PICTURE TWO neighbours on the same road. One bought a Volvo XC70 diesel estate new in 2015 and has never let it go. It has done the school runs, the Dunnes shops, the odd trip to Kerry with a dog in the back. The other has been through three Volvos in the same eleven years, the last of them electric.

Now ask yourself which of them has been the better citizen.

If you go by the motor tax bill, it is not close. The keeper pays €1,080 a year, which adds up to roughly €11,880 over eleven years. The swapper, by my rough estimates, pays closer to €3,400.

And here is the bit that bothers me. When you count the carbon it takes to build a car as well as drive it, the two come out surprisingly close. I make it around 50 tonnes of CO2 for the keeper and about 55 for the swapper over the same period.

These are illustrative numbers, based on 16,000km a year and estimates of build emissions from the ICCT, so please do not hold me to the last tonne.

But the point survives any reasonable tweak. Motor tax counts what comes out of the exhaust. It does not count the factory.

The system is built to reward swapping

I am not blaming anyone who buys a new EV. I have one myself, a Volkswagen eUp, and I think it is a great way to get around. But look at what the State is currently offering. A new EV pays a flat €120 a year in motor tax. Budget 2027, announced this week, extends the VRT relief of up to €5,000 on new EVs to the end of 2028.

Meanwhile, VRT is going up by one percentage point on bands above 80g/km from January, which will nudge up the price of a lot of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars.

All of that points in one direction. Replace what........

© TheJournal