Canada To Penalize SUVs, Reward Hybrids
Canadians shopping for a new car will get a rebate for purchasing hybrids, and a penalty for purchasing a gas-guzzler.
"The new federal budget provides for varying rebates for consumers who buy fuel-efficient vehicles (and levies that penalize purchases of gas-guzzlers). The highest rebate available, $2,000, will go to hybrid vehicles including the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid -- and that's on top of the $2,000 rebate already offered by the Ontario government on similar vehicles. (Highly fuel-efficient conventional autos can claim smaller amounts.)
The formula presented in yesterday's budget for calculating rebates and penalty levies uses a vehicle's fuel efficiency based on a combined rating: 55 per cent of the city fuel consumption rating and 45 per cent of the highway rating.
The budget imposes a special levy to be paid by manufacturers and importers of vehicles that can't travel 100 combined city-highway kilometres on less than 13 litres of fuel -- excluding pickup trucks and autos that use alternative fuels.
A Ford Grand Marquis will be dinged for $1,000, while dealers will see a $4,000 surcharge on each Hummer or BMW M5."
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Good idea, poor implementation
This sort of legislation can stifle creativity. By singling out hybrids, it discourages research into other technologies, such as quasiturbines, miller cycles, Mr. Fusion or whatever.
If anything, a hybrid should get less of a reward than a conventional automobile that gets equal mileage, since the batteries in the hybrid usually contain cadmium, lead or other toxic metals.
If I wrote the legislation, tax incentives would go to ANY vehicle with economy and emmisions more than one standard deviation better than average, and penalties to those more than one SD worse. The incentives and penalties would increase with the number of SD better or worse than average.
Thus, innovation is fostered all over, rather than channelled into only one of many potentially fruitful fields.
Right On!
Since the market hides the true cost of driving because of government subsidies for automobile infrastructure, the least the government can do is level the playing field toward more fuel-efficient vehicles. It would behoove the U.S. to adopt a similar program for all private vehicles, beyond just tax breaks and HOV priveleges for hybrids, and a gas guzzler tax that doesn't include the vast bulk of gas guzzlers - SUVs and pickups.