Hello all.
As above really. To own a TD4 now cost you £330.00 in road tax. Its a 2003 plate, to produce a new, modern vehicle today would consume more energy and cause more pollution than this vehicle of mine has used to be made in 03, and consumed in fuel to date. Even, I'm told electric cars are not with out pollution. It still takes power stations to provide, to power them to charge. And what do our power stations run on??
Just a moan ALL.
Sorry,

Cheers

Petrol & diesel owners will be taxed more in the future, therefore it would be best to do it by cost of fuel, those that do most miles will of cause pay more, using your car more would mean more pollution, so you pay for it, as it stands you are paying the below sum, would you be happy lets say if 10 -15p per litre was added to the cost of fuel, and pay no tax on the car, i would as i only do about 4.500 miles per year, i am sure those whom do more miles would not like to be taxed through the fuel method. ?
0.90 per day
6.34 per week
21.50 per month.

Good plan chuck £1.00 into a jar right after the day you pay your tax this year, do it every day come 12 months you will have tax money ready.

One of my other cars has been roadtaxed to death, it's literally worthless because despite returning mid thirties MPG, it's official figure for CO2 is 256g/km, which nudges it into the top tier £570/year road tax bracket. Meanwhile, my 3.9efi v8 D1 that returns ~8mpg (big aggressive tyres, loads of offroad toys, racy engine tune, heavy right foot) is £270/year. As for electric cars... I live in Peterhead, just along the coast from us, we have this great big fracking thing...

...which burns north sea gas to make electrical power, try and tell me that none of that electricity powers these "Zero Emmissions Vehicles"? Or nothing from this behemoth called "Drax":


Really all those Teslas and Zoes run on rainbows kissing solar panels and unicorn farts turning windmills... I see a few teslas on the school run, I smile to myself thinking it's nice that you are trying, but if you are charging that off the grid, which up here features a lot of power from the gas powerplant, you're kind of missing the point.

I honestly think that sustainable biodiesel is probably more ecologically sound than carbon producing electricity powering EV's. By sustainable biodiesel I mean it has to either be upcycled cooking oil, or produced from reasonable crops, like rapeseed rather than palmoil, which is typically produced in the far east in fields created by clearing rain forests. Things like rapeseed could be produced in larger quantities, locally, or at least domestically, possibly using fields laying sallow due to common agricultural policy which handicapped our efficient farmers to make a "fairer" or "more competitive" marketplace in the EGU.

Even with the carbon from the biodiesel, it started in the atmosphere, got pulled into the plant that made the vegie oil, serves a life in the food industries, and gets recycled into fuel releasing its carbon back to whence it came from. Granted there is the carbon from processing crop to oil to fuel, that can be done with renewables, and you'd be using the plant oil as energy storage. Meanwhile the typical EV has rare earth elements mined and refined in china, shipped to japan/usa for manufacturing into batteries, common materials processed by mining and extracting or recycling to make the rest of the vehicle, shipped to a factory, made into a new car, then running on hopefully sensibly renewable produced electricity, or if its ran off dirty electricity it's never ever ever going to offset its carbon footprint from being made. Then there is battery life / recycling etc...

Dont worry Drax will be clean as from March this year!

570 per year benefits tax contribution for my D3.

I was pleasantly surprised to find my FL2 was £40 cheaper to tax than my FL1.

That's cos DVLA know that a FL2 won't be on the road as much!!!!

Sorry, couldn't resist it!

andyfreelandy said:

That's cos DVLA know that a FL2 won't be on the road as much!!!!

Sorry, couldn't resist it!

Click to expand...

Definitely true for mine.

lynall said:

Dont worry Drax will be clean as from March this year!

570 per year benefits tax contribution for my D3.

Click to expand...

Even after its transfer from coal to biomass, Drax still won't be all that clean as it's biomass material is AFIK imported from the USA & Canda, meaning the carbon footprint of shipping the material halfway across the world must be considered.

Jayridium said:

Even after its transfer from coal to biomass, Drax still won't be all that clean as it's biomass material is AFIK imported from the USA & Canda, meaning the carbon footprint of shipping the material halfway across the world must be considered.

Click to expand...

I recently watched a tv programme on that, cut trees down, take trees to processor, process trees into biomass, take biomass to port load onto boat, boat around the world to uk, off boat onto trucks and all the way to drax, wow great idea, the fuel consumed alone for transport must be amazing, go greens!

- meanwhile they are now telling - as I have an oilfired CH boiler - that I should burn oil instead of using my woodburner - The firewood industry puts a bottom in the forestry business and saves the need to extract oil - these environmentalists never look at things in the round.

dfossil said:

- meanwhile they are now telling - as I have an oilfired CH boiler - that I should burn oil instead of using my woodburner - The firewood industry puts a bottom in the forestry business and saves the need to extract oil - these environmentalists never look at things in the round.

Click to expand...

