
France to Raise Pollution Tax on SUVs and Trucks to €22k - hhs
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-20/france-sharpens-offensive-against-suvs-by-raising-penalties
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twblalock
If you want to tax pollution, tax fuel consumption or actual tailpipe
emissions, not a broad class of vehicles.

Which emits more -- a small family SUV or a BMW M3?

Governments have taxed vehicles based on weight, width, engine displacement,
etc. -- and the automakers adapt. It's very easy to game the system. Just tax
vehicles on a model-by-model basis on the fuel they actually use, and on what
they actually emit.

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dvfjsdhgfv
The headline is imprecise, the proposed law takes this into account.

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imtringued
The article only talks about SUV specific penalties which is wrong.

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rcMgD2BwE72F
And yet, the most popular French SUV won't be a taxed a single € as part of
this super malus (Peugeot 3008 and 5008).

Thus tax increase will impact far less than 1% if the sales. It's all PR,
nothing concrete.

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Gibbon1
Be a lot better to just put an uniform excise tax on new vehicles based on
expected C02 emissions. That would also tend to solve the problem of guys in
yellow vests throwing stuff.

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stephaner
It's a tax based on number of grams of CO2/km for all vehicles so 3008/5008
are concerned too. The updated tax for 2020 starts at 110 g of CO2/km
(previously 117 gCO/km, last year)

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isoprophlex
Yes, glorious. See also [].

Where I live (the Netherlands) there is absolutely no need to drive a
ridiculous Dodge Ram with a 6 liter engine that emits a bazillion kg co2.

However there's a worrying trend of people exploiting some tax loophole to
drive them cheaply, with road taxes going down to the level of ordinary
passenger vehicles.

I'd really like us to implement similar incentives to get these ridiculous
things off the roads.

[] [https://www.iea.org/commentaries/growing-preference-for-
suvs...](https://www.iea.org/commentaries/growing-preference-for-suvs-
challenges-emissions-reductions-in-passenger-car-market)

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C1sc0cat
If your parent doing the school run a suv does make sense, and don't for get
that pickups are used a lot by farmers and I suspect the Dutch farming lobby
is just as powerfull as it is in the other eu states and the USA.

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pjc50
You don't need a vehicle that size unless you have more than two children, a
perfectly normal 4-door car will do. And all the usual externalities of SUVs
are worse at school: the high ride height makes it harder to see small
children, and the large amount of space taken up makes the parking and traffic
jam round the school worse.

No, the Dutch solution to the school run is a Bakfiets cargo bicycle until the
kids are old enough to ride their own.

Dutch farming is very .. intense? Quite a lot of it is done in greenhouses.
Sure, if you're in agriculture you can justify a larger vehicle. That's at
most 5% of the population?

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Symbiote
More than three children.

In the 1990s every 5 person family managed fine with a normal car.

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arethuza
Most SUVs on the road that I see in the UK look like they probably have _less_
space than an equivalent car - and that's without abominations like 'sports'
SUVs (which seem the most pointless vehicles every invented).

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ahartmetz
It is true that most SUVs have less interior space than station wagons. The
high ground clearance wastes vertical space and the trunks are quite short.

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Karto
Pity. I live in a remote part of France, shaped by hills, forests, and very
devoid of public services. Most people don't have too much money, yet every
third car you see is an SUV or 4WD, because they actually are quite useful in
daily life. My neighbour drives a tiny but nimble Suzuki Vitara with which he
does just everything, much of which no regular city car could do. Was he to
buy that same car in two years, it'd cost almost twice as much because of
those taxes. (damn even the baker drives his deliveries with a Vitara). I see
all the excesses around the SUVs, I agree there's a nuisance to be dealt with.
But again the government rules with a large and blind PR hammer, and we'll
quietly sit under the blow once more.

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pjc50
Suzuki Vitara is an 8"CV" car: [https://www.neowebcar.com/puissance-
fiscale/suzuki/vitara/1-...](https://www.neowebcar.com/puissance-
fiscale/suzuki/vitara/1-9-d) which would incur €6250 tax.

(It's amazing how well Bloomberg's propaganda has worked here, hasn't it?)

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Karto
6000 Euro tax for a 15000 euro car. I'd call it significant enough and
ridiculous enough to be more than mere propaganda. But you're right, the
figures I had in the mind were for the Jimny, not the Vitara. Over 10000 tax
for a car that's less than 20000 euro.

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growlist
Call me cynical but - I'm guessing it's a lot easier to punish market sectors
in which your own manufacturers are weak.

