France to Raise Pollution Tax on SUVs and Trucks to €22k | Hacker News Reader

France to Raise Pollution Tax on SUVs and Trucks to €22k

bloomberg.com

109 pointshhs115 comments

If you want to tax pollution, tax fuel consumption or actual tailpipe emissions, not a broad class of vehicles.

Which emits more -- a small family SUV or a BMW M3?

Governments have taxed vehicles based on weight, width, engine displacement, etc. -- and the automakers adapt. It's very easy to game the system. Just tax vehicles on a model-by-model basis on the fuel they actually use, and on what they actually emit.

Often you will notice that regulation in EU countries, and the EU itself, are not thought through. Indeed a BMW M3 and many small cars can emit more emissions than SUVs. But I suspect this is more of an eny tax, as in Europe SUVs are not that common and are considered "luxury", despite small cars shrinking to the point where there is not enough headroom on the backseat.

The tax is based on emissions. The Bloomberg article is just of a very low quality.

That's actually what's happening here, it's just that misleading (nationalist?) reporting has left that bit out.

The tax is based on "administrative horsepower", calculated from engine power + CO2 emissions per mile. That is then looked up in a tax table. See my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21862516

The headline is imprecise, the proposed law takes this into account.

The article only talks about SUV specific penalties which is wrong.

That's what's being done, the tax is based on CO2 emissions [1]. And this tax is symbolic as the sales of cars exceeding 172g/km (the tax threshold) are only 1% ( 10 000 and 15 000 vehicles in France) of the cars sold each year [2]. Indeed most SUV won't be concerned (Even a fat and quite luxurious SUV like the Audi Q5 is under the threshold) , and based on what I read only affordable "sports" cars will be. Much ado about greenwashing.

Tax rates 173g/km : 12.552€ 174g/km : 13.109€ 175g/km : 13.682€ 176g/km : 14.273€ 177g/km : 14.881€ 178g/km : 15.506€ 179g/km : 16.149€ 180g/km : 16.810€ 181g/km : 17.490€ 182g/km : 18.188€ 183g/km : 18.905€ 184g/km : 19.641€ 185g/km and more : 20.000€

[1]https://www.autoplus.fr/actualite/malus-CO2-plafond-taxe-bar...

[2] https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/automobile/le-sup...

A good first step would be to stop all subsidies for fossil fuels. Taxing while subsidizing doesn't make sense. https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/news/eu...

And yet, the most popular French SUV won't be a taxed a single € as part of this super malus (Peugeot 3008 and 5008).

Thus tax increase will impact far less than 1% if the sales. It's all PR, nothing concrete.

Yeah considering what you say there must clearly be political motivation

But contrast a 5008's 120 g/km with the average American gas guzzler doing 350+ g/km. All in all this is a good development imo.

The idea of a law without political motivation is absurd. How else would it come into existence? Monkeys on typewriters?

If that is true then it sounds like a great protectionist measure, so not PR at all!

The minister literally said it:

> ces véhicules ne sont construits ni en France, ni même par nos constructeurs nationaux

"those vehicles are neither built in France nor by our national automakers"

https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/automobile/le-sup...

Be a lot better to just put an uniform excise tax on new vehicles based on expected C02 emissions. That would also tend to solve the problem of guys in yellow vests throwing stuff.

It's a tax based on number of grams of CO2/km for all vehicles so 3008/5008 are concerned too. The updated tax for 2020 starts at 110 g of CO2/km (previously 117 gCO/km, last year)

That's what's actually happening, it's just that Bloomberg have .. misreported it?

That’s fine. As long as it includes emissions already created during production.

From the article:

> Under a law adopted by parliament this week, cars emitting carbon dioxide above a certain threshold will be subject to a 20,000 euros ($22,240) penalty in 2020

So that seems to be because they don't pollute as much

Also, this made me cringe.

> In 2020, the central government will give as much as 6,000 euros toward the purchase of an electric car costing less than 45,000 euros.

This looks like an anti-Tesla threshold, all the while pushing people to go towards electric cars that either you buy but rent the battery, such as Renault Zoé, or with poor autonomy.

