Leave it to The West Coast to Mess Up Hybrid Cars

[Bruzilla]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/14/eveningnews/main674120.shtml

Great news for hybrid car drivers - all that money you save in gasoline will soon be going to milage taxes.

 

[scupper trout]

Pasted from text of article:

"Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it's as simple as that," says engineer David Kim.

Kim and his team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.

"So, if you drive 10 miles you will pay a certain fee which will be, let's say, one tenth of what someone pays if they drive 100 miles," says Kim.

The new tax would be charged each time you fill up. A computer inside the gas pump would communicate with your car's odometer to calculate how much you owe.

Sounds a tad Orwellian to me...............

 

[alex]

"Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it's as simple as that," says engineer David Kim.

Kim and his team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.

"So, if you drive 10 miles you will pay a certain fee which will be, let's say, one tenth of what someone pays if they drive 100 miles," says Kim.

The new tax would be charged each time you fill up. A computer inside the gas pump would communicate with your car's odometer to calculate how much you owe.

Wait a minute. Isn't that we do now when we buy gasoline? The feds and the states already tax us for road use with each 9/10 gal of gas we buy. Does this mean these taxes will go away? Somehow I doubt that. Looks like a double tax to me.

 

[Steve]

Wait a minute. Isn't that we do now when we buy gasoline? The feds and the states already tax us for road use with each 9/10 gal of gas we buy. Does this mean these taxes will go away? Somehow I doubt that. Looks like a double tax to me.

The article states that California may replace the pump tax with the odometer tax. Should that occur, I would think that all cars would have to be equipped with the odometer device.

But this is still a BS tax. You want to save money on gas (and thus tax), so you buy a vehicle with great MPG ratings. The government realizes that its going to lose money, because less gas is sold. So they shift the tax into another area.

End result: the consumer doesn't save any money, but instead gets to drive around in some wimpy, eco-loving death trap.

 

[Dymphna]

For this to work, they'd have to retrofit every car on the road with a GPS based device to track this. It wouldn't be fair to tax someone who drove across the country and back, based strictly on mileage. Can you imagine the bill at that fill-up? What about people who live out of state, have an older car without the tracking device, who regularly do business in California? You can't track them, can't tax them, yet they may be using the roads more than the locals. What about private roads? It wouldn't be fair for them to tax some farmer who mainly uses a particular vehicle to tool around on the farm with. What about filling up gas cans? They don't have odometers, or computer interfaces. There are already some people who live near the state line, who cross over into a cheaper state to buy gas, as big as California is, though, it's just a drop in the bucket. But if Cali does this and the neighbors don't, people will be crossing INTO Cali, because there isn't a per gallon tax and they don't drive enough miles in CA to worry about the other tax. I'm sure the much smaller neighboring states will love that.

In all likelihood, this proposed tax, if passed, won't be used to replace the existing per gallon tax, but to augment it, causing the double tax, as Alex pointed out. That being the case, what's the point in buying a hybrid afterall?

 

[Lenny]

Wait a minute. Isn't that we do now when we buy gasoline? The feds and the states already tax us for road use with each 9/10 gal of gas we buy. Does this mean these taxes will go away? Somehow I doubt that. Looks like a double tax to me.

BINGO! But when you're a state dependent on TAXES to pay all those entitlements, you'll find an excuse to blame all the problems on those who have money. Gives you more excuse to punish the well-off to pay the less-well-off.

 

[hamsterfang]

Whoah! Is anyone else a little bit scared that the government may be placing mandatory GPS systems and mileage trackers in our cars? Isn't this an invasion of privacy? I can't believe people are actually considering such a tax (well, actually-I can). Prices on gasoline are horrible on the West Coast and pollution is a major problem in many areas-you'd think hybrids would be exempt from any type of mileage tax. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

Small hybrids are becoming increasingly expensive, while the price of some gas guzzling SUVs have dropped within the last several years. With the thousands of extra dollars you spend on a hybrid (Let's say a Prius, about $26,000. Expensive for a small sedan), you don't save much money in the end, even if you save money on fuel. Say the SUV costs $22,00, and therefore there's a difference of $4,000 between the two vehicles. Are you really going to be saving $4,000 in gas? Asides from this, I hear that (I think it is this) if the battery in the Prius ever dies, it can cost hundreds or even thousands to replace.

Hybrids like the Prius are much kinder to the environment- that's their only real benefit. They're also cute little cars....but they're cramped and have slow acceleration.

Oh, and I forgot to ask- don't people who earn certain hybrids in Maryland actually get a little bit of a tax break?

 

[Steve]

In all likelihood, this proposed tax, if passed, won't be used to replace the existing per gallon tax, but to augment it, causing the double tax, as Alex pointed out. That being the case, what's the point in buying a hybrid afterall?

There is no reasoning with a politician, especially the higher ups. They live in a different world and they forget, nay ignore, the very people that vote them into office. Cali folks wanted to be cutting-edge 10 years ago with the energy saving vehicles. I can't wait to see how they feel after this one gets through.

 

[Steve]

Whoah! Is anyone else a little bit scared that the government may be placing mandatory GPS systems and mileage trackers in our cars? Isn't this an invasion of privacy? I can't believe people are actually considering such a tax (well, actually-I can).

Scared? Hell yeah! But it's not the actions of one or two politicians. It's the action of a collective of politicians whose disinterest in what they believe to be minutiae actually grows out of control into a behemoth of societal taxation and contraints.

Its called "Socialism". What starts as a meritorious idea gets squashed under the drive of big government to maintain itself, at any cost. The "sheeple" politicians become more concerned with status in the body politic, and with re-election, that things like eco-cars and TAX SAVINGS for the people, become liabilities. Meanwhile, they live on in luxury and taxation havens.

What else is new? :shrug:

 

[Railroad]

I don't know which idea makes me angrier - the hybrid cars or the taxation. Suffice it to say, I'm glad I live on the right coast.