Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

A few hundred dollars per year increase (at the pump or registration fees) still makes financial sense for an awful lot of people.



As long as you use taxes to internalize the cost of those emissions for people who don't want to wait an extra 15 minutes to refuel (and those funds go into air source carbon removal), that's a fine solution. At the rate at which EVs are selling [1], it seems the wait is not an impediment to ownership. It's important those who don't want to wait (and require liquid fuels because of that) don't put that burden (carbon emissions that aren't paid for) on everyone else collectively.

[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2020


... or you incentivize the wait by decreasing cost.

Sometimes I feel like these discussions about EVs are strangely divorced from most people's lives. We will likely make our next purchase an EV purchase, and I think the cost of waiting on long trips probably has to be considered against other annoyances of ICEs, but the economics of this are a major reason more people don't switch to EVs. Even the cheapest ones still cant compete against the ICE market as a whole, especially when you consider the used vehicles that will be in circulation for some time.

Adding costs will just make it more difficult for people to afford anything.

If people want EVs to take off, they need to incentivize purchasing them, not tax the ubiquitous alternative. If the carbon costs are real, manifest it in decreased costs for the alternative. Otherwise it's all theory.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: