Ditch the fuel tax, and instead have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled and vehicle weight? Could also incorporate lesser factors like efficiency, and likely to be a subsidy for heavy vehicles. Of course the beauty of fuel tax that it incorporates all of those factors already, and you get easy, regular collection.
As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?
> have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled
Now the hard part is getting accurate distance traveled figures from all road users. Good luck with that.
> As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?
Yes, and the system is breaking down because of solar. Typically, most of what you pay for electricity goes towards maintaining the line to your house, not towards generation. When you get solar panels that cover most of your usage, but keep the connection for use when the sun does not shine, your bill goes down to the point where it's no longer enough to maintain your grid connection.
The correct solution to that is to disaggregate transmission and generation, and for transmission bill you for the size of your main incoming fuse instead of consumption. However, in much of the US the utilities are heavily constrained in how they bill you by law, and cannot do this, so the only thing they can do is hike up prices on everyone, so solar is even more appealing and more people get it, resulting in even higher prices...
Unfortunately the UK does not have proper emissions checks as part of the MOT.
There is a (subjective) visual check for visible smoke, and a metered exhaust check which again only tests generically for "smoke", ie large particulates.
Unfortunately there is no testing of specific pollutants (NOx, PM2.5, PM10, etc) so many vehicles can pass MOT even if they are way outside allowed emissions levels, have had DPF removed, etc.
Because installing a tracker on someone’s car will end with lots of privacy issues? You need a tracker to properly attribute taxes to the person that owns the road, and even though you don’t need super accurate trackers, any tracking can be abused.
You don't need trackers if you just want to replicate the mechanism of the fuel tax for cars that don't use fuel. For that you only need a tamper-protected mileage counter.
I disagree on ditching the current fuel tax for combustion engines. What about keeping the current system for combustion engines and creating the "distance traveled tax" only for electric vehicles. Although the separate systems would be a bit confusing for hybrids.
Only took me a few seconds to figure out how to abuse the distance traveled tax for combustion engines. Physically roll back the odometer if the vehicle is old enough, do it electronically, disconnect the odometer, and/or other ways. I think people that travel around the country a lot would abuse. FYI, messing with the odometer is a felony so don't do it.
My state does not have yearly inspections, so nobody is going to read my odometer.
As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?