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Comment by bjarneh | Hacker News Reader

> I’ve lost count of how many times good sounding government programs turn out to be lame once you read the fine print.

This is certainly true. Not sure if the one we had in Norway a few years ago can be classified as 'lame'. But it did more harm than good I think, as electric bikes became associated with a government subsidy for the rich. Most of the money went directly to the richest areas in Oslo (which are the richest areas in Norway probably). The subsidy gave buyers of electric bikes 5.000 NOK (~$500), but bikes were hard to come by and very expensive at the time (2016), so only the rich got on waiting lists for bikes and swooped up all the subsidies.

Source (in Norwegian):

https://www.aftenposten.no/oslo/i/O3Vl/el-sykkelsubsidier-gi...

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The same thing happened/is happening with electric vehicle subsidies: it's essentially a 4000€ gift to the rich that can afford a 70k€ car.

What needs to be done is:

(1) End subsidies for electric cars, and give them for e-bikes instead. With the 4k on a 70k you're barely making a dent, and you can use it instead to give e.g. 5× 800€ subsidies on 1000-1500€ e-bikes.

(2) Lump sum instead of percentage. say 800€ on a 1000€ bike or 800€ on a 5000€ bike.

(3) Give the money directly on the purchase instead of returning it later. This latter mode essentially blocks out people who don't have the money upfront. With solar panels this is especially grating: in my country you can get 85% subsidy on solar panels, which is just ludicrously efficient (I installed mine for ~500€ 6 months ago and they have nearly paid themselves back). But for that to work you need to have >5k€ lying around that you don't mind only being paid back in the end of the year! That excludes ~80-90% of people, according to statistics.

It's even worse in the US! The electrical rebate is against tax collected, so you not only have to have the money to buy (or borrow to buy) an electric car, but you have to have enough tax liability to take advantage of the whole rebate.

Or lease the car and let the car company take it for you.

If it was an above the line credit, I would have highly considered it.

Same with net metering: you need to be an electricity hog to get the most value.

Otherwise you just accumulate credit that you may never use. Or you create new electricity use which defeats the purpose (but great if you actually sub pre-existing fuel consumption, if you have it). I wonder if nano-markets emerge where you invite your neighbourhood to charge their stuff at your home or run extension cords around…

Better to have a feed in tariff where you’re encouraging to conserve and produce.

Typically you would need an income of $47,000 to maximize the $7500. And under $150,000 (individual).

Per https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-credits-deductions/dis...

Single (no dependents) is the problem.

The purchasers of the plug-in Pacifica are not usually going to be in that demographic. I couldn't get to the $7500, so the Sienna wins.

Here is an even better plan.

Instead of subsidizing e-bikes, install bike infrastructure. Because bike infrastructure helps literally all people on bikes, including e-bikes. Because lets be honest, for most things you would use a bike for, normal bikes work perfectly fine and they are available to the very poor.

And such infrastructure would likely also improve live of pedestrians.

The US builds roads far to wide anyway, and thanks to all the work in Europe we know how to build good bike infrastructure. A new federal code for roads, bikes and pedestrian. This could also massively improve road safety in general.

On the other hand, good policies get rich people to subsidize development of new technologies that benefit everyone.

Lots of subsidies in Canada for solar installs but no innovation comes to mind.

We’ve had some Canadian content requirements, but it ends up being the mounting equipment and wiring. We haven’t developed capacity to put together our own core inverter components or panels themselves: too cheap to assemble overseas.

That could be relevant very early in the life cycle of some technology, but e-bikes are far from that. They are a very widely available consumer product that frankly doesn't need support for further innovations.

Batteries are going to get better regardless and even if they don't, the current state of the art is by far good enough for 99.9% of practical uses for e-bikes.

> But it did more harm than good I think, as electric bikes became associated with a government subsidy for the rich.

Ultimately the question is: did the electric bike program meet its goals? If one of the goals was to improve access to transportation for the poor, it sounds like it fell short. If the primary goal was to reduce the use of cars, it may have still been a success. (That said, I do question the commitment of those who had the money but choose not to until there was a subsidy.)

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