The Ford Transit Connects made in Europe and are sent to the US with seats in them. In the US, the seats are removed and then sent back to Europe, presumably to be installed in new Transit Connects.
The EU only considers an electric bicycle an "ebike" if it has a motor that's 250 watts or less. Anything labeled above 250w is considered a motorcycle and requires more fees, taxes, licensing, etc. The "workaround" is that vendors kept shipping the same bikes but edited the spec sheets to say "250w", regardless of the motor's actual power output (often 2x that wattage)
The article doesn't hint at the limiter being removed (or not installed in the first place) until the end of the article. But yeah I would venture to guess that limiter won't be on that truck for very long. Maybe just long enough to get it registered and pass inspection.
Reminds me of how the Converse shoe company glues a thin layer of soft fabric to the bottom of the rubber souls so they can be imported as slippers which are taxed differently.
Reminds me of being in Oklahoma City, where almost every pickup truck and SUV has a sticker on the back bumper that says 'Commercial Vehicle' presumably as some local tax loophole.
IIRC if you have a vehicle with a body on frame truck chassis and claim it is used 51% or more for business purpose you can pay much lower registration.
That's fine, as long as it's in actual proportion to cost. For example, a single semi truck does as much damage to the road surface as 9,600 sedans. I'm more than happy to pay my fair share.
Because a car in America is fairly essential for upward mobility and that tax hits the poorest the hardest making it harder to keep that car. It's effectively rent-seeking for a low-level good without taking into account usage. They can't scale back usage to reduce that tax. It just is.
Compare it to similar rent-seeking taxes on land ownership (i.e. property taxes), which affect wealthier people more able to afford the tax.
I know when I was a college student, affording the registration and bare-bone insurance payments on my 25 year old honda was actually pretty non-trivial. If I couldn't afford gas on a particular month, I could find creative ways to ride-share / take public transit (sometimes) / not drive / etc. But that didn't do ANYTHING to my registration payment.
Yeah... The rise of remote work may help that situation. But as a whole, the solutions are probably borderline infeasible since the US is just so spread out.
NC has a license plate that says “weighted” which I read as “weighed” assuming it was some commercial thing where you had to have the truck/van weighed to get that plate… (whatever… it doesn’t matter.) Weighted seems to be on commercial vehicles but I can’t figure out why “weighted.” Does NC add weights to commercial vehicles?
> The plate issued for vehicles licensed for 7,000 pounds through 26,000 pounds must bear the word “weighted,” unless the plate is a special registration plate authorized in G.S. 20-79.4.
That is correct. We also have farm plates, they're red text on a white background. Those are meant to be used only during for the purpose of performing farm business. Towing, hauling stuff around, taking goods to the market (I see tons of them on the vehicles at the farmers market in Raleigh). I believe they are also subjected to a lower tax and (May?) not require their safety inspection.
Edit: the weighted plate is for commercial use and over 9000lbs total (vehicle included). This can also cover non-commercial if you're hitting that weight and not hauling a camper. There are carveouts, but the tax increases with the weight of the expected max tow. The state charges a road use fee instead of a state tax on registration.
It's gross combined weight rating (GCWR), not the actual vehicle weight. It's the same thing here in TN too. You register a truck based on the max weight you'll load in it or combined weight with the truck and trailer. The higher the weight, the more you pay.
The Massachusetts equivalent is (or at least to be) putting the name of a made-up business on a vehicle so it could go through the Ted Williams Tunnel toll-free.
Denmark has one of highest taxes on cars. Almost 300%, but if you buy a 4x4 and rip out the back seats it is now classified as a van and the tax is like 15%. I had a "van" like that for many years.
All pickups in California are registered as commercial vehicles and you have to pay much larger registration. I think you can get around it if you have a permanent camper installed and its an RV.
Rules and regulations make things difficult. It is even more difficult to people that operate on different ones on a regular basis but never read the rules.
