It’ll price too many people out of the market. Poor people need personal mobility too, especially those in rural areas.
 
In the not too distant future the government will have come up with a way to heavily tax the use/ownership of private electric cars. The few remaining petrol and diesel cars will be pretty much left alone. It’ll be something like 95% hybrid/EV vs 5% ICE, so not a lot to be gained from taxing the old girls.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I do wonder at the wisdom of scrapping an otherwise good car when it hands you a bill similar to its market value. I can see that if money is tight, binning it and buying another banger may be cheaper, short term, but you are getting an unknown quantity which could hand you another bill within days. Moreover, the existing vehicle is familiar and you have some idea whether it’s reliable, otherwise. Then there’s the environmental issue.

My brother recently scrapped an otherwise very nice Volvo XC90 when it handed him a c£2k bill. He’d had the car from nearly new and looked after it. It seemed to me that it should have been worth more, to him, than the notional market value. Scrapping an otherwise decent car just feels wrong, to me.
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My Yeti is coming up to 10 yrs. old and we will do all we can to keep it running.
Not done 70 K yet, so it has maybe 100,000 miles left at least. (2 litre diesel engine)
We are keeping everything working, no need to change it until it croaks or diesel cars are illegal.
I don’t know how old cars have to be before they become ’a modern classic,’ but that is how we regard the Yeti. When other Yeti drivers start waving at us, that will be nice.

I did drive umpteen 3-Wheelers (Reliants) as I didn’t get a car license until I was about 35 years old. Motorcycle license served me well until then. 3-Wheeler drivers always used to wave at each other, an extension of Bikers giving the nod to other Bikers - a recognition that we were in a special ‘ club.’
I have no idea if modern day Bikers give the Nod to other Bikers? I hope so.
It was always wonderful when another Biker would stop if you were pulled up at the side of the road with a mechanical issue. Happened to me a lot :). Usually it was a massive bloke, potentially part of a local Chapter o_O, always helpful.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
In the not too distant future the government will have come up with a way to heavily tax the use/ownership of private electric cars. The few remaining petrol and diesel cars will be pretty much left alone. It’ll be something like 95% hybrid/EV vs 5% ICE, so not a lot to be gained from taxing the old girls.
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I'm fairly convinced this a major driver behind 'smart' meters - they will detect the high power draw of an EV charging and it'll get hit at a higher tax rate for that period. It wouldn't be hard to measure that happening over the 'typical' average usage and bill accordingly. The government will find a way to get their hands on your money once the massive amounts of fuel duty disappear.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
In the not too distant future the government will have come up with a way to heavily tax the use/ownership of private electric cars. The few remaining petrol and diesel cars will be pretty much left alone. It’ll be something like 95% hybrid/EV vs 5% ICE, so not a lot to be gained from taxing the old girls.
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Eradication of Fossil-fuel fuelled vehicles is a totemic issue and taxing them to ****ery to force you into an EV is to the Government's advantage because it costs the Treasury nothing and increases tax revenue. The end game is ICE vehicles as curios brought out for classic car runs and rallies (as we see with Steam vehicles) and that will be less than 5%.
 
The biggest issue is that the charging infrastructure just isn't even remotely ready for a move en masse to EVs. Public chargers aside, what happens to all those who have to park on-street or live in flats etc? Overly-rapid adoption of EVs (or conversely, heavily penalising ICE cars) will create a divide for those who need a car but can't buy or charge an EV but are getting hit with increasingly punitive taxes on their ICE vehicle.

Bringing the thread back to roadside assistance there was an interesting article on how EVs are changing the face of it - they're too complex for a roadside fix and also can't be towed thanks to no 'true neutral' and the way the motors work. It means any EV needing moving requires a flat-bed or a method of towing that at least lifts all four wheels off the road. The primary 'breakdown' issue though is running out of charge - the RAC are installing generators in their fleet but the issue is charging times as they're typically only around 3.5kW which translates to about 14 miles of range per hour.

Article here: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/electric-vehicles-breakdown
 
Big Tabs said:
I did drive umpteen 3-Wheelers (Reliants) as I didn’t get a car license until I was about 35 years old. Motorcycle license served me well until then. 3-Wheeler drivers always used to wave at each other, an extension of Bikers giving the nod to other Bikers - a recognition that we were in a special ‘ club.’
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Ditto. I covered 24,000 miles in two years in my first Supervan and it taught me a great deal about how to maintain a car. Strangely, driving a car like that, which by most standards was a death trap, also taught you to drive well and unlike a certain well known motoring journalist, I never rolled one over.
 
