Ralgha

I've had a house built, the vast majority was built "to code" if you think they do any more than that out of the goodness of their heart, you're naive. Now consider a house that is built before having a buyer, it'll be even worse without the buyer monitoring what's going on.

All the transportation safety codes exist because of the government, not competition. Look at the 737 drama, even with massive regulation, Boeing still tried to cut corners on safety to make an extra buck. They got away with it for awhile too, but eventually it bit them on the ass hard. If there were no federal regulations, airplanes would be falling out of the sky from bad design, shoddy maintenance, and fatigued crews.

You seriously think private corporations have your best interests at heart? Not a snowball's chance in hell.

Parilla125

You are crazy! Boeing is ONLY about safety, making a comfortable and happy workplace, and making sure the workers have a good wage. Really! No kidding! They care not for making a profit. It is all about the people and customers. Yup. I read it on the Googles! It MUST be true!

liberpolly

You are arguing as if anyone here was advocating abolishing government regulations.

Whereas we are discussing whether the government, which claims to want to increase electric vehicle ownership yet desides to tax them more, is acting as an Orwellian propaganda machine, or a Kafkian bureaucracy nightmare.

Ralgha

Some people have been arguing that private companies will handle everything on their own better than the government, and that is false.

That aside, the government is in something of a catch-22. There are many reasons that we need electric vehicles, yet if they take over, no more gas tax revenue to fund the infrastructure. Logically, the best solution, I think, would be a tax based on weight of the vehicle and miles driven, thus directly tying it to wear and tear on the infrastructure.

Personally, I don't like the mileage aspect because it would either requirea transponder on every vehicle, which I don't want for privacy reasons, or extra work from each driver to track and report miles, which I don't want because I'm lazy.

Finding the best solution is not easy.

liberpolly

As I said, tax tires. Tire use is proportional to "weight of the vehicle and miles driven".

liberpolly

Do we at least agree that taxing electric vehicles annually is the WORST possible solution?

motoroco

There's a third side to this coin that I haven't seen mentioned yet. It's in the public's interest to reduce the need for personal vehicle ownership overall, so any tax increase on them (ICE or electric) is a "good thing" regarding that specific goal. Oh, if only we had invested in trains instead of highways!

Chrishil54

Yes they could, and did, but have also hiked fees on EV to help "recover" even more.

Chrishil54

They already tax tires, along with just about everything else they can think of. Heck, they even figured out how to tax you for going to the bathroom.

Chrishil54

Problem with trains is that once they are in place, it's not easy to change their route as the population centers shift and grow. Cars are popular because they let people go where they want, when they choose. Bus routes are valid too because like cars, they routes are adjustable with little cost.

Sentinel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera...car_conspiracy

MikeMikeMike

If this was a serious recommendation I think the problem with heavily taxing tires is that they are very transportable. Every American citizen near the border would just take a weekend trip North or South and outfit their car with fine Canadian or Mexican tires and then drive another 20k miles.

liberpolly

We could institute "tire snitch patrol" where people report on their neighbours smuggling untaxed tires for 10% reward.

liberpolly

That's independent goal from shifting the current mix of cars toward electric ones. So it is bad thing for the climate.

We've invested in trains. I am paying few hundred dollars tax for each vehicle each year, so they can keep planning it for 5 years, design for 4 more years, and then spent 10 more years building a 7-mile line of light rail, for the total cost of 2 billion dollars, with projected 2000 daily boardings.

For this money, we could buy each Ballard resident an electric motorcycle, and have spare change to pay for everyone's ride on electric Uber anywhere they want.

Your government, hard at work.

I mean, I love trains and street cars, they are wonderful in Europe, but when we let idiots to take over the government because they say all the right and woke things, that's what we're getting.

So if they'd took these two billion dollars and invested them into promoting, subsidizing, and de-taxing electric vehicles instead, we would have much, much bigger impact on slowing the global warming.

Texasl

I believe that the population centers will naturally shift to take advantage of the expansion of the rail transit systems.

You'll take my untaxed tyres away from me when you pry my cold dead fingers from around them.