I do both, and in this current cold snap, I'm burning oil and wood, like it's going out of fashion.

Jayridium said:

One of my other cars has been roadtaxed to death, it's literally worthless because despite returning mid thirties MPG, it's official figure for CO2 is 256g/km, which nudges it into the top tier £570/year road tax bracket. Meanwhile, my 3.9efi v8 D1 that returns ~8mpg (big aggressive tyres, loads of offroad toys, racy engine tune, heavy right foot) is £270/year. As for electric cars... I live in Peterhead, just along the coast from us, we have this great big fracking thing...

...which burns north sea gas to make electrical power, try and tell me that none of that electricity powers these "Zero Emmissions Vehicles"? Or nothing from this behemoth called "Drax":
View attachment 227071

Really all those Teslas and Zoes run on rainbows kissing solar panels and unicorn farts turning windmills... I see a few teslas on the school run, I smile to myself thinking it's nice that you are trying, but if you are charging that off the grid, which up here features a lot of power from the gas powerplant, you're kind of missing the point.

I honestly think that sustainable biodiesel is probably more ecologically sound than carbon producing electricity powering EV's. By sustainable biodiesel I mean it has to either be upcycled cooking oil, or produced from reasonable crops, like rapeseed rather than palmoil, which is typically produced in the far east in fields created by clearing rain forests. Things like rapeseed could be produced in larger quantities, locally, or at least domestically, possibly using fields laying sallow due to common agricultural policy which handicapped our efficient farmers to make a "fairer" or "more competitive" marketplace in the EGU.

Even with the carbon from the biodiesel, it started in the atmosphere, got pulled into the plant that made the vegie oil, serves a life in the food industries, and gets recycled into fuel releasing its carbon back to whence it came from. Granted there is the carbon from processing crop to oil to fuel, that can be done with renewables, and you'd be using the plant oil as energy storage. Meanwhile the typical EV has rare earth elements mined and refined in china, shipped to japan/usa for manufacturing into batteries, common materials processed by mining and extracting or recycling to make the rest of the vehicle, shipped to a factory, made into a new car, then running on hopefully sensibly renewable produced electricity, or if its ran off dirty electricity it's never ever ever going to offset its carbon footprint from being made. Then there is battery life / recycling etc...

Click to expand...

Oh you pulled my old heart strings. Boddam to the left of the powerstation couldnt see the lighthouse. to the back new camp RAF BUCHAN closed to the top right the Radar site and underground subterrain tunnels now water logged. I can even see the old rugby pitch where i played for the station. just about see my old supply building where i worked and the guard house when i skipped past the barrier post for the last time.
I was going to cartwheel but i busted my toe a couple of weeks before i was leaving

MULDERKE said:

Hello all.
As above really. To own a TD4 now cost you £330.00 in road tax. Its a 2003 plate, to produce a new, modern vehicle today would consume more energy and cause more pollution than this vehicle of mine has used to be made in 03, and consumed in fuel to date. Even, I'm told electric cars are not with out pollution. It still takes power stations to provide, to power them to charge. And what do our power stations run on??
Just a moan ALL.
Sorry,

Cheers

Click to expand...

Agree 100% about using older cars compared to the massive pollution created building new cars.
As for using EV's v ICE cars, there is no such thing as a green car, the only truly green way to travel is by foot and even then it would have to be bare foot to be truly green.
Other forms of transport like train, bus etc come before cars in the green scale but an EV will contribute significantly less CO2 in it's life cycle than any ICE car.

I enjoy paying my hippo's road tax because it means I can drive him on road.

Do other countries pay a road tax like we do in the UK?

Hippo said:

I enjoy paying my hippo's road tax because it means I can drive him on road.

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Am I halucinating or do vehicles always look a bit shiner when they are taxed?

jedi said:

Do other countries pay a road tax like we do in the UK?

Click to expand...

Yes, some pay silly amounts, Ireland/Belgium and others are several times higher than the UK.

Alibro said:

Agree 100% about using older cars compared to the massive pollution created building new cars.
As for using EV's v ICE cars, there is no such thing as a green car, the only truly green way to travel is by foot and even then it would have to be bare foot to be truly green.
Other forms of transport like train, bus etc come before cars in the green scale but an EV will contribute significantly less CO2 in it's life cycle than any ICE car.

Click to expand...

I genuinley believe all forms of transport are as bad as each other, there are always hidden costs/things that people forget.

Jayridium said:

Am I halucinating or do vehicles always look a bit shiner when they are taxed?

Click to expand...

Freelander's always look good. When they're taxed they're happy so that could by why they shine more.

lynall said:

I genuinley believe all forms of transport are as bad as each other, there are always hidden costs/things that people forget.

Click to expand...

I've done extensive research in to this, and found the train transport is about the lowest CO2 emissions figure per passenger or ton of cargo. Increasingly cruise ships are the worse, and in reality, completely unnecessary.