> It seems they have already won in the market
By gas cars being taxes to death. You can call that a "market" if you want.
By gas cars being taxes to death. You can call that a "market" if you want.
As opposed to being allowed to externalize their emissions to the death of the rest of us? I agree that current taxing of ICE vehicles is not optimal, what should happen is that gasoline is forced to be carbon neutral and pollution costs associated with lubricants and other fluids are built into the prices of those too, but the present situation near universally has been the opposite extreme where ICE costs aren't internalized one bit, and in fact often actively subsidized.
>You can call that a "market" if you want.
I will, since I know what a "market" actually is. Free markets are creations of government and tools of society, ultra scalable economic optimization algorithms. They require being reasonably far along the spectrum of things like cost internalization and information symmetry, the core point is that the price embodies all the costs as well as any floors society desires. That way each individual purchaser can allocate their own resources in as optimal way as possible.
The current anthropogenic global warming mess is precisely because we don't have a Free Market in vehicles, electricity, etc since they're allowed to dump an enormous amount of their costs onto everyone with no reflection in the sticker price. The result being trillions and trillions of dollars/euros all of us are and will have to pay to deal with the mess. And of course some of the damage will be irreversible at any price.
And you can redefine a market all you want. The original poster almost certainly meant it as "winning on its own merit". Yeah a regulator can arbitrary ban a competitor and then you can claim that it is still the market because you think the market is what the regulators say the market is, but it certainly doesn't fit "winning on its own merit".
No, it does not. But they definitely don't have any of the same externalities when it comes to AGW, which is the biggest environmental threat we're facing. And it's not clear they have any significant unique ones vs ICE cars. You'll need to quantify the environmental impact of manufacturing batteries vs crude oil extraction, transport (including oil spills), and refining for example. Internalizing carbon emissions in gasoline/diesel only covers a hard eyed AGW focus. Things like tire wear causing particulate pollution apply to both too. And EVs use far less consumable fluids and have fewer parts.
>And you can redefine a market all you want. The original poster almost certainly meant it as "winning on its own merit".
No, it is you who are attempting to redefine what a "market" is. A product "winning on its own merit" can only be said to be true if all externalities (or at least all significant ones) are accounted for. If the price doesn't include those, the product is not competing on its own merits either. This is econ 101. ICE cars have literally not competed solely on their own merits even once in their entire history. We are seeing at best a very, very slow and halting ultra late correction when the market is already shifting for other reasons because BEVs are just that much better even with ICE cars massively subsidized.
The taxes are an attempt to correct a failed market.