I would guess a lot of people don't like the idea of subsidising luxury cars for wealthy people. I can understand that.

Besides, aren't Model 3 and the coming Cybertruck below that limit?

Made in China + whatever Cybertruck is having M3 could go below $25k USD - perhaps 30k euro if you add duties, etc.

The Cybertruck doesn't make sense in EU. It just won't fit into the cities. :D

In France base Model 3 is 43600. Any option / road ready fees will curiously drive you just past the threshold.

Yes, glorious. See also [].

Where I live (the Netherlands) there is absolutely no need to drive a ridiculous Dodge Ram with a 6 liter engine that emits a bazillion kg co2.

However there's a worrying trend of people exploiting some tax loophole to drive them cheaply, with road taxes going down to the level of ordinary passenger vehicles.

I'd really like us to implement similar incentives to get these ridiculous things off the roads.

[] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/growing-preference-for-suvs...

If your parent doing the school run a suv does make sense, and don't for get that pickups are used a lot by farmers and I suspect the Dutch farming lobby is just as powerfull as it is in the other eu states and the USA.

School runs are done by bike in the Netherlands. In addition there are much more practical vehicles that farmers/builders/<insert_mobile_heavy_work_profession> use.

Such as? Land rovers /Toyota hilux'es are ubiquitous on British farms.

And just because its how your town does it in your country doesn't automatically make it the one best way for every one.

What look like ex-army Land Rovers are pretty common on UK farms and estates, at least here in this part of Scotland, pickups are pretty rare though.

Edit: I wonder if this is because of how much of Scotland is used for grouse shooting - a pickup isn't going to be much good for transporting your pampered customers!

Not sure an Ex army Landy is exactly pampering your clients, it would be ok for the army types on a jolly red trousers and Barbour's.

Why are you shifting the discussion toward 'What vehicle is good for farmers' ? Farmers represent 2% of the population, they're clearly not responsible for 30% of the sales

Yeah, I also preferred the discussion in which the participants expressed what car I need and how I'm supposed to use it. And what I don't need, of course. They live somewhere far from me and have no idea what my family does and why. But they know what I do and do not need for transport, because they have a walking bus in their Lithuanian village and I should learn something from that first before going out there and driving my SUV.

> And just because its how your town does it in your country doesn't automatically make it the one best way for every one.

In the Netherlands, the bicycle is quite certainly one of the most practical options in practically every town.

Maybe _in the US_ an SUV makes sense for the school run...

s/makes sense/is rationalised

Gotta wonder how parents did school runs before the SUV was invented.

They probably didn't, because back then the kid would be allowed to go to school on their own.

You don't need a vehicle that size unless you have more than two children, a perfectly normal 4-door car will do. And all the usual externalities of SUVs are worse at school: the high ride height makes it harder to see small children, and the large amount of space taken up makes the parking and traffic jam round the school worse.

No, the Dutch solution to the school run is a Bakfiets cargo bicycle until the kids are old enough to ride their own.

Dutch farming is very .. intense? Quite a lot of it is done in greenhouses. Sure, if you're in agriculture you can justify a larger vehicle. That's at most 5% of the population?

More than three children.

In the 1990s every 5 person family managed fine with a normal car.

Most SUVs on the road that I see in the UK look like they probably have less space than an equivalent car - and that's without abominations like 'sports' SUVs (which seem the most pointless vehicles every invented).

It is true that most SUVs have less interior space than station wagons. The high ground clearance wastes vertical space and the trunks are quite short.

I agree that it's not a large suv is not needed, but ford, fiat and some others don't. They are stopping making smaller cars and making more suvs because 1: they make more profit, 2: customers want them and 3: profit... the customer want part is kind of silly since if you wanted a mondaeo (medium family sedan) and now it's not for sale, only option is an suv. All these stupid cross overs are there for money making.

In the US market they have a weird tax advantage. Not the case in most of Europe; you certainly see a lot of Mondeos here.

