Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Economist, announcing a future ban on the sale of gasoline cars, as California just did, helps shape future expectations, and discourages investment in vehicles with a looming end of life.
Outright bans can sometimes be a good way to fight climate change
Studies show prospective bans on petrol-powered cars may be less inefficient than you think
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If electric vehicles were in every way as satisfactory as alternatives, it would take little or no policy incentive to flip the market from petrol-powered cars to electric ones.
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Without policy guidance, the market might grope its way towards balance. Shanjun Li and Lang Tong of Cornell University, Jianwei Xing, now of Peking University, and Yiyi Zhou of Stony Brook University estimate that a 10% rise in the availability of charging stations boosts sales of electric vehicles by 8%, and a 10% increase in the number of electric cars on the roads raises the construction of new charging points by 6%. A promise to ban sales of petrol-powered cars at a certain date stands to accelerate this process and reduce its cost by co-ordinating the expectations of firms and consumers. Both firms and households would be less likely to waste money on capital goods the lifespan of which may be unexpectedly shortened by the disappearance of complementary technologies. Other scale economies might be realised: carmakers may feel more comfortable shifting the bulk of their r&d spending towards electric vehicles, for instance, and mechanics might start preparing to service electric cars. Meanwhile, the investment in services linked to petrol-powered vehicles would shrink rapidly.
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Read more: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/10/03/outright-bans-can-sometimes-be-a-good-way-to-fight-climate-change
The authors admit electric vehicles are inferior, then discuss the relative merits of punitive carbon taxes vs outright bans – “shoving” the population in the direction of the desired choices.
Somewhat lost in this analysis is a consideration of the impact of bans and carbon taxes on ordinary people, of the impact of ordinary people being forced to accept inferior products, because someone else thinks they have the right to dictate your consumer choices.
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To affluent people, other affluent people are ordinary. Middle and working class people are just the people you pay to do things you don’t have to, and whom you avoid as much as possible. If affluent people think about their economic inferiors at all it as supernumeraries in the operas where the rich and powerful sing the leading roles.
I remember our Pierre Trudeau, our prime minster in Canada in the seventies and eighties, blithely opining that most members of Parliament were “nobodies” once they got a hundred yards from the House. Nobodies is a revealing word for the leader of Canada to use in reference to any of the citizens he is sworn to serve, as it reveals a dismissive, snobbish arrogance that democratic leaders are expected to abjure in public.
It’s all about the 90 companies and if we ban them two thirds of the problem is fixed-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/weather/topstories/the-90-companies-responsible-for-two-thirds-of-historical-greenhouse-gas-emissions/ss-BB19Jerd
Simples really.
Electric goes gangbusters in the UK while ordinary folk settle for the top seller a small 1.2L 3 pot turbo ICE-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/motoring/news/september-new-car-sales-fall-to-1999-levels/ar-BB19I6TQ
But wherever you see EV sales soaring you know it’s accompanied by the usual for the most deserving-
https://www.motoringelectric.com/buying/how-much-company-car-tax-save-electric-car/
California Ban??
The old Davy Crockett line
“You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”
Honda released the Clarity the other year nationwide after having it in just a few states. In most parts of the country it failed so miserably that they are only selling them in a few states, and it is a much better vehicle than the Volt. And that’s just a plugin hybrid. Even in tech areas, like the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, people are like “na.” Sure, lots of people with lots of money buy Teslas, but, you can buy a top end Honda Accord Hybrid Touring for less than the lowest priced Tesla, and not worry about charging stations.