We need reforms to the method the EPA uses to calculate and enforce fuel efficiency requirements. It's the direct driver of the gigantifucation of vehicles.
Bam, SUVs are really unattractive.
As you can see, those requirements just get gamed.
Instead of complicated rules, just tax fuel (or emissions etc), and consumers will institute their own personal fuel efficiency requirements.
No, because that harm small fun sports cars. The problem is big cars. Just ban big cars.
More fuel you consume more emissions you produce, more distance you go, more road your wear occurs.
Do you want to get 8l V8 engine? Fine, just pay your fuel taxes.
Pinning fuel use seems to be the way to go, rather than penalizing engine geometry, for this reason.
It's important to remember, though, that semi-trucks get 5-8 miles to the gallon due to their weight/purpose. Perhaps these new fuel taxes should only affect classes other than A, B, and C to avoid knock-on effects.
What's interesting here is that semi-trucks cause exponentially more wear and tear on the roads than consumer vehicles, while not paying the corresponding fuel tax — they're being subsidized by everyday drivers.
Also the knock on effects may not be completely negative, it could mean that it isn't economical to drive a truck door-to-door filled with low value merchandise (And give retail a fighting chance).
What I was worried about was trucks used to transport groceries, not delivery trucks.
Last thing the poor need right now is the cost of food going even higher. They're already struggling to get by as it is.
Basically, tax fuel and tax the car.
But no need for outright bans. Almost any externality you can think of from (big) cars is finite, and thus a finite tax is appropriate.
That's not likely to succeed, because:
1. People — individuals and companies — try to game the tax system at least as much as they do pollution regulations, and probably much more so because tax obligations are largely self-reported with only sporadic auditing to catch cheaters and gamers.
2. Certain political elements are always trying to defund the tax auditors (e.g., the IRS). We might well ask why that is.
3. Politically, tax hikes are always harder to get through Congress — and to keep in force — than sensible standards for products and behaviors that voters can see are beneficial to them (e.g., pollution prohibitions).
> 2. Certain political elements are always trying to defund the tax auditors (e.g., the IRS). We might well ask why that is.
Tax the petrol itself. That works reasonably well in most of the world. No need for complicated individual audits etc.
> 3. Politically, tax hikes are always harder to get through Congress — and to keep in force — than sensible standards for products and behaviors that voters can see are beneficial to them (e.g., pollution prohibitions).
I don't know. We kicked off the whole discussion because the standards you have are NOT sensible.
True — but see my #3 above (political problems), and then add 3.1: Special-interest groups, which donate heavily to politicians' campaigns, always lobby for tax breaks of various kinds, e.g., tax deductions (at the federal level) for state- and local sales- and property taxes.
At a high enough tax rate, the would-be gas guzzlers' contribution to the fisc outweighs their probabilistic homicide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
Which makes importing smaller trucks like you see in other countries cost prohibitive
We've got the Maverick hybird which does 99% of the farm stuff.
And we also have a tow equipped expedition that we use when we need to haul horses or the big trailer. The expedition also comes in handy when we regularly haul 6+ people.
I've had the need for a gooseneck trailer maybe once in the last decade.
Weird that the more unsafe (to everyone else) and wasteful and polluting but also more profitable to industry modern trucks and SUVs are legal in their place!