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Without reasonable alternative such as frequent and reliable public transit or major support for electric vehicle adoption, this will hurt most Californians muc

Without reasonable alternative such as frequent and reliable public transit or major support for electric vehicle adoption, this will hurt most Californians much more than it helps. While I don't claim to be an expert on policy, perhaps a $0.65/gal tax which funds public transit would be a better use of this increase in cost.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
~20% of all vehicles sold in California are already electric, and generous state subsidies exist on top of federal subsidies. Some states will arrive at a majority EV future sooner than others. https://www.veloz.org/ev-market-report/ https://www.veloz.org/ev-market-report/ https://driveclean.ca.gov/search-incentives https://driveclean.ca.gov/search-incentives
- inamberclad 2y ago
  Those are great, and I'm all in favor to alternatives to gasoline, but most people aren't buying new cars these days. In fact, the age of the average car in the US is at all time highs. These subsidies aren't moving the needle enough. The reality is that most people will simply be forced to pay more for their commute. This is the government using the stick when they should try and use the carrot.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    People are still buying new and used vehicles (as it is unavoidable if you cannot rely on public transportation), and with a mixture of policy, they will be encouraged to buy EVs. > This is the government using the stick when they should try and use the carrot. You can provide as much carrots as you want and people will still say it's not enough. Everyone wants to freeload, no one wants to pay the true cost of burning fossil fuels for transportation (which would be >$10/gallon if you bake CO2 emission and health costs in).
    - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
      > Everyone wants to freeload, no one wants to pay the true cost of burning fossil fuels for transportation (which would be >$10/gallon if you bake CO2 emission and health costs in). If we want to talk about externalities in a balanced way, we can’t pick and choose. You can’t just recognize CO2 from burning gas or specific health issues, because that is the same as artificially picking what you want to allow and not allow. You have to also price in the externalities and opportunity costs of the alternative. In the case of electric vehicles, it is everything from raw materials (mining), to the reduced quality of life due to limited range of EVs, to child labor in the supply chain, to the geopolitical implications of using certain battery suppliers like CATL, to pollution (not just greenhouse gases from car production or electrical utilities but other environmental pollutants as well), to increased tire wear from heavier vehicles, and more. Maybe no on wants to pay the true cost of fossil fuels but no one wants to even talk about the true cost of EVs let alone pay it. I don’t know which is “better” but I suspect the math will be more complicated and not support heavyweight taxation.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - RGamma 2y ago
        Whatever the case we do not want to run out of accessible oil and fuck up the climate because that little detour would end modern civilization and prevent it for as long as new oil forms at scale (on the order of 10^8 years). Calculate the cost of that. Oil is incredibly precious.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >Everyone wants to freeload, no one wants to pay the true cost of burning fossil fuels for transportation I was ready to buy an FEV this year. Instead, my company laid me off to get record profits, my state and country gaslit me to belive unemployment is low and the economy is great (while also taking about mysterious headwinds. Almost like we're heading towards a recession...) , and the job market went from an annoying but reasonable hoop to a whole-ass circus. I've been getting spanked all year and people are asking me why I'm destroying the environment with my 2008 Sedan? Clearly no one wants me to even afford rent at this point.
  - dangus 2y ago