A lot of Dutch people often visit Germany. Driving in Germany is considered fun by most because they do not have a speed limit. Since we have a speed limit (nation wide) of 100 km/h people sometimes even go to Germany just to hear they engines roar. All of them do not realise that going over the Dutch speed limit in a different country means you Dutch insurance will not pay out when you have an accident.
Very nice to encounter that after you wrecked your car...
Even Germans don't know their insurance won't cover or just partially cover crashes happening > 130km/h (hint: Richtgeschwindigkeit/recommended speed is 130km/h everywhere, even on Autobahn stretches without speed limit).
This is only the case if they can show that the crash occurred due to you driving at an excessive speed. It's by no means the case that getting into a crash on the autobahn going 200km/h automatically means that you're not getting a full payout.
Oh also, if you have vollkasko this is very unlikely to ever be an issue unless you were being grossly negligent (e.g. fiddling with the navigation while going 200km/h+), you're covered against "regular" contributory negligence.
Wait, what? Really? What a daft insurance. So you're limited to 100km/h even on an unlimited stretch of the autobahn, with people going a lot faster around you? Or even somewhere like Poland where the limit is 140km/h and driving 40km/h slower than everyone else is an actual hazard?
I don't believe OP at all, I'm Dutch and never heard of this. Also the max speed limit in the Netherlands is 130 km/h, but between 06:00 and 19:00 it's 100 km/h (don't ask...)
Maybe OP is confused about the rules on unlimited roads like some German autobahns, there is indeed reduced payout above 130 km/h. But insurance not covering anything above 100 km/h is ridonculous
Bij 50 over de snelheid ben je de lul. Hoe dat zit als je in Duitsland 150 rijd overdag waarbij in Nederland de limiet van 100 dan geld zou ik niet uitproberen.
Right, but OP said that if you drive over 100km/h OUTSIDE of Netherlands, you won't be covered by your insurance, which is obviously complete nonsense.
Again, I cannot imagine that this could possibly apply outside of Netherlands. As long as the insurance covers you for driving abroad, and you follow the law in whatever country you're in, why would the speed limit in Netherlands matter.
Speed in a crash isn't a particularly big problem. The dangerous bit is how quickly you decelerate. Going from 100kmh to 0 over a few hundred meters and a few seconds by bouncing around the road and the barriers won't be much fun but you'll walk away. Going from 100kmh to 0 by driving in to something stationary will kill you pretty much instantly unless your car's safety tech saves you by giving you a cushion of air to decelerate in to.
You are of course correct, but speed does give an upper bound on how quickly you decelerate. Anyways, I got curious and looked up accident statistics in Denmark [1], and only ~10% of accidents that result in fatalities happen on freeways (where speed is highest), ~56% happens on country roads (second highest speed and more objects that will decelerate you quickly) and the remaining happen in the city. The authorities estimated that excessive speed played a major factor in 43% of the accidents.
Coincidentally, while fines for speeding are relatively lax in Germany, the penalties for underrunning minimum distances (which are calculated from speed) will wreck you. (Your driver's license will be decked pretty fast, and you can end up in prison too.)
I have a really hard time believing that this is true. Assuming you don't have some special insurance, you should be covered on all public roads in the EU as long as you drive according to the laws of those countries.
Also there is actually a limit, the amount of roads where there isn't one gets smaller every year.
Ongoing construction works, local municipalities that want to reduce noise, others want to reduce traffic jams, end up with enough places limited between 80 and 100 km/h.
The model is reported to do a combined 21.0 liters per 100 km (or ~11-ish mpg) and more in the city. Driving this monster means you'll be paying roughly 50€ per 100km just for gas even if you didn't have to pay any of those import taxes. You really, really have to love this truck to drive it in Finland.
My friend bought a TRX. Not sure why, he has to drive a lot for work. He was paying over $250 a week in gas and even with mileage reimbursement from his work it didn’t make sense. I laughed when he sold it within 2 months.
He did end of selling it for much more than he bought it for.
