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A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

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1457 points kwindla | 5 comments | 25 Apr 25 15:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.792s | source
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aidenn0 ◴[25 Apr 25 16:56 UTC] No.43795946[source]▶
For anyone curious, if you made a similarly sized gas-powered pickup with an i4 engine, it would be penalized more than a full-sized pickup for being too fuel inefficient, despite likely getting much better mileage than an F-150 because, since 2011, bigger cars are held to a lesser standard by CAFE[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...

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MostlyStable ◴[25 Apr 25 17:26 UTC] No.43796306[source]▶
Example #5621 that a simple carbon tax would be miles better than the complex morass of regulations we currently have.
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bgnn ◴[25 Apr 25 19:39 UTC] No.43797777[source]▶
why can't we just tax the gas at the pump? this is, at least, what I'm used to in Europe.
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1. brianwawok ◴[25 Apr 25 19:40 UTC] No.43797791[source]▶
We do. But it’s a super regressive tax. Lots of very poor people depend on a bad MPG car to get to work and live.
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2. bgnn ◴[25 Apr 25 21:45 UTC] No.43798845[source]▶
that's a different problem. US cities used to have good publhc transport, but the urvanization policies since 50s is car-centric. plus, because of the American cars having huge engines they have bad MPG. The current situation US is in is nothing to do with the tax regime.
3. morepedantic ◴[26 Apr 25 04:54 UTC] No.43801046[source]▶
If you subsidize polluting life-styles, you'll get pollution.

You think the rich suffer from pollution and car dependency? It's not at all clear that taxing gas will lead to worse outcomes for the poor. It's entirely clear that subsidizing pollution from the poor will lead to worse outcomes for the planet.

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4. kaishiro ◴[26 Apr 25 12:13 UTC] No.43802915[source]▶
What isn’t clear about the fact that increasing commuting costs for those living paycheck to paycheck leads to a worse outcome?
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5. morepedantic ◴[27 Apr 25 05:24 UTC] No.43809635{3}[source]▶
Because you're only considering first-order effects. Behaviors, markets, and systems will evolve around the new rules. Public transit could improve. People could trade in SUVs for hybrid sedans. People could carpool. People could bike. People could walk. Corner stores could re-open. People could demand zoning changes, instead of fighting every nearby development.