    I think about this the other way around. The federal government and other states have artificially low gas taxes that are a direct subsidy of gasoline car dependence. A state like California imposing a tax like this makes them one of the few states that's actually aware how much the consumption of a gallon of gas costs society and manages to charge someone for it. - The federal gas tax has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, and has not increased to account for inflation - Vehicles are more fuel efficient than in the past, which has reduced the demand for gas by the gallon on an individual basis. - The cost of infrastructure materials has increased (e.g., building new roads and bridges) There is a very decent argument to be had that nobody is actually paying the societal cost of driving, that all of society just loses value by driving. In other words, each mile you drive in your car incurs costs on the rest of society that nobody directly pays, and therefore everyone pays. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp75-46PnMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp75-46PnMY
  - jonstewart 2y ago
    A sudden $.65/gal increase seems steep. There are, however, a lot of negative externalities—probably much greater than $.65/gal—from gasoline that aren’t baked into current prices. Other posts here reference significant savings from longterm health improvements. I’m all for public transit and California needs more of it. At the same time, gas is really bad and so perhaps deserves a stick, just like cigarettes?
- dmoy 2y ago
  CA also has the highest real poverty rate in the country (SPM) I think GP's point about funding public transit is reasonable - a huge chunk of Californians can't afford an EV right now given that the cheapest one on the market is like a good $10k more expensive than the cheapest gas sedans.
  - dangus 2y ago
    I found: 2023 Chevy Bolt EV, 37,000 miles, $15,600 in LA. Or, a 2020 with 27,000 miles for $13,500. 2021 Tesla Model 3, 24,000 miles, $22,000 2022 Kia Niro EV, 21,000 miles, $18,400 2020 Tesla Model Y, 48,000 miles, $26,800 Gasoline cars to compare: 2020 Toyota Corolla, 66,000 miles, $17,800 2020 Honda CR-V, 44,000 miles, $23,800 2021 Nissan Sentra, 41,000 miles, $16,500 It seems to me that EVs depreciate so much faster than gasoline cars that they're almost always cheaper with lower miles than an equivalent gasoline car. The only strong exception seems to be the Tesla Model Y. Anyway, I agree that California especially needs to greatly expand public transit. But I think it's notable that at this point cost isn't really a major negative to EV ownership.
    - riku_iki 2y ago
      > that EVs depreciate so much faster than gasoline cars I think those older EVs have short impractical range, that's why they are cheap?
      - dangus 2y ago
        Everything on this list is 200 miles or higher.
      - dzhiurgis 2y ago
        300-400km range is impractical?
        riku_iki 2y ago
        Its max advertised range. In reality it will likely be smaller depending on driving habits/weather/ac, it is hard to charge EV battery to 100% if you on the move, you don't want charge to drop to 0% obviously, so you will be charging sooner. I do not own EV, but people have range anxiety on reddit.
- riku_iki 2y ago
  > generous state subsidies exist I don't see much/any state subsidies in your link. I think they are all canceled.
brookst 2y ago
It’s important to think of this in relative terms. For some peopl, $0.65/gal is a 25% increase (or more). For California, it’s 15% (or less). Still notable, but not as dramatic as it sounds to some.
yazzku 2y ago
That's what I thought too. Why not raise the price in urban areas, where pollution is greater, as is the standard of living? Then throw in some more public transportation to make up for the difference. The lone white boy chugging gas in rural California and living paycheck to paycheck can probably take a break, and his emissions, I suppose, are largely irrelevant.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Because you can't target price increases due to refinery specifications around fuel composition. You can only encourage EV uptake (policies and subsidies) and destroy fossil fuel demand (impair the fossil fuel supply chain).
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  You mean the area where most of the ones at or slightly above the poverty line is? Why not just re-distribute more fentanyl while we're at it? It'll have the same effect.
thot_experiment 2y ago
> this will hurt most Californians much more than it helps I think you're vastly underestimating the positive externalities of high gas prices. It's annoying that this disproportionately hurts poorer residents but so do cars. Cars are just very very bad for society, while I think in an ideal world we would make public transit so good that it wouldn't make sense to own a car, going about it by making car ownership non-viable so that we're forced to invest more in public transit is also workable. At least this hits you a lot harder if you drive an SUV/truck. We should also do an odometer x weight based tax to adequately punish electric car owners.
