Random EV thoughts.....

You can't have decent public transport outside of the greater Dublin area apart from some urban settings. The population density is simply far too low. Outside of the greater Dublin area the population density in Ireland is 25 times as low as in the whole of the Netherlands.

Cycle. There is always another option.

They can call it whatever they want but the dimensions of the car or the weight determine the segment and those are immutable

You're right. Originally the discussion centred on the merits of different mechanisms to subsidise EVs. The current model is considered by some to be inefficient as it mainly results in a transfer of taxpayer funds to manufacturers without making EVs more affordable, unlike a proposed alternative model based on unlimited tax exemption.

My view is that changing to a unlimited tax exemption would make very little difference in terms of reducing the price or increasing the supply of more affordable EVs. However, it certainly would be more beneficial to the purchasers of more expensive EVs currently above the €60k grant threshold. Don't think that's appropriate and just not sure it would be an easy sell in the current economic climate but I can see why it would be attractive to some.

As you say all other EV related motor tax discussion is for the future when EVs motor taxation, irrespective of the model adopted, will no doubt increase significantly.

Fair enough, it would need a more formalised classification system. However there is an ISO standard for vehicle type already, so it isn't a huge stretch to put size and weight limits around it

As for different classifications meaning different taxes, well that's the way it's always been. I've seen car engines written down as 1.95l capacity to avoid going into the next tax band

I mean it doesn't need to be vehicle segment by itself. It's an indicator of vehicle size and weight but you're correct that it isn't formalised enough to be used outright

The point I'm trying to make is that car taxes based on a high degree of government surveillance aren't realistically going to happen.

There's some people saying that your smart meter will report to ESBN when you're charging your car and somehow tax that. Remember this is the same ESBN that weren't able to implement a night rate on smart meters until recently and have only just launched a portal where you can see your usage

Similarly a tax on mileage isn't going to happen either. The amount of government oversight required to monitor that is beyond their capacity to manage IMO

Car taxes have always been based on immutable characteristics of the car which the customer cannot hide or misrepresent.

Given that the government has generally favoured smaller cars in the past then I imagine this trend will continue

Can you get a day night rate now on a smart meter ?

No, at least not in the sense of the rates you'll get on D/N meters

Up until recently ESBN couldn't implement the 30 mins readings on smart meters , so they could only have 24 hour rates

Now the electricity suppliers have more flexibility to have time of use rates, which is good in theory except all the rates went up by about 30-50%

To give an example, Energia have a Smart EV plan which gives a 12.64c night rate, but only for 4 hours. The rest of the "night rate" is 28.17c which is more than double the D/N meter night rate

Yeah and the problem with taxing consumption in EV world is that some of the most expensive EVs have very low WLTP consumption.

If motor tax effectively targeted at more expensive cars then this won't accomplish the goals of the tax

Ultimately, taxes like motor tax exist for two reasons

The first is obviously to provide a source of revenue to the government. The official explanation is that motor tax pays for road maintenance but this hasn't been the case for decades, all tax revenue goes into a central fund

The second reason is to nudge consumers to buy cars that accomplish the governments political goals. This was the motivation behind switching to CO2 emissions as a basis for taxation to encourage the uptake for low emmision vehicles (worked out great didn't it, that daily dose of diesel fumes reminds me how wonderful asthma attacks are)

Same for putting EVs on a lower tax band, to nudge the population towards buying them

So, what are the political goals of the current government?

Well there definitely seems to be a desire to roll back EV incentives slowly, so the flat €120 tax rate is going to go at some point

If you listen to the Greens, they'd prefer everyone to use public transport and cycle and will probably want to nudge people towards owning smaller cars or not owning a car

FF and FG seem to lean more towards just swapping all the existing cars out for EVs and will probably go after the usual approach to trying to tax higher value cars to generate more revenue

So that's why I think it'll be some function of size or weight. It's hardly a universal rule but generally bigger car = more luxury

I mean if you don't believe me just look at the jeeps that BMW, Audi and Mercedes produce. They seem to design them to be bigger than the equivalent cars from other manufacturers

As I said previously it's better to lump the tax onto new cars rather than penalize less well off people that in 8years will only have a choice of jacked up SUV/Crossover types to buy because that's what richer people are choosing to buy new today. The goal is to change the buying decisions today, once someone chooses a Troc instead of an ID3 you've locked in a lifetime of emissions that you could have avoided by making the Troc 10k (or whatever works ) more expensive than the ID3 today.

If they choose to pay the exorbitant price you have some additional tax revenue to build metro, buy some electric buses, incentivise taxis to switch etc...

Where are these magic "0 emissions" cars though? Sure, zero tailpipe emissions but what about the materials to manufacture them & the electricity to charge them? That's got to be accounted for too I think?

No, nothing short of an outright ban is warranted here for anything that is an SUV, purports to be an SUV or resembles an SUV.

That'll soften their cough 😁.

Dimensions are immaterial here. It's perception. SUVs are invariably perceived to be bad so I'd specifically target them.

Criteria would be:

Just like they do for firearms. Assault rifles are banned, as are firearms that purport to be assault rifles or resemble assault rifles. It's actually a doctrine in Irish & international legislation.

An SUV might be efficient, built from largely recyclable materials & driven very little, possibly in a high density, urban area. It's still an SUV though.

But you agree in principle that we should really, really, penalise hard, those who chose to drive "SUV" type vehicles. I mean big, opulent, inefficient, expensive & wholly unnecessary cars?

That seems to be the prevailing ideology?

Steelmanning here. I'm even questioning my thinking here to be honest.

I see your point regarding usage, but I don't see how it's practical without some big brother style surveillance system, which the government probably doesn't have the ability or interest to develop

I mean you could probably accomplish the same thing in principle by making every motorway and N road a toll road and just have a flat charge for road tax