Yea. But ford are still killing the mondaeo in Europe and other countries. Their Kuga and the like make them more money... fiat are killing the 500, which is nearly the perfect city car. They make more from the punto cross over. I'm based in ireland. If you try go to some dealers, there are less small and medium cars and more larger suvs and cross overs...

Yet they are hardly seen around on many European school runs.

Unfortunately they are very common on school runs in the UK - at least in Edinburgh.

Sure, not saying that they don't exist, just not to the extent of other side of Atlantic with almost free fuel.

To be fair, I think you are correct - Edinburgh is probably unusual in this regard (affluent, fairly small, incredibly high levels of private schools).

I live in London and sometimes it feels like every second car is an SUV. UK has some weird class thing with Range Rovers: everyone has to have one,or you not really upper middle it's like an upper level of white van for working class.

I'd love to see a map of proportion of SUVs of all cars on the road in the UK - I'm sure it would correspond with population density.

e.g. Higher population density, greater proportion of SUVs.

School run can also be done by school walking bus, bike, or actual bus.

I doubt many of us would mind quite so much the tiny few SUVs actually used by workers and farmers because they absolutely need such a beast. Mind, saying that my friend with the absurdly big crew cab Toyota pickup, uses the wife's regular size car when it's just them and the kids... The pickup is for transporting 1 tonne of kit around fields -- he actually detests them to drive. :)

Just in case you don't know of the crocodile/walking bus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_bus

I believe it's more common for smallholding farmers in EU to rely on a small car runabout and a tractor, with more specialized equipment (possibly rented) for other work.

I'd expect intensive farmers use exclusively on specialized equipment.

Yup, my parents are retired farmers and they used a station wagon + three different sized tractors, shared with another farmer. Friends of them who were foresters used a Subaru Forester. Subaru makes actual workhorses, not two-ton shopping vehicles.

The fact that there even exists an argument that an SUV makes sense for a school run is evidence that we're now living in the bizarro timeline.

Why you might need to transport kids to after school / sports events - for example I regularly used to see a small kid waiting for the same bus as me staggering along with a cello that was bigger than he was.

And there is the psychological safety aspect of a big SUV with a higher driving position.

Yes yes, but people used to be just fine with normal-sized cars. The large majority of car-owning people in the world still are. SUVs are a negative-sum game; a race to the bottom where people feel the need to get a bigger car just because their neighbors have ones as well.

I used to do 800 kilometers trips for vacations with my family (2 adults, 3 kids) in a 1994 fiat punto every few years and I'm still alive, I'm pretty sure you can drive your kids to school in any vehicle as long as it has enough seats.

People completely lost touch with reality.

"At the same time, the government is considering reducing cash incentives for the purchase of electric cars."

when there's no money left... there's no money left.

Well, the plan was always to eventually reduce the cash subsidy for electric vehicles. The subsidy was intended to help electric vehicle design and manufacturing to mature to the point that electric vehicles are a viable, affordable, and desirable option for a large number of actual consumers. This is happening. I see dozens of Teslas on the road every day (I live in Chicago, I'm not sure if my experience is typical, but I assume it is approximately representative of US autobuying trends).

So I guess I don't see it as a "we're out of money and need that income", rather I see it as a "now that the EV market has matured, we can take the training wheels off".

I'd like to see vehicle tax based on some combination of weight and emissions. Say £1 or €1 for every kilo over the weight of a, hmm, Smart Car? :) Now add an emissions component, enough to make a 1 litre engine and lightweight EVs really appealing.

Road damage is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight! It would be amazing to see taxes for road repair done on that basis.

Edit: the tax of the article is based on engine power and CO2 emissions. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21862516 for calculations.

That just means basically all damage is done by delivery trucks, garbage trucks, buses etc. that you can't really get rid off. Smart, Tesla or Dodge ram doesn't make a big difference there

> you can't really get rid off.

Doesn't mean they shouldn't pay for the damage they do to the road. Why should the state subsidise them?

Because those are public utilities and you presumably want to incentivise mass transport.

By 'you' do you mean me in particular? Or do you mean the world in general? If you mean me then the answer is no; I see no reason why we should not have transparency in transport costs.

