this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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the subsidies are supposed to sway buyers to switch from ICEs to EVs. in other words, it's not going to put extra wheels on the road and further cause traffic jam issue. Car sales in Malaysia is extremely low on a per capita basis compared to say Australia, Japan and Taiwan actually. Traffic jam issue has a lot to do with town planning + poor driving etiquette + lack of enforcement.
let's just say if i'm an a economics lecturer i would put this question in my exam and ask my students to justify this statement on subsidies with economic principles they have learnt over the past semester.
I’m all for increasing public transport but sometimes people make it seem like cars and public transport have to be either/or and neglecting that decent public transport is very concentrated in the KV and building infrastructure takes massive amounts of time & money.
Why can't people be car optional even in other cities. Yes the federal govt doubled down on funding the Penang LRT yet RapidKuantan and Terengganu buses are a huge embarrassment.
Also, the government tax regular cars so much over so many decades and removed practically all competitions to protect those AP cronies anyway. what is a bit of subsidies going to hurt the governments coffers in the grand scheme of things..
The subsidies is possibly also a challenge to the status quo (AP cronies), effectively rendering the importation of EVs financially non-viable for consumers and reduce AP cronies' influence on the automotive market. We have seen how Anwar was willing to waive Tesla's tax, effectively killing Teslas brought in through the AP system.
Essentially the subsidies would improve competition within the sector which is better for consumers in the long run. She used vague terms like "solid plan" and "hot water" but did not consider that it is very much a political and social issue and is something far greater than an urban-dweller's first world problem such as traffic jam.
Also EVs are fucking expensive to run due to really backwards tax as they are taxed based on output i've heard. so you could be driving an NPC EV and pay a ton more in road tax than someone driving an AMG. so the impact on governments budget wrt subsidies is a lot less than some might think