- Gibbon1 2y ago
  People over estimate the contribution of gas taxes to total cost of ownership and under estimate all the others. That was my take away for the decade I was sick and broke and had to deal hard with my finances.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  People saying this seem to only watch a few walkable cities and then fail to realize that California by itself is 1. Larger than almost all EU countries 2. a lot of farmland 3. Have higher salaries (so bigger budgets) 4. Is extremely mountainous, more so than most US states. There's a reason it's a multi- decade long initiative just to make a high speed railroad and it's not just the politics of manging all that land. >We should also do an odometer x weight based tax to adequately punish electric car owners. California wants to be mostly FEV by 2045. That's a horrible idea unless you care more about road construction than the environment. And spoilers: we can build more robust roads. We don't becsuse the peope judged it cheaper to repave pavement than take that extra effort.
  - thot_experiment 2y ago
    I'm aware, I've lived all around California for the last 25 years, the vast majority of those years without owning a car and yet I managed to get around via bus/train/bike okay, and not just in metropolitan areas. That aside, I'm curious about this point in response to my tax suggestion. > California wants to be mostly FEV by 2045. That's a horrible idea unless you care more about road construction than the environment. I'm not sure I follow how that shakes out, can you elaborate?
gosub100 2y ago
Frequent, reliable are just the start. How about "crime free" and "excrement free" to round it out?
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  Worst NYC subway ride ever included a brown cylindrical object rolling three feet across the floor whenever the train started or stopped. And the riders acted like this was just another Tuesday. But those riders had no other options. In CA the better option is right there in front of your house, with highways crisscrossing every which way to get you on your way.
  - gosub100 2y ago
    The first and only time I rode on Atlanta's MARTA I got to the airport and thought "ok this wasn't that bad", as I get up, turned around and see a homeless man passed out in his urine puddle running down the car. This is not "public transit", it's public toilet, public unsupervised mental health shelter.
jandrewrogers 2y ago
The vast majority of Californians live in areas unsuitable for public transit. Unless you plan on leveling and rebuilding California cities first, expecting people to use public transit in California is not realistic.
- amrocha 2y ago
  Cities are suitable for public transport and that’s where most californians live. Yes, they shoud rebuild their cities, it’s called development and is done all the time.
  - jandrewrogers 2y ago
    I am talking about the cities. Cities are not intrinsically suitable for public transportation. In the case of California, extreme sprawl and low-density guarantees that public transportation will be unusable. Almost none of it was designed to allow public transportation to be feasible, no amount of wishful thinking will change that. I've lived in every major metro in California. There is no chance that public transportation will be viable for most people in those cities in my lifetime.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Those aren't cities then. If it's not dense enough to support city services like a functional bus system, that's just suburban sprawl or maybe a town.
      - jandrewrogers 2y ago
        There is something like 50-60 metros in the US with more than 1 million people. By your definition only a few of these are "cities". Either way, the point still stands that they are largely unsuitable for a functional bus system.
    - amrocha 2y ago
      It’s actually really easy to fix that. You give government right of first refusal on any low density property for sale in california, you get rid of sfh zoning, re-zone anything within 1Km of public transport as high density, and then build mid-rise high density buildings everywhere as you massively expand public transport network. Within a decade you could have dense efficient cities all over california.
kccqzy 2y ago
> major support for electric vehicle adoption There already is major support. Even Republicans in California (different agenda than republicans in national politics) support it.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

