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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

Shouldn't it be mandatory for ICE car manufacturers to make hybrids only ? It would push the market up, simplify through less options and help ecology and health in the process.

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Hybrid is the means rather than the end. Better to require CO2 emissions to conform to a certain limit (or better still a gradual tax scale - that's already how it works in my country) and let the manufacturers achieve that by whatever way seems best.

The bigger problem in the US is that "commercial" vehicles are exempt from many of the regulations, and so manufacturers get a lot of their cars legally defined as "light trucks". Start treating businesses the same way as individuals.

"treating businesses the same way as individuals" too leftist for America I believe

It should be mandatory to hit MPG and emission targets, not to force a certain technology.

But that way you are effectively banning supercars, which is pointless since they effectively contribute nill to global emissions(and usually already pay massive taxes due to emissions). You need to regulate cars which sell hundreds of thousands of models each year, if VW sells millions of golfs globally, it's extremely important that every golf they sell gets good economy and emissions, because it's going to be so common on the road.

That sort of do that now in the U.S. with CAFE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy

I'm not a huge fan personally. If this is really something the country is interested in then just raise the gas tax and let people figure out how to respond to that.

First, companies lied about emissions. Second, hybrid would probably tone down emissions in cities tremendously, even consumption. I have no actual data, but the amount of time spent at low speed or waiting is staggering. A tiny DC motor + regenerative breaking is great.

The lying about emissions thing only became a problem because the testing wasn't sufficient enough to catch the cheats. Companies are going to cheat, they're going to lie, they're going to skirt as much regulation as they can. That's a fact of capitalism, companies are going to do whatever they can to make as much money as possible. It's the job of government inspectors to make sure the regulations are being followed properly and punish the companies when they fail to meet expectations.

Real-world testing scenarios, code review, and a corporate death penalty to follow it up would go a long way towards stopping them.

Not sure cheating, lying and skirting regulations are a fact of capitalism so much as a fact of any economic system. Many Soviet factories lied to meet quotas, both numerical and qualitative.

Well that phrase was attached to the idea that followed it in the same sentence more than it was attached to the entirely different sentence that came before it. People lie and cheat inherently, but the goal of capitalism is to make as much money as possible. So naturally companies are going to do that, which is why government regulation exists.

Note that I'm not trying to compare economic systems or argue for/against any particular economic system, just pointing out that the goal of capitalism is to make money, people inherently cheat and lie, so in a capitalistic society people will lie and cheat to make money. We all know this is true, which is why private companies are regulated by public agencies. The diesel cheating scandal was a failure of regulation enforcement more than anything.

Interesting questions, how much lying is the result of competition, economic paradigm or just chaos and human nature ?

Sure, I still believe it's easier to lie for emissions than to produce hybrid vehicles.. it's simply harder to hide a DC module. I see this as the best middle ground for manufacturers that don't want to do more effort for emissions and sales.

We are talking about CO2 emissions, not particle pollution. Since CO2 emissions are 1:1 related to fuel consumption, the fair, straightforward and easy way to discourage excess emissions is to raise taxes on fuel.

(Depending on political preference you might choose to cut other taxes with the revenues, or refund them equally per capita or reduce the deficit.)

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