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Economic viability can be massaged through subsidies or taxes, if the break even point isn't too far away from the current point.

• EricE 5y ago
  >Economic viability can be massaged through subsidies or taxes Wow - we have subsidies than can alter the laws of physics? Neat! Why didn't we deploy that before now!
  • xxpor 5y ago
    No, but just think about an extreme case. What if there was a tax on any liquid hydrocarbon based fuel of $1000/gal starting 1/1/2023? What would the reaction be? Obviously truckers would want to buy something so they didn't have to drive a diesel truck any more. If battery powered trucks were more expensive per lb*mi than the diesel at the old price, the switch would cause general prices for goods to go up, granted, but the case for non-diesel trucks would be there because it wouldn't go up enough to cause the demand for trucks to collapse.
    • bluGill 5y ago
      The reaction would be the political party that passed that tax would lose overwhelmingly by a landslide in the election. If you want to do some form of tax that is large enough to make a difference you first need to make the alternative to paying that tax viable enough that people will switch. Hydrocarbons are massively more energy dense than any other practical fuel. (nuclear is of course more energy dense, but not currently practical for trucks) If you want to get rid of them, then you need an alternative that works well enough for people to actually switch. There are a number of them, but batteries are not one, and never will be.