Pay-as-you-drive instead of fuel tax?

General Chat In The News
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As we switch to electric cars less income will go into the coffers from fuel tax. And electric cars don’t pay road tax.

So what do you think of the suggestions to make up the shortfall in income with pay-as-you-drive charges?

Pay as you drive

I think in some ways it would be fairer in that those who use the roads the most would pay the most

But it might put people off switching to electric cars because the big attraction for some is not paying prices and electricity being cheaper than petrol

And those who’ve already invested in electric cars might feel a bit cheated.

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The NSW Government has already said that EVs annual rego will eventually be based according to their distance travelled but it will not introduce this until they are established because they don’t wish to slow their uptake.

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I guess the time will come when every road is a toll road. And we will be tracked by satellite. The DVLA will have our bank details.

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It does sound as if it’s going that way. It’s going to be hard on those who have to travel for their work so perhaps we’ll see less of those sort of jobs

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I was listening to a phone in on the radio about this very subject this morning. General thoughts are it will start out looking an excellent choice, but it will hammer you later when it’s too late to do anything about it other than pay up. A good example was when we were all told diesel cars were the way to go, people changed and the cheap diesel soon rocketed in price, it’s a good bit dearer than petrol now. So I say be wary of what seems like a good deal if your offered one, as it may not be good for long. Personally I will never have an electric car.

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Lets go back to steam engines using waste material to burn, then the government will get sod all in revenue

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I’d just be worried about finding somewhere to charge it all the time

And like you say, I bet they find a way to make it more expensive

You can’t trust them not to shift the goalposts

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The railways seem to cope with electric power quite well and I remember the trolley buses in London so I think that there is a good case for electric trucks travelling on long distance expressways.

It would be easy to run electric overhead wires over say the left hand lane on the expressway for a few km so that trucks could charge their batteries as they travel say on the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne so that they would have plenty of battery power once they arrive in the city to get them to their depot.

It is just a matter of imagination and will

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