Victoria’s Electric Car Tax Robs Peter To Pay Peter

Victoria is set to become the only place in the world to de-incentivize the purchase of electric vehicles with an electric car tax for every kilometre driven. 

Victoria will also introduce a $3,000 incentive to encourage buying electric cars.

After coming up with this brilliant move, I don’t see why the Victorian Government should stop there.

• They could encourage healthy eating by taxing fresh fruits and vegetables. 
• Exercise could be encouraged by taxing gyms and bicycles. 
• Maybe they could raise money for the police by mugging grannies? 

Actually, I have a great public health idea for Victoria.  They should slap a $50 tax on COVID vaccinations to raise funds to encourage people to get vaccinated.  While a tax of $50 may seem like a lot to get vaccinated, COVID is such a serious threat we can’t afford to take half measures.  Maybe it should be a $100 tax per vaccination to make sure we encourage people enough.

The EV Tax

Victoria’s Andrews Government intends to tax EVs by introducing a per-kilometre road charge of 2.5 cents for fully electric cars and 2 cents for plug-in hybrids.  This was supposed to pay for roads, but it makes no sense to slap a charge on low emission vehicles when internal combustion cars are free to pollute our air and emit greenhouse gases without paying for the harm they cause.  While the manufacture and use of electric cars can also contribute to these problems, the effects are much less and decreasing.  

If the Victorian Government goes ahead, they will reduce people’s incentive to buy electric vehicles and fuel-efficient hybrids.  Fewer will be sold than otherwise, and more conventional petrol and diesel vehicles will end up on our roads and are likely to cause harm above 2.5 cents per kilometre.

Fortunately, I have a plan to stop this that’s sure to work.  I’m asking everyone to sign a petition arranged by The Australia Institute that says the EV road charge is as dumb as a hammer made out of sacks.  I’m sure this will work because it’s good, and an in-depth analysis of Disney movies has informed me the good side always wins.  

So here’s a link to the petition page.  Go ahead and sign it:

CLICK HERE FOR VICTORIA’S ELECTRIC CAR TAX IS STUPID PETITION PAGE

Here’s the comment I included when I signed:

“It makes no sense to increase the cost of running low emission vehicles when conventional vehicles are not required to pay for the damage they cause the environment and our health. The reduced uptake of low emission vehicles the road charge will cause will hurt us all.”

But there’s no need to leave a comment if you don’t want to, and you can also un-tick the box that says The Australia Institute will send you spam — I mean, updates.  You can also ignore them when they ask for a donation after signing the petition.  The Australia Institute’s full-time workers average over $100,000 a year in pay, so they’re not going to starve to death if you don’t shell out.¹

Don’t keep reading this.  Go and sign it.  It doesn’t say you have to be a Victorian to put your name on it.  It’s all one planet.  We only have a single atmosphere to share.  Unless you’re Elon Musk, you’re not going to get any of Mars’ atmosphere, and that hardly even counts as air.  It’s more a method for shifting dust around. 

Just stop reading and sign the petition!  If you do that, I promise I’ll have some more words written for you by the time you get back. 

Previous Mentions

Michael, who is sort like Batman except cooler, recently wrote about the Vic EV tax in this article titled:

Victoria’s Electric Car Tax “Worst EV Policy in the World”

He also wrote about it earlier here:

Electric Vehicle Opinions Victoria Poll Results

And here:

AAA Revs Up On Electric Vehicle Tax Support

In case you were wondering, he’s not in favour of it.

My boss, Finn Peacock, also had something to say about it:

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The EV Tax Is A Dumb Plan

The good news is other states that were considering doing something similar — SA and NSW — have given up on it for now.  But Victoria is still planning to introduce a road charge of 2.5 cents per kilometre for electric vehicles and 2 cents for plug-in hybrid cars in July.  The reason given is it’s supposed to make up for them paying either less than average or nothing at all in fuel excise.

If you’re familiar with the ins and outs of taxation, you may be wondering how this will work because the fuel excise is federal while Victoria’s “ZLEV Road-User Charge” is state level.  The answer is, it’s not going to work because — for the first few years — the government will use the money collected to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles.  Yep, that’s right.  To get money to encourage the uptake of EVs, they will charge EV owners money for every kilometre they drive. 