This is a hilarious thread. People think that just because they have the HP, that their driveline and tires are capable of safely going above the factory governed speed. People stating that they've gone north of 120 in a lifted full size pickup on presumably public road shouldn't be allowed to drive.
If the tires are up to it modern vehicles have no problems operating well into the triple digits. It's just a wear and tear issue. Things don't spontaneously explode if you go too fast.
Most modern cars, sure, but I wouldn't feel the same about a lifted truck with 36" mud terrain tires as mentioned in that thread. In a stock solid axle pickup, you somewhat frequently encounter what is referred to as a "death wobble" where the whole vehicle shakes, even at moderate speeds. Suspensions in full size trucks are commonly using 1950's era tech, not modern double wishbone or multilink setups that many cars have. This ignores that when you get into triple digit speeds, even small things like wheel balancing can make a huge difference for safety and performance (ignoring speed rating of tires). Most of the people commenting in that thread seemed to have lifted trucks (ignoring body vs suspension lifts or that they took cheap route to do so, e.g. grade 5 vs 8 hardware), so they are already changing things like center of gravity, aero and handling.
Appears to be about a system in normal RAMs, not specific to this Finland thing. I’d be curious if it’s the same speed limiter with a variable changed, or a different easier-to-remove system.
Most "handheld tuners" can adjust the speed limiter without issue. Newer Dodge products need a PCM reflash in order to use the handheld tuner. Some tuning shops can do this on site, but I think a Finnish person would need to ship their PCM to the USA for a reflash, or buy a second flashed unit.
Being a Hennessey product, this probably comes with a flashed PCM and the handheld tuner for it. I wouldn't be surprised if the manual came with a section stating something like, "this setting right here will adjust the speed limiter on your vehicle. It would be VERY ILLEGAL to use this feature to CHANGE THE TOP SPEED LIMITER to beyond 55MPH. Please don't use this feature if you're in the EU."
Nissan did something similar with their gtr 30 years ago, limiting the boost to skirt Japanese regulations but its apparently easy to remove the limiter and put down a lot more horsepower.
This reminds me of the case of the Amstrad CPC 472.
Amstrad exported the 64K CPC 464 to loads of countries, and it did quite well. But Spain wanted to promote home-grown micros, and in an act of protectionism, applied a special tax to any computer with 64K or less of RAM.
Amstrad MD Alan Sugar directed his engineers to solder a completely non-functional 8K RAM chip to the mainboard, changed the name of the Spanish version to the 472, and skipped the tax.
1 gallon of gas puts out 19 pounds of CO2, so this equates to about 10.5 mpg which actually sounds reasonable for a 1000 HP supertruck that weighs 7800 lbs. A stock Ford F-250 only gets 16 mpg for reference.
> I can't wait for the day people will have decided they need a vehicle so heavy that an airliner mpg actually sounds reasonable for a car.
Airliners are pretty darn fuel-efficient, more efficient than even many lightweight cars. (Assuming you don't leave seats empty, that is.)
As of 2017 [1]: "Domestic airliner can get anywhere from 45.5 to 77.6 miles per gallon per passenger, with an industry average of about 51 miles per gallon of fuel per passenger."
For comparison, the average car gets something like 25-30 MPG, so airliners are some 2x more efficient.
What average car are you talking about ? 9.5l / 100km is attrocious and average in 2005.
A starlet from 1998 gets better fuel economy already. And so does a Volvo v40 2.0 turbo. I believe a 1800kg modern day M3 sports car already gets better fuel economy than a plane if you seat it with 3 people.
I couldn’t find a detailed breakdown in one of the sources, but how can the average be so close with light trucks and vans. In any case this is not representative for the majority of Europe.
I'd argue it's ordinary rather than reasonable. It seems like the tax is fair, you can import a 1000hp beast for personal use and get taxed heavily, or you can import it for whatever sort of haulage you need a 1000hp pickup truck for and you're limited by the rules of other haulage trucks.
