HILLAR PETERSEN ⟩ Time to trade the family van for a sports car

Photo: Erakogu

• I thought it would be worthwhile to change cars this year, so as to avoid the new registration fee.
• Large family car owners will face higher car taxes due to weight starting in 2025.
• With the tax making minivans expensive, it’s worth considering a sports car over a family car.

The answer to the question of what kind of car is best for me changed recently, writes Hillar Petersen, board member of the NGO Lasterikkad Isad.

In order to get the whole family into the car at once, we need an eight-seater vehicle, and as recently as June I was convinced that nothing could beat a big family van. An interesting phenomenon called motor vehicle tax made me reassess the circumstances.

Our current Ford van recently turned 10 years old. A good time for a swap. I'm probably not the only one to think it would be worthwhile to change cars this year, so as to avoid the new registration fee. In June, I started looking into what was being offered. It's a shame that the Multivan had been reduced to a seven-seater in the meantime. Anyway, to summarize the market research, I found that the most reasonable thing would be to order a new Ford van. However, it turned out that it won't be that easy, because amidst the production difficulties and the insignificance of the Estonian market, the delivery time offered upon ordering was 6-12 months.

Uh-oh, what to do now? Six months would still fit into this year, but if it takes longer, it would not anymore. Once the actual delivery time is known, the order can be withdrawn, but this would not solve the problem of there being no car.

Why is the issue of delivery time so important? For a car with a gross weight of more than three tons, the weight component of the registration fee is the maximum, 4,000 euros. In addition, the carbon dioxide part – in the case of a reasonable diesel, another 1,915 euros. Therefore, when buying a car, about six thousand in addition to the price. Painful!

As an alternative, I thought about not replacing the current van at all – if it ran for 10 years, maybe it will run for 10 more. These older Transits are still around today and some of them do not even reek or rust that badly. But my daughter offered a more interesting idea: why buy a boring van, let's get a Porsche or some other cool car, a Tesla would also be quite good.

Even though the family wouldn't fit in them, the thought caused excitement. So, out of interest, I looked at how much the car tax would be in either case if I bought a new car in 2025. For my childhood favorite, Porsche 911 Carrera, with a gross weight of 1,860 kilograms and an emission of 230 grams per kilometer, I would have to pay a registration fee of 4,065 euros, or a third less than when buying a van. However, in the case of a six-seater Tesla Model X, with a gross weight of 3,079 kilograms, the registration fee would be only 1,508 euros. Of course, for both Porsche and Tesla, the annual fee is also significantly lower than for an eight-seater diesel van.

Is it even possible to make the car tax reasonable in any way at all? Probably not really, because it will still seem unfair to someone. As an idea, I once suggested that since a larger family needs a larger car, it would be worthwhile to take into account the number of minor children when calculating the tax.

Ideas such as taking into account the number of seats in the car and having the unladen weight instead of the gross weight as the basis for the weight calculation would follow an economical way of thinking.

A larger number of seats should have the effect of reducing the tax, because it is more efficient to transport more people with one car, similar to public transport. However, the unladen weight would be a more accurate basis of calculation when it comes to road wear than the gross weight, because the car is often driven alone. Taking into account the unladen weight would not penalize drivers of family cars, whose car's high carrying capacity makes the gross weight greater than that of SUVs in a similar weight category, so strongly. A SUV has a higher unladen weight than a minivan, but usually a lower gross weight. It is namely the owners of large family cars who will pay more for weight when it comes to the car tax that will come into effect in 2025.

It is clear that these changes will not come. So it's worth taking the car tax just as it is. Since the tax makes buying a minivan ridiculously expensive, it is a worthwhile idea to buy a sports car instead of a family car. An even better idea is to buy a motorcycle, for which no registration fee is added at all.

With two Porsches or four motorcycles, the whole family could drive in style. In any case, good time for a midlife crisis!