It Will Reduce Fuel Efficiency

The fuel excise is currently 42.7 cents per litre for both petrol and diesel.  My 2004 Hyundai Getz gets around 15 kilometres per litre, while a plug-in Mitsubishi Outlander hybrid² — according to Mitsubishi — apparently gets around 53km to the litre.  If I accept that as being true, a comparison of the total amount of fuel excise and/or Victorian ZLEV Road-User Charge vehicles will pay looks like this:

• 2004 Hyundai Getz:  2.9 cents per km in fuel excise.
• Fully electric vehicle:  2.5 cents per km in VIC ZLEV Road-User Charge
• Plug-in Mistsubishi Hybrid:  2.8 cents per km in fuel excise and VIC ZLEV Road-User Charge

While a completely electric vehicle pays less than a Getz, a Mitsubishi Outlander really gets screwed over.  It’s so ridiculous it makes me wonder if whoever came up with this idea was run over by a plug-in hybrid and is out for revenge.  They have managed to develop a plan that will increase the average fuel consumption of new petrol-powered vehicles sold in the state.  How the hell could they think this is a good idea?

Environmental & Health Costs

The road-user charge for a fully electric car is less than what the Getz or plug-in hybrid would pay, so while that may not seem so bad, it ignores the elephant that isn’t in the room because it died from heat prostration before it arrived.  Electric vehicles and fuel-efficient hybrids result in much lower greenhouse gas emissions per kilometre driven than internal combustion engine vehicles. 

In 2020 the average Australian passenger car got 9 kilometres to the litre.  Each litre of petrol burned emits around 2.3 kilograms of CO2.  Emissions from oil extraction, refining, and transport increase it to at least 2.6 kilograms per litre.  This comes to 0.29 kg of CO2 per kilometre driven by the average Australian passenger car. 

The amount of additional CO2 we can safely add to the atmosphere is zero.  We’re way past the point where it’s possible to say, “Hey, maybe a little more won’t hurt?”.  Passenger car emissions harm us all through environmental damage caused by global warming.  Some estimates put the damage cost of each additional tonne of CO2 added to the atmosphere at over $500.  But I’ll instead consider how much it will cost to clean up the mess by removing a typical passenger vehicle’s CO2 emissions from the atmosphere and sequestering them long term. 

An optimistic estimate of what it might cost to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at anything approaching the rate current road transport adds it is $70 a tonne.  This comes to 7 cents per kilogram or 2 cents per kilometre driven by a typical Australian passenger car.  If a less optimistic estimate of $100 a tonne is used, it comes to 2.9 cents per kilometre.  So just cleaning up the greenhouse gas emission mess caused by fossil-fueled passenger cars per kilometre driven could easily cost more than the EV road charge Victoria wants to impose.  

In addition, pollution emitted by internal combustion engines takes an expensive toll on health.  I’m not going to try to estimate its cost per kilometre because it’s too complex for my little brain.  But it’s definitely significant. 

Currently, fossil-fueled cars don’t pay for the cost of their greenhouse gas emissions or their pollution health costs.  While electric cars also result in emissions and health costs, they are far less than average and declining as the grid becomes greener. 

If the Victorian Government wanted to instead:

• Tax vehicles based on their greenhouse gas and/or health costs, or…
• Make all vehicles pay the same road charge.

I would be fine with that.  Well, actually, the second option is dumb compared to the first, but at least it wouldn’t foolishly disadvantage cars that cause less pollution and less environmental damage. 

Electric Car Tax + Rebate Makes No Sense

I want to make it very clear that I don’t think the Victorian Government are a mob of idiots. I mean this in a very profound, moral, philosophical, and — perhaps most keenly of all — legal sense.  But I do think their plan to put a per-kilometre road charge on EVs and hybrids is idiotic.

People respond to incentives.  If this is your goal…

Don’t offer one hand in friendship and then use it to pull people in and knee them in the groin.  People hate that.  You’re not even robbing Peter to pay Paul, you’re robbing Peter to pay Peter, which is pointless.  

If you want a rapid uptake of low emission vehicles, then increase the upfront cost of high emission ones and use that revenue to decrease the cost of those that emit little or nothing.  You’ll find a miracle in low emission vehicle uptake will occur when people can save money by not buying a car that makes the world burn.  It will work a hell of a lot better than charging them more for each kilometre they drive.

If you’re not willing to do something like that, maybe you shouldn’t try to help electric cars at all.  I suspect you’ll cause more harm than good.  But if you want to make fossil fuel vehicles pay for at least a portion of the harm they cause, I’ll be 100% behind that.

Original Source: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/vic-ev-tax-rebate/