I understand. On the team I'm on right now, we're trying to make some large changes, and some of that has to do with challenging assumptions. I'm just primed to see things like "10 weeks is a reasonable amount of time for Y" as a check point to ask whether it's actually reasonable, or whether we've fallen into a pattern that we've stopped questioning.
You can't directly compare EU versus US mileage numbers.[1] A lot of conversions from liters per mile to miles per gallon use UK gallons, which are 1.2x larger than US gallons. Also the EU mileage tests are less taxing on vehicles and easier to game. In actual driving you're unlikely to hit EPA numbers, and there's almost no way to get to the EU numbers. Typically, European cars get 30-45% higher fuel consumption than their test ratings.[2] The gap has gotten bigger as car manufacturers have gotten better at gaming the test.
There's no special technology in EU cars that makes them get better mileage than their US counterparts. Europeans just tend to drive smaller vehicles, many of which wouldn't pass crash tests in the US. For example, the Smart Fortwo had to be increased in length to pass US crash tests.
50mpg is a pretty reasonable number still, from my use statistics.
> many of which wouldn't pass crash tests in the US. For example, the Smart Fortwo had to be increased in length to pass US crash tests.
The smart isn't really a common car in Europe. As for crash tests, some US vehicles wouldn't pass EU tests either. The two regulations test for different properties, and manufacturers optimize for that.
As for actual safety, trafic fatality is equivalent or better in Europe, especially for people not inside a car.
You barely see trucks here, compared to how popular they are in the US. Looking up a "best selling trucks in EU" would very much give you a skewed perception.
Now you're just reminding me how much Ford massacred my boy... Ford Rangers used to be the stripped down compact pickup actually useful as a light truck, and now it's just another oversized behemoth...
The Maverick should be the new version of that... if it actually offered any practical options!
Yup, whenever I see one here (in Germany) I wonder why not go the Full Size Pickup way? I mean the modern Rangers are as tall as my RAM 1500 anyway and only a little narrower. But narrow enough to make them look awkward. It's like only 20cm I would guess.
I also wonder why no manufacturer brings a full size pickup model to the Euro market. At this point mid sized trucks aren't that much smaller and me daily driving an imported RAM 1500 I can say that German cities/roads aren't too small for full size pickups. (DHL Delivery vans are larger yet still fit everywhere).
Oh and the really cool mid sized trucks aren't here either. (I'd kill for a TRD Tacoma).
I think people might drive this sort of thing on a regular basis.
Traditional "supercar" sports cars are rarely driven and especially not on daily basis. Partly because of their value, but also because they tend to be spectacularly impractical and are usually uncomfortable to boot. Can't even fit your groceries in them half the time.
This monster pickup truck is actually practical as an everyday driver.
(I'm not saying that 1000HP is something people actually need; I'm just saying - you could drive it to the store and carry your groceries home with it comfortably)
It's not even good for groceries, for reasons anyone who has actually bought groceries can readily fathom. You want your groceries in a backseat or in a trunk, not in the cab of this stupid testosterone-poisoning-advertising machine.
In any warm climate, you don't want your groceries out in the hot sun while you drive home, and in any cold climate, you don't want them damaged by that weather, either.
A Honda Civic is 20x more practical and carries 2.5x more passengers and gets 5x better mileage.
If you want to roll coal, fine, but just admit it. Let's not pretend this vehicle is in ANY way "practical". It's just not.
This truck has a back seat. Unless they removed this feature recently, you can even fold the seat bottoms up, and fold out a riser that makes the back floor completely flat. It should hold a few dozen paper grocery bags in a single layer, no problem. Of course, you could get a cover for the bed, and fit many, many more groceries back there.
I think the Rivian is a much flashier truck though. It has a better 0-60 time than the un-capped Hennessey RAM, and is less than half the price.
Neither are practical for "truck stuff" (the Rivian has a small bed, and depreciation on the Hennessey is going to dwarf the value of most loads). At least the rivian is solid around town and for offroading/camping.
