4 ms·

People should be taxed for driving ICE in my view, the area where I live, people just drive around all the time for any reasons, I think mostly from boredom: do

People should be taxed for driving ICE in my view, the area where I live, people just drive around all the time for any reasons, I think mostly from boredom: down to the store, to buy a tool, just constantly driving around, because it's "cheap". All the money from these taxes should go to planting forests, renewables projects etc.

thehappypm 4y ago
They are: excise tax, sales tax, gas tax.
- ignormies 4y ago
  Only one of those is valid: a sales tax affects electric and ICE vehicles equally. The gas tax _is_ the excise tax (unless you have another example?). But yes, the gas tax is exactly what the prior commenter is looking for. It's just far, far too low. US Federal gas tax, last raised in 1993, is 18.4¢/gal. Compare this with Europe, where the average is ~$2.47/gal [1]. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe-2022/#:~:text=The%20average%20excise%20duty%20on,1.98%20per%20gallon)%20on%20diesel https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe-2022/#:~:text=....
- culi 4y ago
  if you add up the subsidies (even if you don't include building and maintaining the damn roads) it's still much more subsidized than it is taxed
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Electric vehicles use the road too.
    - culi 4y ago
      yeah...
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  These don't even cover the cost of roads, much less all the negative externalities.
S201 4y ago
> I think mostly from boredom: down to the store, to buy a tool How exactly is buying a tool or grocery shopping (what I assume is meant by "the store") driving out of boredom? But to your point, a tax on driving ICE vehicles may indeed incentivize different behavior in areas where there are other transit options. Proposing such a tax is a very urban-centric view, however. Anyone in an even somewhat rural area would immediately realize how impractical it is. For example, if I personally wanted to use public transit I would first need to walk 5 miles each way along a 50mph road without sidewalks to get to the nearest bus stop. Of course increased public transit options are a piece of the puzzle here, but there are huge areas of the US that have a population density far too low for any type of public transit system to make sense. These areas also tend to the be the areas where buying an electric car is far out of reach economically as well. Like it or not, ICE cars aren't going anywhere for a while.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Proposing such a tax is a very urban-centric view, however Except I live in a rural area and that’s where I see all the wasted trips, in cities people just get an elevator downstairs and buy food. I’m talking about just encouraging basics like, planning your shopping for the week, instead of going to the store everyday to buy milk, eggs etc. Planning your jobs better so it’s two trips to the hardware store and not ten. The cost of being sloppy is too low imo and it just means people drive around a lot more than required. Personally, every time I think about staying my car I think if there is another way to accomplish my mission without the vehicle, or I bundle my trips / get something shipped.
63 4y ago
It's not a personal choice thing most of the time, it's just the way our infrastructure was designed. I couldn't walk to the grocery store even if I wanted to.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  And even if I could: I'm not lugging around several bags of groceries and other sundries that entire distance back to my residence. The way shopping for groceries works here in the US is that we buy enough goods to last us a week or two. That simply isn't happening with just two hands and feet, or even a bicycle.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    I see plenty of people using dolly carts at my supermarket. I'm not saying it's practical for everyone, especially large families. But there are more options than people may consider at first, simply because everything in the US is so car centric by default.
  - ignormies 4y ago
    The process is a feedback loop though. People drive because everything is so spread out. The corner stores die because people don't walk past anymore. Rinse and repeat. Electric cargo bikes are the last bastion of hope here. https://youtu.be/rQhzEnWCgHA https://youtu.be/rQhzEnWCgHA
  - legulere 4y ago
    You can load a bicycle with cheap pannier bags easily with a lot of stuff. There’s also trailers and on the luxury level cargo bikes if you have more stuff to transport. Buying enough goods for a week or two is not an issue with bicycles.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    If you go to the store once every 2 weeks, you're not the kind of person I wrote the comment for, I'm talking about the majority of people I see who seem to always have a reason to be driving to the store, pickup ice cream, pickup milk, pickup blah blah. Where we live, we'd really have to drive to the store, that's it; However, we go once a week maximum to avoid more trips.
giardia 4y ago
A blind tax on ICE would be regressive as hell. You'll be punishing people who can't afford an electric or hybrid which would in turn reduce their employment opportunities, either by taxing the fuel at a higher rate or by making their vehicle more expensive upfront (so they either don't want to put miles on it or they're forced to get a cheaper vehicle which is more prone to issues) -- and let's be honest, public transport outside the major city centers is a joke in America and probably always will be because of how spread out we are. Rural residents (frequently low income) often don't have a stable enough grid to charge electric vehicles reliably either. Don't get me wrong, I think we need to make the shift but there are still a lot of unresolved practical issues. I expect there's a lot more room for technological improvements in the next 5-10 years which will drive the cost so low that people won't even want an ICE unless it's really necessary for something. Honestly, there's bigger fish to fry with carbon emissions anyway.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Can you elaborate? I didn't realize there were places in the US without reliable electricity (other than during storms or whatever). How common is that, outside of people who are willingly "off the grid"?
