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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

As California's attempts to tax mileage of hybrid and electric vehicles proves, if you create an additional source of revenue for the government, tax levels will bear no relation to the harm they're designed to compensate for. It becomes just another way for the government to raise taxes without admitting to doing so.

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The gas tax was set to charge for road wear, not carbon externialities

And VAT in Europe was only created to rebuild after the war.

Tax repeals are very rare, once they're worked into the budget they are there to stay and usually will expand to pay for other things besides the reason they were originally created.

Hybrids aren't necessarily emitting substantially less.

I was always shocked by the 'good' mpg US hybrids get, compared to Uk/Euro diesels - (though some of the difference is down to different sizes in gallons between us, but still. My 12 year old volvo v70 (not a small car) got 53mpg easily

But are those UK or US gallons? Cars in the UK get 20% more miles per gallon simply because gallons in the UK are 20% bigger.

Prius highway rating of 4.4 L/100 km (53 mpg-US / 64 mpg-imp) Volvo V50 highway rating: 3.8 L/100km - this is the 'extra economical' diesel, with start/stop, aero body and aero wheels, so a good match for the Prius - seems odd that all that extra tech wouldn't give them much improvement? I guess city driving it may be better but I don't have time to dig out the figures now.

It's not a secret that people pay car fees.

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