If you want subsidize certain kinds of mass transport then target the specific type. If the price of food (which is at a historical low in the western world) goes up as a result then that will simply show people where their money is being spent. If you want to subsidize it then subsidize the people who need it (low income customers).

Other public utilities, such as electricity, do not give a free ride to freeloaders who cause extra expense to the rest of use they charge for the damage done. For instance a user of electricity that has a very bad power factor will be charged a very high rate and will therefore be encouraged to improve.

There are emission-based vignette schemes (eco-taxes). Orthogonally, going above 3.5t is a steep increase in inconvenience and costs: you need a different license (C or above) which is more expensive and has to be renewed regularly and there many streets are forbidden.

I'd also want to have width factored in. Wider than strictly necessary vehicles make life worse for all road users, space is not infinite. Occasionally they even make life shorter and it's never the life of those inside those vehicles.

I believe Norway fundamentally does exactly this. From recollection, in Norway you are taxed on the following items at time of purchase:

* A CO2 tax (banded by emissions)

* An NOx tax (banded by emissions)

* A weight tax

* A scrappage fee (fixed, by vehicle type)

* Then the usual 25% VAT

I may be missing something here (in particular, annual taxes), so if there are any Norwegians willing to chime in, feel free.

There is an additional progressive tax on the vehicle price which makes expensive cars seriously expensive. And the VAT comes last and is charged on top of the total of the other costs including the taxes.

This is one of the reasons why Tesla was able to jump start the electric car business in Norway with the Model S and model X because EVs are exempt from all of that except VAT (I think, not sure). It's also effectively a regressive income tax because the more expensive cars are effectively subsidized by a larger amount of money per car than cheap cars. In my opinion we would have been able to have even more EVs if the subsidy had been the same amount of money for each car regardless of the value of the car. Then the Leaf and the Zoe would be really cheap cars.

I love my Model S but I feel that I have been subsidized more than I should have been (no I'm not giving it back).

Why not put all tax on the Fuel? Then you have everything in one tax, exactly the way you want it. Take the bike more often? Benefit immediately. Buy a lighter vehicle? Benefit immediately. Drive less wasteful? Benefit immediately. It seems like such a system would stimulate only good things.

Loading all tax into fuel just drives (heh) more and more people into fueling over the border. Fuel already is really expensive in The Netherlands.. €1,77 per liter or €6,73 per gallon, and most of that cost is tax.

(Obviously) it should be done EU wide.

That's not what EU is for though.

I believe the main problem with the tax on fuel (it already exists) is that you cannot make it as progressive as you want. It will be the same percentage regardless of how much fuel you use and so far this proved not good enough to skew the market in favour of the low-emission solutions.

It's just not high enough. I find it pretty unfair that I pay the same amount of tax on my familiecar that I use for 10.000 km a year as someone who drives is 100 km per day.

I had a citroen C1 once, because the government canceled road tax on such very efficient, small cars. Sadly his law lasted only a couple of years (and it messes a lot with the market value of these cars!). But is was nice that I only paid insurance as long as I didn't drive it. In Poland there is not even a tax on cars, so it is already only in the fuel. It can be pretty nice there to have multiple cars, a big one when you need it, a small one to use a lot. You could even circulate the big one among family, but as it is now in the Netherlands, nobody want to be the owner of the big car.

Raising the fuel taxes indiscriminately was what sparked the "yellow vest" movement last year. I don't think the French government is in any hurry to try that again, especially since there's already a strike going on right now for the pension reform.

If it came with overall tax reductions, especially with road tax reduction, it could be a financially neutral rule for a specific amount of km per year. You could make is so that it then mostly hits people with monstrous cars, not the yellow vest people in their ordinary, perhaps slightly aging cars.

Pity. I live in a remote part of France, shaped by hills, forests, and very devoid of public services. Most people don't have too much money, yet every third car you see is an SUV or 4WD, because they actually are quite useful in daily life. My neighbour drives a tiny but nimble Suzuki Vitara with which he does just everything, much of which no regular city car could do. Was he to buy that same car in two years, it'd cost almost twice as much because of those taxes. (damn even the baker drives his deliveries with a Vitara). I see all the excesses around the SUVs, I agree there's a nuisance to be dealt with. But again the government rules with a large and blind PR hammer, and we'll quietly sit under the blow once more.