~20% of all vehicles sold in California are already electric, and generous state subsidies exist on top of federal subsidies. Some states will arrive at a majority EV future sooner than others. https://www.veloz.org/ev-market-report/ https://www.veloz.org/ev-market-report/ https://driveclean.ca.gov/search-incentives https://driveclean.ca.gov/search-incentives

inamberclad 2y ago
Those are great, and I'm all in favor to alternatives to gasoline, but most people aren't buying new cars these days. In fact, the age of the average car in the US is at all time highs. These subsidies aren't moving the needle enough. The reality is that most people will simply be forced to pay more for their commute. This is the government using the stick when they should try and use the carrot.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  People are still buying new and used vehicles (as it is unavoidable if you cannot rely on public transportation), and with a mixture of policy, they will be encouraged to buy EVs. > This is the government using the stick when they should try and use the carrot. You can provide as much carrots as you want and people will still say it's not enough. Everyone wants to freeload, no one wants to pay the true cost of burning fossil fuels for transportation (which would be >$10/gallon if you bake CO2 emission and health costs in).
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    > Everyone wants to freeload, no one wants to pay the true cost of burning fossil fuels for transportation (which would be >$10/gallon if you bake CO2 emission and health costs in). If we want to talk about externalities in a balanced way, we can’t pick and choose. You can’t just recognize CO2 from burning gas or specific health issues, because that is the same as artificially picking what you want to allow and not allow. You have to also price in the externalities and opportunity costs of the alternative. In the case of electric vehicles, it is everything from raw materials (mining), to the reduced quality of life due to limited range of EVs, to child labor in the supply chain, to the geopolitical implications of using certain battery suppliers like CATL, to pollution (not just greenhouse gases from car production or electrical utilities but other environmental pollutants as well), to increased tire wear from heavier vehicles, and more. Maybe no on wants to pay the true cost of fossil fuels but no one wants to even talk about the true cost of EVs let alone pay it. I don’t know which is “better” but I suspect the math will be more complicated and not support heavyweight taxation.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - RGamma 2y ago
      Whatever the case we do not want to run out of accessible oil and fuck up the climate because that little detour would end modern civilization and prevent it for as long as new oil forms at scale (on the order of 10^8 years). Calculate the cost of that. Oil is incredibly precious.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Everyone wants to freeload, no one wants to pay the true cost of burning fossil fuels for transportation I was ready to buy an FEV this year. Instead, my company laid me off to get record profits, my state and country gaslit me to belive unemployment is low and the economy is great (while also taking about mysterious headwinds. Almost like we're heading towards a recession...) , and the job market went from an annoying but reasonable hoop to a whole-ass circus. I've been getting spanked all year and people are asking me why I'm destroying the environment with my 2008 Sedan? Clearly no one wants me to even afford rent at this point.
- dangus 2y ago
  I think about this the other way around. The federal government and other states have artificially low gas taxes that are a direct subsidy of gasoline car dependence. A state like California imposing a tax like this makes them one of the few states that's actually aware how much the consumption of a gallon of gas costs society and manages to charge someone for it. - The federal gas tax has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, and has not increased to account for inflation - Vehicles are more fuel efficient than in the past, which has reduced the demand for gas by the gallon on an individual basis. - The cost of infrastructure materials has increased (e.g., building new roads and bridges) There is a very decent argument to be had that nobody is actually paying the societal cost of driving, that all of society just loses value by driving. In other words, each mile you drive in your car incurs costs on the rest of society that nobody directly pays, and therefore everyone pays. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp75-46PnMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp75-46PnMY
- jonstewart 2y ago
  A sudden $.65/gal increase seems steep. There are, however, a lot of negative externalities—probably much greater than $.65/gal—from gasoline that aren’t baked into current prices. Other posts here reference significant savings from longterm health improvements. I’m all for public transit and California needs more of it. At the same time, gas is really bad and so perhaps deserves a stick, just like cigarettes?
dmoy 2y ago
CA also has the highest real poverty rate in the country (SPM) I think GP's point about funding public transit is reasonable - a huge chunk of Californians can't afford an EV right now given that the cheapest one on the market is like a good $10k more expensive than the cheapest gas sedans.
- dangus 2y ago
  I found: 2023 Chevy Bolt EV, 37,000 miles, $15,600 in LA. Or, a 2020 with 27,000 miles for $13,500. 2021 Tesla Model 3, 24,000 miles, $22,000 2022 Kia Niro EV, 21,000 miles, $18,400 2020 Tesla Model Y, 48,000 miles, $26,800 Gasoline cars to compare: 2020 Toyota Corolla, 66,000 miles, $17,800 2020 Honda CR-V, 44,000 miles, $23,800 2021 Nissan Sentra, 41,000 miles, $16,500 It seems to me that EVs depreciate so much faster than gasoline cars that they're almost always cheaper with lower miles than an equivalent gasoline car. The only strong exception seems to be the Tesla Model Y. Anyway, I agree that California especially needs to greatly expand public transit. But I think it's notable that at this point cost isn't really a major negative to EV ownership.
  - riku_iki 2y ago
    > that EVs depreciate so much faster than gasoline cars I think those older EVs have short impractical range, that's why they are cheap?
    - dangus 2y ago
      Everything on this list is 200 miles or higher.
    - dzhiurgis 2y ago
      300-400km range is impractical?
      - riku_iki 2y ago
        Its max advertised range. In reality it will likely be smaller depending on driving habits/weather/ac, it is hard to charge EV battery to 100% if you on the move, you don't want charge to drop to 0% obviously, so you will be charging sooner. I do not own EV, but people have range anxiety on reddit.
riku_iki 2y ago
> generous state subsidies exist I don't see much/any state subsidies in your link. I think they are all canceled.

brookst 2y ago

It’s important to think of this in relative terms. For some peopl, $0.65/gal is a 25% increase (or more). For California, it’s 15% (or less). Still notable, but not as dramatic as it sounds to some.

