Drivers could be hit with new ‘tyre tax’ in crackdown on emissions
By Paul Homewood
The war on car drivers – part II
Drivers risk being forced to pay a “tyre tax” as Britain explores a crackdown on brake and tyre wear emissions.
Ministers have hired advisers to explore how to address harmful emissions that experts say are more harmful than diesel fumes.
The Department for Transport has asked consultancy Arup to “develop recommendations on how to better assess and control these emissions which will persist after a transition to zero tailpipe emission vehicles”, according to a Government filing.
Although the Whitehall officials this weekend insisted that Arup’s work was not designed to inform tax policy, it is being seen as one of the strongest signals yet that a tyre tax is coming down the road.
Andy Turbefield, head of quality at Halfords, said: “Putting a tax on road safety is not the right way to plug the fuel duty gap. Worn tyres and faulty brakes are two of the biggest causes of accidents.
“As it is, many motorists are delaying tyre replacement and basic maintenance because of the cost-of-living crisis. Using the tax system to penalise people for keeping their vehicles in a roadworthy condition is not a good policy.”
Tyre and brake wear pollution is expected to be the next battleground for clean air campaigners after drivers switch to electric vehicles.
Particles sent into the air – known as “particulate matter (PM) 2.5” – are more harmful than nox emissions that have been the target of low-emissions zones such as Sadiq Khan’s Ulez in London.
Although tyre technology has developed to reduce dangerous emissions, the Environment Department said last week that non-exhaust road emissions have “remained largely unchanged between 1996 and 2021”
Mr Turbefield added: “If taxing non-exhaust emission is to be considered, then there needs to be more research into emissions from road surface wear. It’s plausible that electric vehicles, which are much heavier than petrol vehicles, cause more damage to road surfaces and are therefore a bigger source of road surface emissions. Any review needs to take account of the big picture.”
In May Professor Alastair Lewis, chairman of the Department for Transport Science Advisory Council, said: “When everybody owns a low emissions vehicle, low emission zones become a toothless control lever to try to manage air pollution.
“A world where we [have] jam-packed roads full of electric cars [also] isn’t a particularly attractive one… Even if they are electric, [they] will generate lots of particles.”
“At some point in the future when most of those cars have disappeared, a different form of air pollution control” is likely to be needed, he added.
“We do have to project forward about how we’re going to manage vehicles in large cities like London in the future when we have a largely electrified fleet of vehicles.”
Halfords may have a vested interest, but Andy Turbefield is spot on. A tyre tax would jeopardise road safety with drivers delaying replacements. And, as he says, EVs are a bigger problem as they are heavier, so why does not London’s ULEZ penalise them as well?
Prof Lewis, of course, let the cat out of the bag. The long term objective is to get us all out of our cars and onto public transport.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The clean air act of the 60s/70s has been proved , [ official Gov figures ], to have reduced particle emissions by 75%.
During the Covid lockdown , with about 80% less traffic on the roads , there was no difference to emissions in the air , proving that traffic is not a major factor .http://airqualitynews.com/2020/09/08/pm2-5-pollution-did-not-decline-during-lockdown-in-scotland/
This is one of the few reports that was allowed , most of them which proved that traffic was not responsible for particulate emissions were not allowed or censored .
So they are still lying their heads off in their scheme to stop everybody from being able to drive .
Yep. You will own nothing and be happy in your ghetto. While your « betters » cruise past in their Zil lane. Time to lynch these public « servants ».
PM2.5 is largely a scam ginned up by US EPA. Junk Science site has chapter and verse including the dangerous EPA experiments that inadvertently disproved the scare.
https://junkscience.com/2022/01/pm2-5-reaching-new-depths-of-fraud-cleaner-air-is-deadlier-air/
The EPA are still at it: https://junkscience.com/2023/01/epa-official-proposes-tighter-pm2-5-standards/
Indeed, all based on a highly specious piece of statistical sophistry, the Linear No-Threshold model, dearly beloved of the regulatory industry because it can be used to prove that absolutely everything is dangerous even in utterly infinitesimal concentrations.
That’s not the problem with it. It takes “excess deaths” in some areas and correlates then with higher exposures to PMs. But to do that it has to take all the deaths possible (in the data) and then use every single exposure – whether you’ve lived in the higher PM area for 1 day or 100 years! And that’s done by post codes which are notoriously unreliable – I’m actually in rural France but am being exposed to Londons PMs in these studies. Its simplistic, p hacked junk
It’s totally a scam. The studies are shameful. They completely fail to demonstrate actual exposure and fail to identify a biological mechanism of harm. It’s just activist lies.