Suzuki Vitara is an 8"CV" car: https://www.neowebcar.com/puissance-fiscale/suzuki/vitara/1-... which would incur €6250 tax.

(It's amazing how well Bloomberg's propaganda has worked here, hasn't it?)

6000 Euro tax for a 15000 euro car. I'd call it significant enough and ridiculous enough to be more than mere propaganda. But you're right, the figures I had in the mind were for the Jimny, not the Vitara. Over 10000 tax for a car that's less than 20000 euro.

Your neighbor will be fine. The taxes start at 160 g CO2/km. The Vitara has between 121 and 172 g/km.

Meanwhile people in urban areas pay a lot more for rent so that they don't need large cars. Seems fair to me.

Reduce a complex equation to only two variables ? But that's no the point : expecting fairness isn't practical anyway. :) I'd bet the practical response will be people stretching their car's lifespans way beyond reasonable, pushing them to new extremes of decrepitude and unsafety. There's also no police anyway to keep that in check.

Call me cynical but - I'm guessing it's a lot easier to punish market sectors in which your own manufacturers are weak.

This is why the world is acting so sluggishly to climate change.

And for a cash strapped government to find pretexts to increase taxes.

On the other hand, for the sporty versions of some midrange popular cars (Renault Mégane RS, Peugeot 308 GTi...) the pollution tax will amount to almost 50% of the MSRP. I guess car enthusiasts on a budget will be more inclined to buy lighter cars, a segment where French manufacturers are basically non-existent (even if a Twin'Cup is really fun to drive).

Indeed. I’m clinging to my ‘08 Civic Type-R (MSRP was 30000, 25000 in stripped down version. The tax would be 80-95% of MSRP!) but will have to let it go within five years as level 2 Crit’Air will be entirely forbidden to operate in my city by 2025.

Peugeot 308 GTi has a "puissance administrative" of 16, right in the high end of the tax table. Presumably because it's a 250hp car. I'm sure that's fun but it's also a really excessive amount of power (and CO2)

"really excessive" is quite going overboard. Of course you don't need 250hp to go forward. Yet those cars are less that 1% of the sales, blaming CO2 pollution on those is downright ridiculous, especially since they're not driven at wide open throttle all the time, which makes them much less than the stated output overall.

For example my 200HP car redlines at 8k rpm, thus the legal pollution (incl. CO2) emission check is evaluated by revving it constantly at ~6k for several minutes, which is absolutely not what daily operation looks like (more like 2.5k~4k, and not even WOT).

Case in point my car usually gulps 6~9 L/100km (open road ~ city) but when I picked up the car last week after the mandatory two year legal check, the ECU was reporting over 20L/100km means consumption, which I never ever managed to reach, even when doing some spirited driving for extended sessions.

On the other end of the spectrum, this pushes towards heavily downsized engines that operate at the limit most of the time in regular use, putting excessive strain on the hardware, resulting in terrible reliability, constant excessive pollution, and premature wear of the engine. No wonder people have to change cars at 150000~200000km. Comparatively, at 12yo, my car is nearing that threshold and still performs as good as new. I expect it to pass 500000km with flying colours.

Totally - but comments here claim make claims like the below. If accurate this is a straight win for France:

isoprophlex: “Yeah considering what you say there must clearly be political motivation. But contrast a 5008's 120 g/km with the average American gas guzzler doing 350+ g/km. All in all this is a good development imo.

We could refer to the actual text: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/15/amendements/2493/AN...

Which amends http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/textes/2493.asp#D_Artic...

This adds a set of "bands" to the bottom of the table of tax based on "Puissance administrative", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_horsepower or https://www.french-property.com/guides/france/driving-in-fra...

Looks like a Toyota Land Cruiser is about 11-12: https://www.neowebcar.com/puissance-fiscale/toyota/land-crui...

