Rather than tax them a bit more, which won’t actually improve safety if people just opt to pay the tax and drive them anyway, why not just straight up legislate weight limits for private vehicles, with commercial licensing as done with cargo trucks expanded to fit more conventional vehicles driven for commercial purposes that have to be large and heavy? Car companies will start making smaller cars again real quick if they’re not allowed to sell them otherwise
The point is to use the tax to pay for upgrading the infrastucture. Also attempting to regulate car sizes like that would be political suicide in most states.
Why not make it a two peonged attack against heavy vehicles?
Tax heavy cars severely, and bring the smaller cars we have in Europe to the US, getting the VW Transporter and MB Sprinter would offer smaller, lighter and cheaper utility vehicles with more useful features to the US.
Why not make it a two peonged attack against heavy vehicles?
If we correct the perverse CAFE standards that push manufacturers to increase the size of their cars, the problem largely solves itself, without pissing off consumers.
The standards currently require proportionally greater decreases in emissions on smaller vehicles than larger vehicles. Manufacturers are deliberately increasing the sizes of their vehicles to qualify for the easier standards.
Requiring smaller decreases on smaller vehicles will reverse this trend. Manufacturers will need to spend considerable resources on R&D to improve the economy of larger vehicles, or slim them up so they qualify for a smaller category.
Rather than tax them a bit more, which won’t actually improve safety if people just opt to pay the tax and drive them anyway, why not just straight up legislate weight limits for private vehicles, with commercial licensing as done with cargo trucks expanded to fit more conventional vehicles driven for commercial purposes that have to be large and heavy? Car companies will start making smaller cars again real quick if they’re not allowed to sell them otherwise
The point is to use the tax to pay for upgrading the infrastucture. Also attempting to regulate car sizes like that would be political suicide in most states.
Why not make it a two peonged attack against heavy vehicles?
Tax heavy cars severely, and bring the smaller cars we have in Europe to the US, getting the VW Transporter and MB Sprinter would offer smaller, lighter and cheaper utility vehicles with more useful features to the US.
If we correct the perverse CAFE standards that push manufacturers to increase the size of their cars, the problem largely solves itself, without pissing off consumers.
The standards currently require proportionally greater decreases in emissions on smaller vehicles than larger vehicles. Manufacturers are deliberately increasing the sizes of their vehicles to qualify for the easier standards.
Requiring smaller decreases on smaller vehicles will reverse this trend. Manufacturers will need to spend considerable resources on R&D to improve the economy of larger vehicles, or slim them up so they qualify for a smaller category.