  - giardia 4y ago
    There are quite a few places in densely forested areas. But it's not just a matter of uptime (which is an issue), but of capacity. If you live 50-100 miles out of town in a small community, the community can't afford to upgrade those lines. The county won't pay for it, and neither will the state or feds. That kind of range also means you need to charge fairly often.
    - hedora 4y ago
      Unless you are talking about fast DC chargers, an EV's current draw is comparable to a households appliance, such as an electric range, dryer or furnace. I'd be surprised to hear of a community with trunk lines that actually can't handle 1-2 EVs per house.
rkagerer 4y ago
In Vancouver, Canada they already have that. Taxes amount to something like 38% of your bill.
trimbo 4y ago
> People should be taxed for driving ICE They are. Heavily. In California, right now with gas at $3.59 (Costco), gas taxes are adding around 50% to the price of gas. ($1.15 of fixed fees, plus sales tax) > All the money from these taxes should go to planting forests, renewables projects etc. Those types of taxes get passed, but eventually end up in general funds or borrowed against to fund general funds. But people still keep proposing these like next time it won't happen.
- acdha 4y ago
  > They are. Heavily. In California, right now with gas at $3.59 (Costco), gas taxes are adding around 50% to the price of gas. ($1.15 of fixed fees, plus sales tax) Now look at how that still doesn’t come anywhere near paying just for the roads, much less the other subsidies like parking or the cost of all of the extra healthcare needed.
xracy 4y ago
Unfortunately, I've got some really bad news for you... There's nothing unique to ICE cars that makes particulate bad. The worst part of cars for particulate is their weight, and EVs are heavier than ICEs. So in some ways, they are actually worse because of the way they wear down tires. You want to get rid of particulate, gotta go fewer cars altogether. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389421015910 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438942...
- onecommentman 4y ago
  Or change the formulation of the wear elements of tires. Tire manufacturers complain that tires aren’t viewed as items that most drivers are willing to invest in, much past the minimum. They’d be delighted to make premium tires that reduce the airborne particulates, although that would probably worsen the perceived comfort and actual safety of the vehicle. But maybe an 80-20 would get most of the environmental benefit with minimum impact to the driver and their safety. It’s a mature technology, but also a new challenge. Or road sweepers that wash the road and collect the tire dust, not just the trash.
  - xracy 4y ago
    I mean, the problem is that the nature of tires is to have maximum traction so you can take advantage of rolling friction. Which means that you'd have to find some magic material that could really take a beating. Also, road sweepers don't solve the problem. When you drive by someone, you are creating these particulates for them to breath. Machines with moving parts don't last forever. This is more true under more load. Also, if you wanted to change the number of pollutants, you'd really need everyone to get these new magic tires, so it would have to be a cheaper product, and specifically not a premium product. It's also worth noting, that the person at risk for all of this is not the driver. The person at risk for all of this is anyone else. You're not kicking up particulates for yourself, you're kicking up particulates for everyone around you.
LinuxBender 4y ago
I'm in a rural area that also turns into snow and ice one third of the year. I am not opposed to riding a horse into town, in fact I would prefer it. If adding penalties for ICE vehicles then I would expect first there to be more places I can tie up my horse and I suspect the local town will have to implement dumping stations for all the horse poop. I guess there is also horse-gas emissions to consider. I can feed them things to reduce gas. Another option would be an EV albeit sub-optimal. I've been looking at getting an EV side-by-side. [1] There are several street legal options. Many here use side-by-sides to go into town. The EV cars have a long ways to go before I will consider one. Highly dystopian telemetry, standard features sold as subscriptions, battery tech is still ancient in my opinion, too many features and too many attempts to make the cars self driving and the tech just isn't ready. The EV side-by-sides are still a bit pricey and it would be entirely useless for going up into the mountains as the range / battery tech is still ancient. Producing this EV also emits a lot of emissions. To be carbon neutral might take a lifetime, especially when having to replace the batteries. It gets really cold here so I would need batteries that can handle it and Lithiom Ion requires heat pads so I will be using more solar/grid power. I do not get much solar power here. I am starting to see EV's as shiny luxury golf carts but that is just my take. I could just walk. It's only a few miles into town but then I would have to make many trips and pulling a cart of groceries through ice and snow is much harder than one might imagine. Even pushing a shopping cart 50 feet when I have a few bags of oats and the store was too cheap to clear the ice from their parking lot is quite comical and quite a workout. Walking along the highway is super dangerous in the winter. There are no buses or trains anywhere near me and I doubt that there ever would be. People here are expected to have snow capable vehicles. I've thought of e-bikes with super-fat snow tires. It turns out those don't work so great. I have a neighbor that tried it and they just went back to using their truck. [1] - https://www.polaris.com/en-us/off-road/ranger/2022/ranger-ev/ https://www.polaris.com/en-us/off-road/ranger/2022/ranger-ev...
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  So you expect that the world the cost of your lifestyle choices at no cost to you? Why shouldn't you pay for the cost of your choice to live in a rural area?