The talk about “emissions” is likely just a fashionable smokescreen, and this is primarily about taxation. It would be a good method of taxation because of low cost of implementation, and difficulty of evasion. As an owner of a small car it would be somewhat satisfying to see more money coming from those who choose to own and/or drive tanks.
Owner of a car? Your name is on ze list. Stop being smug, you will be penalised.
As Prof Lewis said – letting the cat out of the bag – when all you have are EVs on the roads there is little to be gained from ULEZs so they have to find another way to tax us. Ironically, it’s the very heavy EVs which will get through tyres the most and therefore pay more.
There used to be a joke that the Government would take your pay and dole out your ‘allowance’ rather than let you have your pay and then take tax from it. I think it’s getting closer.
BTW: I wonder how many computer models died in order to support this idea.
I’m not sure that there are going to be any small, affordable vehicles available for people to buy by the end of this decade. Manufacturers are already in the process of ceasing production of small petrol/diesel cars (e.g. the Ford Fiesta), and even the smallest electric powered vehicles are still way beyond the price that many people will be able to afford.
They could tax petrol to do that…oh wait…
Replacement of petrol and diesel driven vehicles by all electric vehicles wil lead to greater particulate emissions from tyres for the simple reason that electric equivalent vehilces weigh more and so increase tyre wear. The science of wear mecahnisms for anyone interested is called tribology. Of course the ULEZ is not about health but rather tax gathering as most sane people know.
It’s about getting people to stop using cars and use what our Betters think we should use. Tax comes as an after-tjought. Politicians like Khan simply want us to behave how he thinks we ought to.
I partly agree. However I am convinced that the main motive is money in SK’s case. If he was so keen on the agenda you think is more important then I wonder why he didn’t accept my invitation to the conference I organised on pollution in London and instead sent a pleasant but rather junior representative.
The most common reason for MOT failures for battery cars? Tyres. You do have to a bit dim to fail on tyres as they are quite visible – yes, I once had a failure on all 4 tyres but in my defence it would have failed for the exhaust anyway – but I suspect that with a new car the owners don’t expect the tyres to be worn out in just 3 years. I see Hankook advertise a battery car specific tyre at UEFA matches.
Damage to the inside wall of a tyre may not be so visible until you get the vehicle up on a maintenance ramp. Had that happen to me as result of pothole damage. Potholes have cost me 4 tyres in the past few years, including 2 immediate deflations – and replacement of shock absorbers and bushes. Close to £2 grand all told.
What public transport? Railways are a joke, Avanti shambolic. I checked out the price earlier this year for a day return to London from Bangor, Gwynedd………£340, so for 4 people £1360, as opposed to £80 in diesel! So who in their right minds would not drive?
More madness.
You shouldn’t go. That’s the end game. Stay where you are, do as you are told, eat what they say, stay cold,.
Unsurprisingly there is crap journalism at the Telegraph as a bit of research would find that the issue of tyre and brake wear is under consideration for the next round of car construction regulations being put together by the EU for the whole of Europe.
But we are no longer in the EU…are we?
Vehicle regulations are managed by the EU on behalf of UNECE and WP29 so EU membership is irrelevant. The UK could pull out of these and have its own regulations but then prices would rise and choice would fall due to the costs of producing UK specific vehicles.
Yes we need another round of car regulations.
Because otherwise car regulators wouldn’t have anything to do.
The Euro 7 regulations are a looming nightmare as they would end affordable cars.
‘Worn tyres and faulty brakes are two of the biggest causes of accidents.’
Quel bullshit.
“Mechanical failures, according to US News, are a factor in 12 to 13 percent of all auto accidents.”
Human error is the biggest cause of vehicle crashes.
ULEZ, so what if everyone pays the charge, the missions won’t change, so Mr Mayor that isn’t really the reason for the charge is it?
interestingly what they dont mention is that for a given model, the EV version is 25% heavier than the ICE version. That means that tyre wear and break wear for any journey is increased due to the weight so producing more particulates.
See PFG above. Are you sure that the weight difference is only 25 percent for equivalent vehicles?
A 25% increase in weight contributes 2.44 times as much in road wear, which scales as the fourth power of axle weight.
Please indicate the proportions of abrasive and erosive wear plus a comment as to which the power law applies. Also do you have data for the tyre wear size distribution function for load, speed etc as well as the predominant mechanism in play?
