What's wrong with tax credits for hybrid cars?
You're no plug-in, Ford hybridToday, Toyota is facing a battery shortage for its hybrid cars. By next year, however, Toyota might have enough batteries to produce 1 million hybrids per year.
Aside from Honda, no other automaker will produce even 100,000 hybrid vehicles per year until lithium is developed. Even then, many automakers might skip hybrids, instead preferring to put their lithium technology into limited production plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles.
However, if Toyota swapped its NiMH batteries for Enerdel's lithium batteries, for instance, it could produce either 100,000 electric vehicles or one million Prius hybrids. And, without question, 1,000,000 Prius hybrids would have a significantly greater effect on both foreign oil dependency and global warming.
Considering that plug-in vehicles could be 3 decades or more from achieving at least 20 percent marketshare, why is America's lithium focus only upon plug-in vehicles?
Without question, tax credits for plug-in vehicles are a worthy expenditure. Still, why only plug-ins? Why not put lithium into as many vehicles as possible?
Ultimately, wouldn't lithium hybrids lead to a much quicker and dramatic effect on America's foreign oil dependency and carbon footprint? Shouldn't that be the driver of any battery-powered tax credit?
Labels: Foreign Oil Dependency, Hybrid Vehicles, lithium battery
posted by Dahcredyns at
8:40 AM
10 Comments:
what exactly is the tax credit trying to achieve?
what behavior are you trying to incentivize?
are you trying to achieve some minimal fuel efficiency standard where any car using any fuel that achieves a certain efficiency level gets the incentive?
or are you after something else?
if you want to give tax credits for less fuel use - why not give those credits for less fuel use - no matter how you achieve less fuel use?
so you set the standard to be 12K a year and you get a credit for every 1000 miles you drive less than that amount.
so..let's say you get rid of your car and walk, bike and use mass transit and you get the full 12K credit....
when I ask what the goal is that we are trying to achieve - this is what it means.
we have to be clear about what we want the policy to accomplish and right now, I think that different people have different ideas about what that policy goal should be and if we have not essentially agreed on that policy - then you get the kind of questions like "what's wrong with tax credits for hybrid cars".
My view of course.
Larry,
Let's face it: biking to work and mass transit is not a scalable solution. In my opinion, biking might raise more problem than it actually solves. Look at those people running through red lights and stop signs.
Though it does make sense to pay for any fuel efficient vehicle, the main conventional venue for getting more MPGS is to buy a smaller car. This is good as a temporary solution, but this is not a road to the future. Plus, downsizing also has its limits.
Hence, comes the idea of giving credits for people jumping the bandwagon of future technologies.
Dahc,
tax credits obviously benefit Japan automakers more than Big 3. Therefore, the government is unwilling to extend it.
larry-
this isn't about what i'm trying to achieve, it's about what the government is trying to achieve.
there are already tax credits for hybrids, but they have to be plug-in hybrids.
i'm simply asking why just plug-ins?
as for the goals of these tax credits, they were set up largely to kick start the battery industry for such vehicles, since it is the key to plug-in vehicles.
if we're going to use tax credits to kick start the lithium industry, why not do it in the most efficient way possible - isn't that the essence of your argument? focused, pragmatic efficiency?
to that and LB's point, a focus on lithium hybrids might take away Japan's conventional hybrid advantage, especially Toyota's advantage while firing up the US lithium industry.
----- food for thought
today, Enerdel - an American company - can produce enough lithium battery packs to power ALL of the Big 3's hybrid sales.
oh.. I'm gonna stick to my guns here.
when the government gives tax credits for SOME technologies but others what are they saying?
Are they not essentially deciding which ones have the most promise or will do the most good?
and how do we define "good"?
are we going to reward less energy use no matter how you achieve it or are we only going to reward reduced energy use achieved by certain technologies but not others?
If we want to reduce energy use - do it like congestion pricing for roads or for electricity.
It's costs 9 times as much to provide energy at peak hour than at the non-peak hours and yet we charge the same price no matter when.
but I digress...
why should we care if someone achieves less energy use by a plug-in or a conventional hybrid or a conventional fuel - driven less or biking or walking or mass transit or some combination of the above ???
as long as at the end of the day - less energy is consumed?
If someone can achieve just as much energy reduction with a natural gas car why should we give credits for hybrids and not natural gas?
see.. I think we do not have a cogent focus here.. we're all over the map ... and letting our own individual preferences and beliefs and hopes drive the priorities....
In the end - we should people choose what saves the most energy - for them - and let them decide what the past choices are that allow them to achieve the reductions instead of dictating what the market will be by favoring one technology over another - when we really don't even know how they will ultimately play out.
no?
I got a couple of words mangled there...
a missing 'not' in the first sentence and a couple other typos...
sorry
but you probably got my drift -
why reward/incentivize one choice over another or one technology over another when - at this point - we ourselves don't have a clear idea of how things will play out?
If you provide the same tax credit for both natural gas or plug-in, and others, it will foster competition from the providers of those technologies ... and it will drive investment in the technologies that the market gravitates towards...
cost and energy use are not the only criteria....
i don't disagree with you larry.
still, thus far the government has decided what IT wants to do, and it will be making more decisions soon. I'm simply questioning the plans and trying to build a conversation around these issues that are still being developed.
if i were king, however, i'd increase the gas tax and give the money back to the people and they can decide to buy a bus pass, new bike or a new fuel efficient vehicle.
that's obviously not going to happen.
thus, i've been arguing for a line in the sand on foreign oil dependency followed by the most pragmatic plan to get there that, minimally, doesn't increase emission and fits into a longer term plan for even cleaner, more renewable energy.
I still don't get it.
The Gov't was so much less enthusiastic about it's hybrid incentive program than it's plug-in incentive program.
Setting the max at 60,000 vehicles per manufacturer made the hybrid program incapable of generating the kind of volume needed.
Additionally, getting the incentive when you do you tax return is not nearly as desirable as getting the instant rebate, like the CARS program.
The Hybrid incentive program was designed to fail....
I'm not convinced that the govt won't do this:
Raise the gas tax significantly then give strong rebates to those that conserve ...
here's the problem with my idea.
what the govt finds easiest to administer is a single transaction - like - you buy - and they give a rebate.
what's harder is letting folks make a list of deductions ... itemized...
leads to a lot of expensive auditing and watching over folks to make sure they don't game the system...
they also don't like to give one dollar amount for one kind of car and another dollars amount for a different one.
but they made an effort with the clunker program... sorta
but we're talking like the govt is disconnected from the people on this...
there are lots of lobby folks even on the "green" side.. Environmental Defense, NRDC, etc who represent the conservation/reward side of things...
but for any govt rebate program - I think they have to have a more generalized criteria that is not specific to fuel type or technology type unless they're going to delegate that criteria to the administrators who will then develop a flexible criteria that can adapt to how technology evolves...
My theory of government incentives is the following:
When the government wants to increase energy efficiency they will create a mandate, e.g. EPA, Energy STAR, CAFE, etc., even Cap and Trade is essentially a mandate.
When the government wants to subsidize industry/create jobs they will spend money and create rebates/credits, i.e. CARS, plug-ins credit, all the other subsidies in the federal budget.
So if trying to decide between CNG and plugin credits, the Feds will care most about jobs created by each program.
BTW, the hybrid credit is a unique case, I think. When California created the hybrid credit to jump start the hybrid industry, it was a sweetener to go along with their PZEV mandate. When the Feds finally created a hybrid credit, it was clear that Toyota had won that market and so there was little money put into it.
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