If you want to roll coal, you can go die in a fire. Seriously. You're assaulting everyone around you with carcinogens and cardiovascular poisons.
I'd ask how it's legal, but it's not (at least around here). A better question is why the law isn't enforced.
Well, the good news is that I agree with you. Looks like you misread my post and/or aren't familiar with typical USA pickup trucks.
It's not even good for groceries, for reasons anyone who has
actually bought groceries can readily fathom
Sorry, no.
Like many pickup trucks sold in America (not sure about elsewhere) the TRX has two rows of interior passenger seats and seats four people. The back seats fold away and create a large interior cargo space if desired.
Additionally, many folks with pickup trucks have tonneau covers on their cargo beds for everyday use when they're not transporting anything really big -- at that point the cargo bed is essentially a traditional car trunk/boot.
Such vehicles are popular with the significant portion of folks who "need a truck a few times a year, but want something that can be used as an everyday vehicle because they don't want to own two separate vehicles."
A Honda Civic is 20x more practical and carries 2.5x more
passengers and gets 5x better mileage.
Yeah, again, sorry. The TRX seats 4 people.
Do I wish people would drive Civics (or smaller) vehicles instead of these monster trucks? Yes.
Do I personally drive a much smaller, hybrid vehicle similar to the Civic? Yes.
Have I been working remotely for 4+ years, partly for environmental reasons, to avoid driving in the first place? Yes.
If you want to roll coal, fine, but just admit it. Let's not
pretend this vehicle is in ANY way "practical". It's just not.
I tried to be clear in my post.
I do not think anybody should be using such a monstrous vehicle for mundane everyday tasks like transporting groceries. Obivously it is overkill of the highest order and a bit of a menace.
But you certainly could use it for that. In that sense it is eminently practical.
That's what makes vehicles like this such a potential environmental nightmare. Unlike a lot of other vehicles in the "$100,000 / 1000HP" neighborhood, people might actually use this monster as an everyday driver rather than a "garage queen."
Ok, it's not practical if you define practical as carrying things it's not good at carrying and ignore the ability to load wood, tools, furniture, etc.
Where would you park it? I have not been to Finland, but here in Spain it would not fit in many parking spaces. Not to mention narrow roads where they can’t physically fit
The truck costs $150,000 to start. What is the use case of spending that much on a truck but not spending the extra $66k tax to unlock its full power? A car collector who wants to own it, but never use it, and wants to save a buck?
If you just like the look of the truck, you could buy a RAM 3500 and install the liftkit and bumper yourself for less than half the price.
This is clickbait. The article takes some technically possible bizarre situation and presents it as though this is something that happens regularly.
The kind of person who can afford this won’t enjoy the speeding ticket if they remove the speed limiter. Finland issues fines based on income. They’ll avoid the tax, but pay it in other ways.
>> Because Finland is a member of the European Union, it must adhere to a particular directive that requires speed limiting devices to be installed if the N2 vehicle is used on the road.
Does this mean that no vehicle in this weight class is permitted to go over 55 mph anywhere in the EU, regardless of tax and whether the vehicle is foreign or domestic?
In Germany, a bus can go up to 100 km/h (62 mph), cargo trucks including tractor units 90 km/h (56 mph) - this would include the "N2" vehicle class.
However, there seems to be a "M1" class for passenger vehicles that isn't weight restricted.
My understanding is that the truck cannot be classified as a commercial vehicle (too heavy) so they classify it as a N2 truck to save tax, but they could presumably also classify it as M1 (paying the tax but avoiding the need for the speed limiter). I read it as "commercial vehicle" being a third class that would normally be used as a way to bypass the tax if the vehicle wasn't too heavy for that.
Actually there is, but is complicated mess... Like recreation is fine as is transporting food you yourself produced. Or tools for work, unless the distance is over 50km...