yazzku 2y ago

That's what I thought too. Why not raise the price in urban areas, where pollution is greater, as is the standard of living? Then throw in some more public transportation to make up for the difference. The lone white boy chugging gas in rural California and living paycheck to paycheck can probably take a break, and his emissions, I suppose, are largely irrelevant.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Because you can't target price increases due to refinery specifications around fuel composition. You can only encourage EV uptake (policies and subsidies) and destroy fossil fuel demand (impair the fossil fuel supply chain).
johnnyanmac 2y ago
You mean the area where most of the ones at or slightly above the poverty line is? Why not just re-distribute more fentanyl while we're at it? It'll have the same effect.

thot_experiment 2y ago

> this will hurt most Californians much more than it helps I think you're vastly underestimating the positive externalities of high gas prices. It's annoying that this disproportionately hurts poorer residents but so do cars. Cars are just very very bad for society, while I think in an ideal world we would make public transit so good that it wouldn't make sense to own a car, going about it by making car ownership non-viable so that we're forced to invest more in public transit is also workable. At least this hits you a lot harder if you drive an SUV/truck. We should also do an odometer x weight based tax to adequately punish electric car owners.

Gibbon1 2y ago
People over estimate the contribution of gas taxes to total cost of ownership and under estimate all the others. That was my take away for the decade I was sick and broke and had to deal hard with my finances.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
People saying this seem to only watch a few walkable cities and then fail to realize that California by itself is 1. Larger than almost all EU countries 2. a lot of farmland 3. Have higher salaries (so bigger budgets) 4. Is extremely mountainous, more so than most US states. There's a reason it's a multi- decade long initiative just to make a high speed railroad and it's not just the politics of manging all that land. >We should also do an odometer x weight based tax to adequately punish electric car owners. California wants to be mostly FEV by 2045. That's a horrible idea unless you care more about road construction than the environment. And spoilers: we can build more robust roads. We don't becsuse the peope judged it cheaper to repave pavement than take that extra effort.
- thot_experiment 2y ago
  I'm aware, I've lived all around California for the last 25 years, the vast majority of those years without owning a car and yet I managed to get around via bus/train/bike okay, and not just in metropolitan areas. That aside, I'm curious about this point in response to my tax suggestion. > California wants to be mostly FEV by 2045. That's a horrible idea unless you care more about road construction than the environment. I'm not sure I follow how that shakes out, can you elaborate?

gosub100 2y ago

Frequent, reliable are just the start. How about "crime free" and "excrement free" to round it out?

shermantanktop 2y ago
Worst NYC subway ride ever included a brown cylindrical object rolling three feet across the floor whenever the train started or stopped. And the riders acted like this was just another Tuesday. But those riders had no other options. In CA the better option is right there in front of your house, with highways crisscrossing every which way to get you on your way.
- gosub100 2y ago
  The first and only time I rode on Atlanta's MARTA I got to the airport and thought "ok this wasn't that bad", as I get up, turned around and see a homeless man passed out in his urine puddle running down the car. This is not "public transit", it's public toilet, public unsupervised mental health shelter.

jandrewrogers 2y ago

The vast majority of Californians live in areas unsuitable for public transit. Unless you plan on leveling and rebuilding California cities first, expecting people to use public transit in California is not realistic.

amrocha 2y ago
Cities are suitable for public transport and that’s where most californians live. Yes, they shoud rebuild their cities, it’s called development and is done all the time.
- jandrewrogers 2y ago
  I am talking about the cities. Cities are not intrinsically suitable for public transportation. In the case of California, extreme sprawl and low-density guarantees that public transportation will be unusable. Almost none of it was designed to allow public transportation to be feasible, no amount of wishful thinking will change that. I've lived in every major metro in California. There is no chance that public transportation will be viable for most people in those cities in my lifetime.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Those aren't cities then. If it's not dense enough to support city services like a functional bus system, that's just suburban sprawl or maybe a town.
    - jandrewrogers 2y ago
      There is something like 50-60 metros in the US with more than 1 million people. By your definition only a few of these are "cities". Either way, the point still stands that they are largely unsuitable for a functional bus system.
  - amrocha 2y ago
    It’s actually really easy to fix that. You give government right of first refusal on any low density property for sale in california, you get rid of sfh zoning, re-zone anything within 1Km of public transport as high density, and then build mid-rise high density buildings everywhere as you massively expand public transport network. Within a decade you could have dense efficient cities all over california.

kccqzy 2y ago

> major support for electric vehicle adoption There already is major support. Even Republicans in California (different agenda than republicans in national politics) support it.