thehappypm 4y ago

They are: excise tax, sales tax, gas tax.

ignormies 4y ago
Only one of those is valid: a sales tax affects electric and ICE vehicles equally. The gas tax _is_ the excise tax (unless you have another example?). But yes, the gas tax is exactly what the prior commenter is looking for. It's just far, far too low. US Federal gas tax, last raised in 1993, is 18.4¢/gal. Compare this with Europe, where the average is ~$2.47/gal [1]. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe-2022/#:~:text=The%20average%20excise%20duty%20on,1.98%20per%20gallon)%20on%20diesel https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe-2022/#:~:text=....
culi 4y ago
if you add up the subsidies (even if you don't include building and maintaining the damn roads) it's still much more subsidized than it is taxed
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Electric vehicles use the road too.
  - culi 4y ago
    yeah...
bcrosby95 4y ago
These don't even cover the cost of roads, much less all the negative externalities.

S201 4y ago

> I think mostly from boredom: down to the store, to buy a tool How exactly is buying a tool or grocery shopping (what I assume is meant by "the store") driving out of boredom? But to your point, a tax on driving ICE vehicles may indeed incentivize different behavior in areas where there are other transit options. Proposing such a tax is a very urban-centric view, however. Anyone in an even somewhat rural area would immediately realize how impractical it is. For example, if I personally wanted to use public transit I would first need to walk 5 miles each way along a 50mph road without sidewalks to get to the nearest bus stop. Of course increased public transit options are a piece of the puzzle here, but there are huge areas of the US that have a population density far too low for any type of public transit system to make sense. These areas also tend to the be the areas where buying an electric car is far out of reach economically as well. Like it or not, ICE cars aren't going anywhere for a while.

bamboozled 4y ago
Proposing such a tax is a very urban-centric view, however Except I live in a rural area and that’s where I see all the wasted trips, in cities people just get an elevator downstairs and buy food. I’m talking about just encouraging basics like, planning your shopping for the week, instead of going to the store everyday to buy milk, eggs etc. Planning your jobs better so it’s two trips to the hardware store and not ten. The cost of being sloppy is too low imo and it just means people drive around a lot more than required. Personally, every time I think about staying my car I think if there is another way to accomplish my mission without the vehicle, or I bundle my trips / get something shipped.