That's pretty much how protectionism works in the EU: tax sectors where local manufacturers are weak, by means of "environment" protection taxes, "quality" standards and so on. Meanwhile, east Europe is full of used German cars which pollute heavily and are a danger to public safety. Governments in some countries tried limiting imports from that country, and they have been punished by the EU. But the EU has "high standards" when it comes to non EU vehicles.

> Governments in some countries tried limiting imports from that country, and they have been punished by the EU.

Do you have any references to the above two affirmations?

Few years ago Romania has introduced a pollution tax for used vehicles imported into the country. The situation is extremely worrying as old cars are imported mainly from Germany, and pollution levels are beyond critical. The EU has chosen to ignore the environmental impact and the context of Romania's economy (people will naturally want to buy whatever they can get their hands on, due to economic hardship). There are so many "Made in Germany" high polluters in the country that I personally can not and will not buy German made cars again. This is an example of where the EU has applied regulation, without proper consideration for the context of a country, and in favor, as usual, of Germany.

Details can be found here: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/CJE_11...

The bullshit is that politicians continue to only take action against consumers when the real polluters, corporations and the military, continue to go unchecked because lobbying pays.

I think of that as rubber hose policy. Beat down hapless working class people who have zero power and pretend some good will come of it.

Do "hapless working class people" buy many SUVs and pickup trucks in France?

French here.

Yes. There are many "cheap" ones, such as Dacia Duster. I see plenty of them everyday.

Not only that, hapless working people buying very high horsepower trucks!

Edit: the Dacia Duster of sibling comment is about 6"CV": https://www.neowebcar.com/puissance-fiscale/dacia/duster/dci , which puts it in the €3125 band.

I don't know how to feel about the meme that governments should target big corporation rather than small consumers. On the one hand, I like it that it makes an environmental message easier to swallow for the masses, because they feel like they're not the ones who have to make an effort. On the other hand, it's quite disingenuous to pretend the outcome is different from simply reducing the amount of energy available to live a materially comfortable life for everyone.

> I don't know how to feel about the meme that governments should target big corporation rather than small consumers.

That's not what was stated. The objection is that hardly anything is done regarding big corporations.

E.g. only in 2020 shipping will have to use low sulphur fuel (max 0.50%). However, companies are allowed to install scrubbers. These devices allow for the environmental impact to continue. This as they take out the sulphur at the detection point, then dump the sulphur in e.g. the water. This is way cheaper than actually using low sulphur fuel. Interestingly enough, there is no availability of 0.50% sulphur fuel. There's 3.5% and 0.10%. They get to 0.50% by mixing the fuel! They've (International Maritime Organization) should've gone for 0.10% and not allowed any scrubbers.

Airline industry: Heavily subsidized, fuel has almost no tax on it. Taking a plane is often way cheaper than a train, while the environmental impact is quite in favour of the train.

> Airline industry: Heavily subsidized, fuel has almost no tax on it.

This desperately needs to be fixed, but because it's enshrined in a treaty that's very hard.

Why? Airport, security theater and airspace use taxes eat up most of your ticket costs anyway.

Per parent: "Taking a plane is often way cheaper than a train, while the environmental impact is quite in favour of the train."

Until we get synthetic jet fuel, we need to impose some kind of carbon tax on it in order to correctly reflect the environmental impact of different modes of transport.

I agree with your points, and my comment lacks precision.

Who do you think sells to consumers?

As a car enthusiast I'm really hoping that we see governments adopting policies that drive manufacturers to provide low and zero carbon vehicles that cover the vast majority of use cases for conventional ICEs.

Hopefully if that happens then it will be possible to allow for motorsport and vintage cars to remain in use.

Related: Measures to reduce air pollution quickly result in big health benefits

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2226280-measures-to-red...

Headline: France raises comparative value of other markets that are not France. Like Russia or China.

France is recently the main Putin advocate in the EU, look at Macrons recent comments about NATO

France has a population of ~70M. What do you think contributes more to global warming, 70M flatulent humans, or a few thousand French SUV enthusiasts?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com