On 15 Sep 2014 at 9:16, Robert Bruninga via EV wrote: > Partly because they are not paying for the added environmental damage... > but pushing it off on the rest of us.
I agree with this point. (TL;DR : skip to the last 4 paragraphs.) In Europe, things that increase public costs are more often (though not always) taxed more. (Duh.) I remember talking in the late 1990s to a pottery maker in Italy who groused that she had to pay more tax, IIRC because of the emissions from her kiln. That's just not much done here in the States. These "social costs" are usually borne by all taxpayers, including those who don't cause them. To be clear here, I'm not saying that people who truly need large vehicles should be "punished" for buying or having them. Read what I wrote in my previous post on this subject. There are lots of valid reasons. However, as a case study, I submit South Korea. Until the late 1990s, they taxed small vehicles lightly, and large vehicles and those with large displacement ICEs very heavily. The assumption was that if you could afford a big car, you could afford to pay more tax. Not surprisingly, the most popular car in Korea during the 1990s was the tiny, economical Daewoo Tico. US automakers griped to our government that they were having trouble selling their vehicles in South Korea. The US Trade Representative negotiated a deal with Korea (in reality "negotiated with" means "dictated to" in these cases). Korea agreed to reduce their large vehicle taxes. You can see the document here : http://www.atesk.org/pages/vehicletax.html An interesting thing happened. Between 1999 and 2000, the number of SUVs registered in Korea increased by 80%. In 2000, small vehicles were still the majority, though they were quickly being overwhelmed. When I was there this summer, the vehicle mix looked a lot like the US's, except with fewer pickup trucks. Back in 2000, only one Korean I personally knew and rode with drove an SUV. Today almost ALL my Korean friends drive them. That's a big change. Here's an interesting sidebar. The USTR's knuckle-cracking was supposed to open Korea's markets to US-made vehicles. But it didn't. Even today, those SUVs clogging Korean roads still don't say Ford and Jeep on them. They're mostly Hyundais and Kias. As of the last few years, a few are branded "Chevrolet," but they're not US-made - they're built in Korea by GM Daewoo. So the USTR's meddling in Korean laws didn't do anything significant to achieve its ostensible goal to improve US-made vehicle sales. It did, however, make parking much more difficult, increase the diesel soot in the air, and raise Korea's energy use and CO2 emissions. The point is that financial incentives for buying vehicles that are better for your country and the world WORK, as they did in Korea before 1998. They don't exist in a vacuum; you have to coordinate them with other laws and incentives. You have to make them strong enough. But they can and do WORK. As of 2015, Korea's Ministry of Transport is offering a subsidy of 15 million won (pretty close to $15k) for Koreans who buy an EV, and some cities and provinces also have incentives running 3-8 million (around $3- 8k). For 2015 their choices will be a Kia Soul or a Chevy (Daewoo) Spark. We will see what happens. But you can bet that if these incentives last, a LOT more automakers there will be introducing EVs. I know that libertarians abhor subsidies and incentives, and I understand why. I understand that often there are unintended consequences. I understand that often the benefit sometimes isn't evenly or fairly distributed among the population. But when it comes to determining how a nation's or state's drivers buy vehicles, incentives WORK. Which (for patient folks still with me) brings us to in interesting notion. As I said before, the problem with commercializing large EVs is how fast the battery cost (and to a lesser degree, drivetrain cost) increases as the size of the vehicle goes up. What if EV incentives were tied to that specific EV's amount of potential environmental improvement? That is, what if replacing a 6000lb ICE pickup or SUV with an EV pickup or SUV got you a bigger subsidy than replacing a 3000lb sedan with a 3000lb EV? A lot of folks who oppose large vehicles on principle would be upset that it put yet more big vehicles on the road, and didn't do as much to reduce energy use and CO2 emissions as replacing those pickups and SUVs with small EVs. But in a nation that's clearly already addicted to large vehicles, where a lot of folks will NEVER buy a small car no matter how cheap it is, such a policy might - might - actually do more to reduce energy use and CO2 emissions. I'm not an expert, and I don't have any research that say that this will for sure work. But maybe it's something to think about, and perhaps research further. David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
