EPA: MY2013 MPG highest ever @ 24.1

we can no longer use "picking on the poor" as an excuse to not institute penalties against low mileage vehicles. We need to leverage people into mass transit, car sharing and highly efficient modes of transportation.

Extreme measures can be tempered with a penalty/reward system. Reward the good, penalize the bad. Rewarding the good can be better. A way for all to fully realize the any tax break be it rebate or a roll over option, but the penalties have been weak or non existent.

if you want to drive a big car, you need to pay for it and the tax should be clear as to what its for. A sliding fee based on MPGs would work. Start at something high like 60 MPG and work from there so you either pay a little (Prius) or a lot (Suburban). EVs pay even less.

If we can charge much higher tax on low-MPG vehicles, but lower that based on income, and do it right at the pump, then not doing so would indeed be regressive. The working poor buy whatever vehicles they can afford in their market, and they tend to be either worn out, unreliable subcompacts or large, low-MPG vehicles in better shape. You want to start in exactly the wrong place to fix this system. The 'cash for clunkers' program was a success because it let the working poor scrap their gas guzzlers and buy efficient smaller cars. This is the approach we should take with EVs and hybrids of all sorts. Use the carrot rather than the stick when you are dealing with people who aren't doing anything wrong.

I agree that there is a fantastically large set of possible unintended regressive consequences that do-gooders could easily trip over in a bid to be the ones to 'take action'.

Fat purchase taxes, a la Norwegian levels, for the guzzlers seems a no brainer to me as it front-loads the car ownership costs to the ones with the money in the first place, and where businesses have an essential business need for that sort of vehicle they can claim it back in tax credits.

The UKs version of cash for clunkers worked really well here too, and in fact it has appeared to kick off a buying trend that has lasted long after the end of the programme.

Managed to delete most of a previous post upthread by accident, when trying to quote from it. Oh well, in that post I made the statement that it looked like all the major automakers would be able to meet the 2016 standards with minimal problem, and here's some evidence to back that up, via GCC:

UMTRI: automakers have surpassed new CAFE requirements for past 3 years

Click to expand...

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/10/20141022-umtri.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

LeftieBiker said:

If we can charge much higher tax on low-MPG vehicles, but lower that based on income, and do it right at the pump, then not doing so would indeed be regressive. The working poor buy whatever vehicles they can afford in their market, and they tend to be either worn out, unreliable subcompacts or large, low-MPG vehicles in better shape. You want to start in exactly the wrong place to fix this system. The 'cash for clunkers' program was a success because it let the working poor scrap their gas guzzlers and buy efficient smaller cars. This is the approach we should take with EVs and hybrids of all sorts. Use the carrot rather than the stick when you are dealing with people who aren't doing anything wrong.

Click to expand...

my bad. my statement was aimed at new cars, not used. Nearly every country does this but us so is it really that much to ask? in some cases, yes. we suck at public transportation with an exception list that can be tracked on one hand of a far-sighted butcher but again, maybe allowing anyone to get a drivers license and a car is not the right thing to do

I agree that new vehicles should have a carbon tax of some sort applied to them.