I know about road wear because I was once involved in bitumen sales, and did a course on the testing of bitumen properties. The fourth power relationship has backing of lab evaluation and a long history of practical experience with different traffic loads on roads that allow the empirical derivation of the relationship. I made no comment about brake and tyre wear, where I have no particular information, although I deduce from looking at this
https://naei.beis.gov.uk/emissionsapp/
and drilling down for PM 2.5 to road transport, and within than to road wear and tyre and brake wear that road wear is of lesser importance, and occurs mainly on the motorways and major trunk routes which account for the majority of HGV miles, where axle weights will be much higher, while tyre and brake wear predominates in major cities, partly because of traffic density, but also because of stop-start traffic.
The weight difference depends on the models being compared. Teslas are notably light, for example: the high performance version of the Model 3 is close in weight to the BMW M3 which has comparable performance.
Other brands and models are not so good.
Professor Alastair Lewis’s “different form of air pollution control” will eventually be the pollutant we all breathe out , namely CO2, and laws will be made to lower these emissions.
A little unlikely John. We breath in approx 400 ppm CO2 and exhale around 40000 ppm. Incidently I suspect that Alastair maybe talking about particulates from wood burning which was mentioned as the major particulate when I ran a big city (London was the example) pollution conference 4 years ago. Likely atmospheric levels of CO2 even in a slightly warming world present absolutely no health threats. It was of course the subject of health which was provided as the reason for introducing ULEZs.
Which is based entirely on junk science. Our bodies are quite capable of dealing with PM of all different sizes. Rubber PMs from cars are pretty much biologically inert for humans.
Lots of particulates may start off as inert for example the iron oxide from wear from tube and railway track and wheel wear. However, the world class team of experts that talked at the polution conference held at the IOP in 2019 would not entirely agree with you. In particular you may like to put your point to a pleasant lady Terry Tetley at IC (t.tetley@imperial.ac.uk)
Pretty soon the worm will turn and there will be protests about things like ULEZs and NZC taxes. And I don’t think the police will be asking if the protesters would like a cup of tea. I’m aware that some LTNs are protesting but that’s small beer compared to what I think is coming down.
What was that, about no taxation without representation?
I saw a post on Twatter yesterday showing one of the new ULEZ cameras lying on the pavement, having been cut down from its supporting pole. I can’t imagine who would do such a thing…
“Prof Lewis, of course, let the cat out of the bag. The long term objective is to get us all out of our cars and onto public transport.”
Assuming of course there is public transport available?
Gawd help you if you are a rural dweller.
“Gawd help you if you are a rural dweller”
Part of the plan is to stop people from having their own property out “in the sticks”, and force us all into cities where we can be more easily controlled.
It’s the season for misinterpretation of statistics on pollution, since a fresh set of updates has just come out. Here’s the background on overall particulate emissions, which have declined dramatically over the years.
By 1990 they had already halved compared with 1970. The CLRTRAP (Claptrap!) regulations impose a PM2.5 target that is more about trying to close down economic activity than dangers from pollution – hence the present floating of tyre taxes. When we come to look at the breakdown by sector, it is apparent that road transport is a minor contributor.
What makes this even more galling is that 15% of particulates is said to come form natural sources such as pollens and sea spray and a further third comes in the weather from other countries. So the effect of a reduction is only half they number they first think of.
Note that PM2.5 is part of PM10. The difference between the two is particles sized between 2.5 and 10.
If you don’t want brake emissions, keep the ttaffic moving!
This is a classic Fear Campaign as described by Booker in his books. A little understood parameter (PM2.5) and some “experts” who say that they are dangerous: perfect for politicos! “Tax people for their safety”, who could object.
However, there is virtually no history regarding PM2.5 effects on health, they could not even be measured a generation ago.
It strikes me that since EV’s usually have some form of regenerative braking, the issue of brake [lining] wear is being hyped up unnecessarily. However, their much greater weight (and hence inertia) will, instead, result in more tyre wear than a conventional vehicle.
As previously posted by others, EV high torque when accelerating from rest is apparently a cause of increased tyre wear and increased road surface wear compared to ICE cars of similar weight.
Tyres do not produce micron emissions small enough to remain in the air. Has no one ever watched a motor race and noted the tyres debris (known in the business as ‘marbles’ – thank you, Murray & James) that gather in places on the circuit?
Even CO2 and NOx emissions are known to fall across the width of a pavement, especially one that is bordered at intervals by trees.
Whenever you get comminution there is always a size distribution. It may well be true that the great majority of particles maybe as you say large as the marbles in F1. Here is a useful link: https://youtu.be/1psqahOcy6g
A while back a Canadian academic (might have been Ross McKitrick) did a retrospective study where he used the models’ formulae to “predict” the mortality impact in past decades when pollution was much higher. He found that the number of deaths predicted exceeded the actual total mortality from all causes…..
It wasn’t Ross but I didn’t know that Neil Ferguson was Canadian.