63 4y ago

It's not a personal choice thing most of the time, it's just the way our infrastructure was designed. I couldn't walk to the grocery store even if I wanted to.

Dalewyn 4y ago
And even if I could: I'm not lugging around several bags of groceries and other sundries that entire distance back to my residence. The way shopping for groceries works here in the US is that we buy enough goods to last us a week or two. That simply isn't happening with just two hands and feet, or even a bicycle.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  I see plenty of people using dolly carts at my supermarket. I'm not saying it's practical for everyone, especially large families. But there are more options than people may consider at first, simply because everything in the US is so car centric by default.
- ignormies 4y ago
  The process is a feedback loop though. People drive because everything is so spread out. The corner stores die because people don't walk past anymore. Rinse and repeat. Electric cargo bikes are the last bastion of hope here. https://youtu.be/rQhzEnWCgHA https://youtu.be/rQhzEnWCgHA
- legulere 4y ago
  You can load a bicycle with cheap pannier bags easily with a lot of stuff. There’s also trailers and on the luxury level cargo bikes if you have more stuff to transport. Buying enough goods for a week or two is not an issue with bicycles.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  If you go to the store once every 2 weeks, you're not the kind of person I wrote the comment for, I'm talking about the majority of people I see who seem to always have a reason to be driving to the store, pickup ice cream, pickup milk, pickup blah blah. Where we live, we'd really have to drive to the store, that's it; However, we go once a week maximum to avoid more trips.

giardia 4y ago

A blind tax on ICE would be regressive as hell. You'll be punishing people who can't afford an electric or hybrid which would in turn reduce their employment opportunities, either by taxing the fuel at a higher rate or by making their vehicle more expensive upfront (so they either don't want to put miles on it or they're forced to get a cheaper vehicle which is more prone to issues) -- and let's be honest, public transport outside the major city centers is a joke in America and probably always will be because of how spread out we are. Rural residents (frequently low income) often don't have a stable enough grid to charge electric vehicles reliably either. Don't get me wrong, I think we need to make the shift but there are still a lot of unresolved practical issues. I expect there's a lot more room for technological improvements in the next 5-10 years which will drive the cost so low that people won't even want an ICE unless it's really necessary for something. Honestly, there's bigger fish to fry with carbon emissions anyway.

Rebelgecko 4y ago
Can you elaborate? I didn't realize there were places in the US without reliable electricity (other than during storms or whatever). How common is that, outside of people who are willingly "off the grid"?
- giardia 4y ago
  There are quite a few places in densely forested areas. But it's not just a matter of uptime (which is an issue), but of capacity. If you live 50-100 miles out of town in a small community, the community can't afford to upgrade those lines. The county won't pay for it, and neither will the state or feds. That kind of range also means you need to charge fairly often.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Unless you are talking about fast DC chargers, an EV's current draw is comparable to a households appliance, such as an electric range, dryer or furnace. I'd be surprised to hear of a community with trunk lines that actually can't handle 1-2 EVs per house.

rkagerer 4y ago

In Vancouver, Canada they already have that. Taxes amount to something like 38% of your bill.

trimbo 4y ago

> People should be taxed for driving ICE They are. Heavily. In California, right now with gas at $3.59 (Costco), gas taxes are adding around 50% to the price of gas. ($1.15 of fixed fees, plus sales tax) > All the money from these taxes should go to planting forests, renewables projects etc. Those types of taxes get passed, but eventually end up in general funds or borrowed against to fund general funds. But people still keep proposing these like next time it won't happen.

