Increase fuel taxes to the level necessary for carbon neutrality and ICE vehicles look immediately unappealing.
1 gallon burnt emits 20lbs of CO2, and a ton is 2000 lbs, so 100 gallons of gasoline emits a ton of CO2.
With current technology takes $15-75 to pull a ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere, or $0.15-0.75 to remediate a gallon of gasoline.
I argue a $1/gallon tax is the minimum viable, since we’ll need a carbon negative economy for the foreseeable future.
It’s not clear to me that $1 more per gallon of gas would kill ICE cars. If I ran a big auto maker, I’d actually lobby for such a tax, since it’s easier than retooling all the lines, and it pushes the cleanup costs onto legacy customers.
I personally think the tax should be paid upfront when you buy a new ICE car (assume it’ll last 100,000-200,000 miles), and not at the pump.
ICE is still the norm in Sweden, with EC standing for 3% of all personal cars. EC have however taken a significant chunk of new sales, with last month being 35%. It also help that all government workplaces over a certain size has free EC charging, and even some shopping centers.
At least CO2 can be scrubbed from the atmosphere.
> At least CO2 can be scrubbed from the atmosphere.
There is no evidence we can scale this up besides planting trees and hoping for the best.
This doesn't mean anything. Better is always relative.