Leading automotive expert says cars should be taxed on weight to end consumer confusion over how to pick the greenest models

How will UK road tax change in the coming years?
This is a topic raised on the V8 Website back in May 2024 following the Spring Budget when the Chancellor made some road tax changes - a modest increase in the standard annual road tax rate to £190 and the introduction of road tax on electric cars from April 2025. But with the increasing number of electric vehicles in the UK and the planned end of the sale of fossil fuelled cars in the 2030s, the underlying need to maintain a good flow of road tax revenue to cover a wide range of road use and maintenance costs will mean the Chancellor will have to consider a major overhaul of the motoring taxation system.

The article considers some of the key issues and options, not least the higher wear rates on the road surfacing and structure from heavier vehicles and also the higher levels of particulates from rubber tyre and road surface wear damaging air quality near roads in urban and suburban areas. You can see the NEWS item and article released in May 2024:
NEWS
& Article

See charts alongside in an A4P PDF. Link


Auto-besity will be a topic we will hear more of in 2024.


Posted: 241231
Auto-besity

Frontal area of a Range Rover is 56% greater than that of a Golf GTi


Range Rover (2.56 tons) is 82% heavier than a Golf GTi (1.60 tons) - that's nearly a ton (or 1230 kg) heavier. Even cars that were once comparatively light have become much heavier over the decades. The VW Golf, which was the No 1 car in Europe before the Peugeot 208, weighed about 775kg in its original 1974 incarnation. By the 2020s it had almost doubled in weight.


Large 4x4s are a very tight fit in standard parking spaces in car parks.
A leading automotive expert says "cars should be taxed on weight to end consumer confusion over how to pick the greenest models". Nick Molden of Emissions Analytics, which played a key role in identifying excessively polluting cars after the Volkswagen emissions scandal, said we are living in an “age of auto-besity”. Cars are getting bigger and heavier.

For example the electric Tesla Model Y, which weighs around 2,000kg (2.20 tons), became the best selling car in Europe last year. The top spot was formerly held by the Peugeot 208, a small car weighing around 1,200kg (1.32 tons) for the petrol version - that's indicates a Tesla is 67% heavier!

These issues are highlighted in an article in The Times today. Link

Nick Molden of Emissions Analytics says “our exhaustive research has revealed that one easy metric — car weight — gives a surprisingly good estimate of overall pollution, including greenhouse gases, air toxics, noise, safety and infrastructure impacts. Consumers can therefore use this to choose their next car, without being baffled by data from biased sources”. He adds "the weight of a car multiplied by the distance it is driven could offer a measure of its total environmental impact". He has argued that his proposed system could replace existing taxation, apply to all types of car and was easy to implement because weight is already publicly available data and distance is recorded by existing processes such as MOTs. Under his proposed system, a driver would pay £100 less annually if their car was 150kg lighter than average or if they drove 620 fewer miles (1,000km) per year than average.

Last year Norway introduced a tax on cars weighing more than 500kg and France two years ago started charging a €10 (£8) tax on petrol and diesel cars for every kilogram over 1,800kg. Cardiff council recently held a consultation proposing larger vehicles, including SUVs, pay more for resident parking permits.
Parking is also a problem with larger vehicles
A Range Rover is 3.2" longer than the standard parking bay and barely 7" under the standard bay width - that leaves only 3.54" of space on each side to open the doors to get out and squeeze in! Some multistorey car parks are being checked to ensure the structures can cope with the significantly higher weight of high concentrations of heavy 4x4s, SUVs and large electric vehicles.