acdha 4y ago
> They are. Heavily. In California, right now with gas at $3.59 (Costco), gas taxes are adding around 50% to the price of gas. ($1.15 of fixed fees, plus sales tax) Now look at how that still doesn’t come anywhere near paying just for the roads, much less the other subsidies like parking or the cost of all of the extra healthcare needed.

xracy 4y ago

Unfortunately, I've got some really bad news for you... There's nothing unique to ICE cars that makes particulate bad. The worst part of cars for particulate is their weight, and EVs are heavier than ICEs. So in some ways, they are actually worse because of the way they wear down tires. You want to get rid of particulate, gotta go fewer cars altogether. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389421015910 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438942...

onecommentman 4y ago
Or change the formulation of the wear elements of tires. Tire manufacturers complain that tires aren’t viewed as items that most drivers are willing to invest in, much past the minimum. They’d be delighted to make premium tires that reduce the airborne particulates, although that would probably worsen the perceived comfort and actual safety of the vehicle. But maybe an 80-20 would get most of the environmental benefit with minimum impact to the driver and their safety. It’s a mature technology, but also a new challenge. Or road sweepers that wash the road and collect the tire dust, not just the trash.
- xracy 4y ago
  I mean, the problem is that the nature of tires is to have maximum traction so you can take advantage of rolling friction. Which means that you'd have to find some magic material that could really take a beating. Also, road sweepers don't solve the problem. When you drive by someone, you are creating these particulates for them to breath. Machines with moving parts don't last forever. This is more true under more load. Also, if you wanted to change the number of pollutants, you'd really need everyone to get these new magic tires, so it would have to be a cheaper product, and specifically not a premium product. It's also worth noting, that the person at risk for all of this is not the driver. The person at risk for all of this is anyone else. You're not kicking up particulates for yourself, you're kicking up particulates for everyone around you.

LinuxBender 4y ago

I'm in a rural area that also turns into snow and ice one third of the year. I am not opposed to riding a horse into town, in fact I would prefer it. If adding penalties for ICE vehicles then I would expect first there to be more places I can tie up my horse and I suspect the local town will have to implement dumping stations for all the horse poop. I guess there is also horse-gas emissions to consider. I can feed them things to reduce gas. Another option would be an EV albeit sub-optimal. I've been looking at getting an EV side-by-side. [1] There are several street legal options. Many here use side-by-sides to go into town. The EV cars have a long ways to go before I will consider one. Highly dystopian telemetry, standard features sold as subscriptions, battery tech is still ancient in my opinion, too many features and too many attempts to make the cars self driving and the tech just isn't ready. The EV side-by-sides are still a bit pricey and it would be entirely useless for going up into the mountains as the range / battery tech is still ancient. Producing this EV also emits a lot of emissions. To be carbon neutral might take a lifetime, especially when having to replace the batteries. It gets really cold here so I would need batteries that can handle it and Lithiom Ion requires heat pads so I will be using more solar/grid power. I do not get much solar power here. I am starting to see EV's as shiny luxury golf carts but that is just my take. I could just walk. It's only a few miles into town but then I would have to make many trips and pulling a cart of groceries through ice and snow is much harder than one might imagine. Even pushing a shopping cart 50 feet when I have a few bags of oats and the store was too cheap to clear the ice from their parking lot is quite comical and quite a workout. Walking along the highway is super dangerous in the winter. There are no buses or trains anywhere near me and I doubt that there ever would be. People here are expected to have snow capable vehicles. I've thought of e-bikes with super-fat snow tires. It turns out those don't work so great. I have a neighbor that tried it and they just went back to using their truck. [1] - https://www.polaris.com/en-us/off-road/ranger/2022/ranger-ev/ https://www.polaris.com/en-us/off-road/ranger/2022/ranger-ev...

TheCoelacanth 4y ago
So you expect that the world the cost of your lifestyle choices at no cost to you? Why shouldn't you pay for the cost of your choice to live in a rural area?