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Wamou
On the other hand, for the sporty versions of some midrange popular cars
(Renault Mégane RS, Peugeot 308 GTi...) the pollution tax will amount to
almost 50% of the MSRP. I guess car enthusiasts on a budget will be more
inclined to buy lighter cars, a segment where French manufacturers are
basically non-existent (even if a Twin'Cup is really fun to drive).

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pjc50
Peugeot 308 GTi has a "puissance administrative" of 16, right in the high end
of the tax table. Presumably because it's a 250hp car. I'm sure that's fun but
it's also a really excessive amount of power (and CO2)

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lloeki
"really excessive" is quite going overboard. Of course you don't _need_ 250hp
to go forward. Yet those cars are less that 1% of the sales, blaming CO2
pollution on those is downright ridiculous, especially since they're not
driven at wide open throttle all the time, which makes them much less than the
stated output overall.

For example my 200HP car redlines at 8k rpm, thus the legal pollution (incl.
CO2) emission check is evaluated by revving it constantly at ~6k for several
minutes, which is absolutely _not_ what daily operation looks like (more like
2.5k~4k, and not even WOT).

Case in point my car usually gulps 6~9 L/100km (open road ~ city) but when I
picked up the car last week after the mandatory two year legal check, the ECU
was reporting over 20L/100km means consumption, which I never ever managed to
reach, even when doing some spirited driving for extended sessions.

On the other end of the spectrum, this pushes towards heavily downsized
engines that operate at the limit most of the time in regular use, putting
excessive strain on the hardware, resulting in terrible reliability, constant
excessive pollution, and premature wear of the engine. No wonder people have
to change cars at 150000~200000km. Comparatively, at 12yo, my car is nearing
that threshold and still performs as good as new. I expect it to pass 500000km
with flying colours.

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jcoffland
The bullshit is that politicians continue to only take action against
consumers when the real polluters, corporations and the military, continue to
go unchecked because lobbying pays.

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abyssin
I don't know how to feel about the meme that governments should target big
corporation rather than small consumers. On the one hand, I like it that it
makes an environmental message easier to swallow for the masses, because they
feel like they're not the ones who have to make an effort. On the other hand,
it's quite disingenuous to pretend the outcome is different from simply
reducing the amount of energy available to live a materially comfortable life
for everyone.

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bkor
> I don't know how to feel about the meme that governments should target big
> corporation rather than small consumers.

That's not what was stated. The objection is that hardly anything is done
regarding big corporations.

E.g. only in 2020 shipping will have to use low sulphur fuel (max 0.50%).
However, companies are allowed to install scrubbers. These devices allow for
the environmental impact to continue. This as they take out the sulphur at the
detection point, then dump the sulphur in e.g. the water. This is way cheaper
than actually using low sulphur fuel. Interestingly enough, there is no
availability of 0.50% sulphur fuel. There's 3.5% and 0.10%. They get to 0.50%
by mixing the fuel! They've (International Maritime Organization) should've
gone for 0.10% and not allowed any scrubbers.

Airline industry: Heavily subsidized, fuel has almost no tax on it. Taking a
plane is often way cheaper than a train, while the environmental impact is
quite in favour of the train.

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pjc50
> Airline industry: Heavily subsidized, fuel has almost no tax on it.

This _desperately_ needs to be fixed, but because it's enshrined in a treaty
that's very hard.

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dzhiurgis
Why? Airport, security theater and airspace use taxes eat up most of your
ticket costs anyway.

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pjc50
Per parent: "Taking a plane is often way cheaper than a train, while the
environmental impact is quite in favour of the train."

Until we get synthetic jet fuel, we need to impose some kind of carbon tax on
it in order to correctly reflect the environmental impact of different modes
of transport.

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thomasfedb
As a car enthusiast I'm really hoping that we see governments adopting
policies that drive manufacturers to provide low and zero carbon vehicles that
cover the vast majority of use cases for conventional ICEs.

Hopefully if that happens then it will be possible to allow for motorsport and
vintage cars to remain in use.

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mariushn
Related: Measures to reduce air pollution quickly result in big health
benefits

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2226280-measures-to-
red...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2226280-measures-to-reduce-air-
pollution-quickly-result-in-big-health-benefits/)

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winningforcoins
Headline: France raises comparative value of other markets that are not
France. Like Russia or China.

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mac_was
France is recently the main Putin advocate in the EU, look at Macrons recent
comments about NATO

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throwGuardian
France has a population of ~70M. What do you think contributes more to global
warming, 70M flatulent humans, or a few thousand French SUV enthusiasts?

