Hacker News Reader

Comment by sheepdestroyer | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Oh, they will be, no worries - doubly so as the fuel they need goes from being a necessary evil of civilization to a niche product for enthusiasts.

There's going to be along tail of ICE vehicles out there, though - say, I have a tractor on my farm (which is not being worked commercially, it is basically an expensive and time-consuming hobby seeing as my wife's family has tilled this plot of land since the dark ages. Literally.)

Anyway, even if diesel prices soar to $25/l (That's $100/gal for the metrically challenged), with our current usage, it will still be cheaper to buy diesel at that cost than to invest in a new, EV tractor. Hence I can't see that tractor going anywhere anytime soon.

Why should something be heavily vilified and taxed simply because you personally dislike it?

Because it’s a dead-end tech that’s holding us back and destroying the place where we all live. If you insist on pursuing it for your own pleasure, knowing what we all know now, you may be a villain.

Most emissions come from grid energy. The greens cancelled nuclear and were the real villains in the end.

but the grandparent poster's problem isn't with ICE itself, but with "emotion, driving as an experience" etc.

In other words, the grandparent poster's argument is merely that people shouldn't be basing decisions on their (flawed) emotional attachment to driving as an experience, and would like such to be shamed and vilified.

This is a moralistic argument. It has nothing to do with environmentalism, but is using climate change as a platform to push a personal agenda or world view. In other words, it's a woke argument.

It’s not vilified. It’s the recovery of environmental costs associated with ICEs as well as subsidizing a lower barrier to entry for EVs.

There are plenty of place around the world where there isn't sufficient capacity in the grid even for powering the houses.. let alone EVs

It’s amazing how much the luxury car industry has advertised what is essentially a shaking and noise complement to going fast.

The “smooth” revs. The “visceral” feel. The “connection” to the road. It’s just a few metal cylinders going up and down real fast, tuned to sound nice in a packaged product.

It’s like brainwashing. Impressive really. I like going to the track when I can, but that’s a bit different. The statement is the work you’ve put into your car, not how “exclusive” your statement is.

people who drive expensive cars don't care about twitter opinions.

They’re already heavily taxed. But why vilified?

A tax can help common infrastructures (building road) or limit something (cigarettes price)

Some people think the ICE car tax(es) already in place are not sufficient compared to the damage they cause. To reduce usage, both tax and public opinion (shaming, vilifying) works great.

It’s regrettable the efforts only focus on a car motors, the most dangerous property of a car is it’s weight (and emissions depends on that weight).

Vilifying things doesn't accomplish anything because the negative opinion becomes a cultural split. People don't care about the hatred of their out-group and lots of people will seek it out to burnish their status with the in-group.

The cars in question are luxury cars that are dime a dozen. I understand heavily taxing ordinary ICE cars, but why luxury ones?

There's a huge overlap between people who seek out such experiences and those who drive recklessly and modify their exhausts.

Or maybe you're not particularly interested in cars or the people who are interested in cars and you can't tell the difference / assume all of "those" people are the same,

I actually am - mostly the engineering part of them though and to me, to paraphrase a prominent local motoring journalist, motoring is dead - EVs are a transition propulsion method and the end state is no motoring as we currently understand it and maintaining a car broadly considered lame.

The only people I've met who are car enthusiasts and don't go for the reckless/loud style of driving are people like my friend - a car mechanic who managed to form a single, road worthy Nissan Z31 from two defunct halves.

Your proposals are a bit contradictory. If you heavily tax something, it becomes a money source for the government; does it then make sense to try to extinguish said activity through artificial social aversion? Also, whatever is vilified by the government, but stays legal or at least feasible, will act as a magnet for the counterculture.

If you really hate something, just propose an outright ban. It would work for Porsches; no one can secretly grow a Porsche in his backyard.

you must be european

Muricah much, or just trolling ? I though that was not the style here

i’m not particularly supportive of people who think fun needs to be vilified and taxed out of existence. it just so happens that this mindset is common among europeans who will never be able to afford a nice vehicle

Reply on news.ycombinator.com