Seeker_UK said:
Eradication of Fossil-fuel fuelled vehicles is a totemic issue and taxing them to ****ery to force you into an EV is to the Government's advantage because it costs the Treasury nothing and increases tax revenue. The end game is ICE vehicles as curios brought out for classic car runs and rallies (as we see with Steam vehicles) and that will be less than 5%.
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So why aren’t big V12s and V8s taxed very heavily now? They’re only hit slightly heavier than economical four cylinder cars.

Edit: for example, 6.0 V12 S Class Merc, 2.2 tons, 20mpg on a gentle run with a following wind, £600 per year.
 
Seeker_UK said:
Eradication of Fossil-fuel fuelled vehicles is a totemic issue and taxing them to ****ery to force you into an EV is to the Government's advantage because it costs the Treasury nothing and increases tax revenue. The end game is ICE vehicles as curios brought out for classic car runs and rallies (as we see with Steam vehicles) and that will be less than 5%.
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It’s all about keeping the golden arrow of consumerism going at full chat and consequently collecting maximum tax revenues. Anyone who thinks EV’s won’t be heavily taxed once ICE’s reduce in number is living in cloud cuckoo land. It’s very cheap to keep a car on the road in UK, too cheap really.
 
Snufkin said:
Ditto. I covered 24,000 miles in two years in my first Supervan and it taught me a great deal about how to maintain a car. Strangely, driving a car like that, which by most standards was a death trap, also taught you to drive well and unlike a certain well known motoring journalist, I never rolled one over.
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I have never rolled one either.
Driving those cars taught me a lot as well.
  • To work on the engine you need broken arms as nothing is accessible.
  • the coolant will leak into the engine, this will happen many times. Cracking an egg into the radiator doesn’t work.
  • If you get anywhere near 60-65 mph it is the closest you will get to flying a Spitfire. Downhill probably.
  • the back corners can be lifted by one person and put on bricks to change a wheel.
  • you can accelerate a bit faster than folks think when at traffic lights, at least up to 30mph.
  • a bread delivery tray will bolt onto the roof (straight through) and serve as a luggage rack
  • the holes left by drilling through the roof can be blocked to stop rain ingress with chewing gum
  • you can kick the back out when cornering vigorously - rear wheel drive, and this feels great.
  • your children will not accept a lift to school in the rain in the 3-wheeler. They will however accept a lift to school on the Yamaha XS1100 Streetfightered, straight Renthals etc. They also want you to rev it a bit when they are dismounting, so that their school mates get a good look :cool:
  • Driving in heavy snow is a challenge, but fun.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
So why aren’t big V12s and V8s taxed very heavily now? They’re only hit slightly heavier than economical four cylinder cars.

Edit: for example, 6.0 V12 S Class Merc, 2.2 tons, 20mpg on a gentle run with a following wind, £600 per year.
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Simplicity. To date, it was easier to not have retrospective changes to VED banding and Osborne introduced a simplified tax system based on screen price. When the Treasury can justify an "all non-EVs pay £1k pa VED" (ie no risk to the Chancellor's electability) they will and simplify the whole system.
 
I really don't think so, but we will see soon enough, as long as the uk doesn't go down the drain. The chancellor will be reminded at every stage that very few EVs are zero emissions anyway.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
I really don't think so, but we will see soon enough, as long as the uk doesn't go down the drain. The chancellor will be reminded at every stage that very few EVs are zero emissions anyway.
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He won’t care as long as he gets the VAT from a new car sale and consequential flow down taxes from the manufactures, employees etc.
The whole thing is a joke, my mother has a 7 year old Toyota Auris diesel. It’s zero VED (so must be excellent according to the govt), does 55 - 60 to the gallon, £150 a year to service, £200 a year to insure and will never break. The car is way too cheap to keep on the road. Why on earth is she going to spend £25K on an EV?
 
SteveG said:
That's my C200 now wearing its set of Cross Climates so it'll be interesting see how they are in practice. I'm heading back to Tomintoul tomorrow evening, taking in some of the fun roads on the way (although as usual I'll be taking it easy as I'll have the dog in the car), so that should give them a good try out.
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Well it seems that God wants to make this trip a proper test for the Cross Climates as it is properly pissing down with rain at the moment, so looks like it's going to be a very wet drive up into the Cairngorms this evening!
 
The Government gave up any pretence to link VED to emissions a while back, it's now a wealth tax purely based on the car value. Not complaining about that, but let's be honest about what it is and the motives. EVs will be the same if any kind of critical mass is ever achieved, which is doubtful because of the charging infrastructure reasons described above. Perhaps critical vehicle mass will skip EVs as we know them to something better, but they will always attract high taxation.
 
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