It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars
It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars
arstechnica.com It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars
Small cars are good for us but bad for business.
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31 comments
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They recognize exactly why people prefer larger vehicles and then completely miss why driving a smaller vehicle puts you at a disadvantage against those bigger vehicles. People would of course become very angry if they’re told their humongous, gas-guzzling, tank of a vehicle were illegal to operate on the road especially only 7 months into an 84 month loan.
How then to reasonably phase these giant cars out? They’re directly more dangerous to everyone but the person sitting inside.
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The main thing is to remove the exemption of "light truck" for regulations that make suvs and trucks so much cheaper to manufacture for auto companies.
As for local areas, they can increase property taxes for heavy vehicles, to disentivse owning them.
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Taxes. The trick to ban something without actually banning it is taxing it into oblivion, discouraging people from doing it. It won’t dissapear, but most people will be discouraged.
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Regulations on the size of cars, ratcheting down for new models. Iirc, one of the factors in the increasing size of cars is due to how fuel efficiency standards are implemented - apparently it’s easier to make a car larger, but lighter, than to actually improve efficiency
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Create an aggressively high truck and SUV personal vehicle ownership tax that increases every year. Tie that tax rate to not only the vehicle's ecological and public safety impact, but also to the owner's income (so that you don't have rich fucks just buying them anyway).
Create buy-back programs that offer reasonable market prices and trade-in values for used trucks and SUV's, which would be held as stock for sale to industry and ag, which would be exempt from the above taxes or taxed at lower rate.
Tightly regulate automobile financing so you can no longer offer loans that outlive large dog breeds.
Subject all consumer motor vehicles to fuel economy standards with no bullshit exceptions.
Yes, this will inconvenience a lot of people with first world problems, but you'll never fix anything if your primary goal is to please everyone.
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We need to tax the externalities of antisocial behavior.
- Require safety standards to test the damage vehicles cause to pedestrians and cyclists, including women and children. Tax vehicles based on how dangerous they are to others on the road.
- Tax vehicles for the damage they do to the roads. Heavier vehicles destroy roads.
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Increase their insurance premiums so that it actually account for the destruction those cars cause.
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Mass sabotage and vandalism
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31 comments