this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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Sounds good to me but I do worry that new vehicles will be even more expensive than they are now and the used car market will go the way of the current housing market.
That’s a good point. I think one solution is smaller cars. For the past two decades, we’ve bought way more car than we need—everyone has huge SUVs and pick up trucks, despite the fact that families are smaller than ever and fewer people carpool than in the past. That’s because big cars are subsidized with relaxed regulations.
The other solution is fewer cars. We’ll always need cars, but there’s lots of low hanging fruit to improve our mediocre public transportation and lack of mixed zoning.
So not a single solution at all.
Raising the cost of living is a typical moron economics. The net result of large rises in the cost of living has always been and will always result in loss of life. Good luck getting voted back into parliament on the back of destroying the middle and low income classes.
How do smaller and fewer cars raise the cost of living? And why is the thing that’s successful everywhere else in the world not a solution? Your comment makes no sense.
How do you think people don’t already buy the cars they need with the money they have?
Cars are a waste of money. Doubling the price of them and increasing the cost of living is just stupid under current economic state.
Good luck with that claim.
Because they don’t sell smaller cheaper cars here due to bad regulation. Most European/Asian cars look nothing like the big stupid SUVs here.
And that’s just not how economic externalities work. When you ignore them, these costs don’t just go away and make things “more affordable”. We all pay for it. In fact, costs falls especially on the poor, who disproportionally tend to use public transit instead of buying big shiny new trucks.
I find this very hard to believe the claim entirely. Give examples. I know for a fact Hyundai (Korean), Honda (Japanes), VW (European), and more are sold.
Was this generated by AI . Wow. It has absolutely nothing to do with reducing cost of EVs or size of cars.
Are and here we are at the core of the bias.
You want to reduce the size and impact of vehicles on roads you don’t do it by doubling the cost of all vehicles, period. You do it with a road tax based on vehicle weight. That way all big vehicles are taxed equally and this includes EVs being taxed more: as they should be. Because of the impact (cost) to the roads and environment that they have. Personal transportation emissions are a very small percentage of transportation emissions which is a small percentage overall (8). EVs just shift the combustion to the energy generation which is just as bad and in some cases worse. EVs charge at night when the grid supply is propped up by the dirtiest generation. So we counter it with grid energy storage and home energy storage. If the grid is rolling renewables, this allows homes to store the energy when it’s the cleanest (home solar improves this vastly) to a point that it would be taking two f100s worth of emissions off the grid per home. This should be the priority, home/grid storage, not doubling the cost of personal vehicles under the false flag of environmentalism.
Of course I don’t mean that literally not a single small car is for sale. 🙄 Anyone who has done even the most cursory search knows that the market for small cars is extremely different in other parts of the world. When you’re misinterpreting my comments in such an uncharitable way, I don’t really see a point in continuing this discussion.
When did I ever say we should “double the cost of all vehicles”? What an insane way to argue with someone! You can’t just invent stupid positions and attribute them to your interlocutor.
I agree with your proposal. A road tax based on weight internalizes the externalities. It sounds like you think we disagree because you don’t know what an economic externality is. Instead of your glib reply, you could… look it up before replying.
I apologise, I reread your original post as I thought it was “1. electric 2. smaller vehicles”. Electrification effectively doubles the cost of sedans even after tax cuts and subsidies. Add to this not everyone can buy a small car, a family with two or more babies/kids for example require a large vehicle, trades people, the list goes on. in my country & state, luxury tax, stamp duty tax are waived for electric vehicles yet they still almost double the price. People buy small cars for small cost. This would push small vehicles beyond the reach of a lot of the population impacting entire households and families in ways we can’t imagine amplified in cities and towns with poor or no public transportation.