I don't think so. The 44.8% tax is levied because of the CO2 emissions. The workaround involves classifying it as an N2, which requires the speed limiter. A vehicle with normal CO2 emissions would simply be registered as a passenger vehicle, not an N2, because it wouldn't require the workaround.
It's all about the proper paper work. You can take a stock RAM 3500 and it would be treated pretty much as a semi truck and you wouldn't be allowed to exceed 100kmh with it. (And you would need a special driver's license).
But then you can take the same truck and change the papers so you limit its max total weight to 3.5 tons and you can drive as fast as you want with your normal driver's license.
I’ve been reading a really interesting book on accidents [0]. One of the things mentioned off the bat was that when cars were first introduced to cities, there was a strong push for them to have speed governors because they killed so many people. The auto industry responded by aggressively pushing for jaywalking laws instead, which ended up winning out. I always wonder what American cities would look like were the auto industry less successful.
There's a similar thing in Germany with the Landrover Defender: Apparently there are plans of bringing it back, in collaboration between Landrover and Fendt, a company that produces and markets land machines. In order to get the Defender to comply with environmental standards, it will have to be classed as a land machine and therefore won't be allowed to go faster than 40 kph [1]. -- This is not even just a lonely wacko importer, but this is about marketing a mass-produced vehicle.
Modern taxes are idiotic, and built for loopholes. Just do a flat x% tax on every dollar of revenue. That's it. Forget income, loss, expenses, tariffs, etc etc. Make $1? Pay x cents. Done.
If you're advocating for a single tax, let it at least be LVT [1].
But seriously, the point of this Finnish tax is to internalize externalities of vehicles that contribute excessively to global warming. Even if there's some loopholes it's still shaping consumer behavior by making you jump through them... and if the jump is too easy, they can just continue making the loopholes smaller.
Thinking this tax is for meeting the government's budget is missing the point. It would serve its purpose just as well if you were required to burn the money instead of giving it to the government.
If you want to bring up luxury taxes and sin taxes, why aren't we categorizing non-primary housing as a luxury and/or a sin and taxing them accordingly?
We do, but raising the taxes on primary homes would disproportionately affect the middle and lower class, whereas targeting second homes / vacation homes / rental homes and multifamily homes that are used solely for rent generation would target the people who are profiting off of the homelessness epidemic.
Ideally the tax on non-primary homes would be so onerous that people would sell their extra homes to people who do not have homes and that would cause home ownership to increase, taking pressure off of the rental market and driving down prices.
Apartments are supposed to be affordable homes for young adults starting their lives out, not permanent living situations for anyone not financially established as solidly in the middle class or above.
You could easily add waivers for section 8 and military rentals to ensure that all sections of the population would be accounted for, and the tax wouldn't affect apartments and condos, just single homes and duplexes/triplexes/quadplexes that are either being held empty as value stores or used for rental income generators by their owners.
I would also say that once homelessness drops to lower than 1 in 10,000 (a little more than half of it's current number) you could waive 80% of the tax with the caveat that should homelessness increase above that number the full tax would come back immediately. That would provide a strong incentive for property management companies to keep rents low enough for poor people to afford them.
Sure, if you want literally everything to be vertically integrated. Either your tax is meaninglessly small, or everything that exists today in a supply chain (e.g. iron ore -> iron pellets -> steel billets -> steel wire -> nails) would have to get conglomerated into a single entity to compete against other companies doing the same.
The Value Added Tax (which is the way sales taxes are structured in most of Europe) only taxes the sale to the final (non-business) consumer. The length of the supply chain doesn't matter, the aggregate tax burden will only depend on the price of the final product.
Yes, but that's not what the original poster proposed! "Just do a flat x% tax on every dollar of revenue. That's it. Forget income, loss, expenses, tariffs, etc etc."
The way that VAT is implemented is that every intermediate pays VAT, but gets a credit for the VAT that they paid.
You don't understand the problem. If you have 4% tax and it takes 10 steps to manufacture the product, you will be paying 48% effective tax. If it takes 2 steps, you are paying 8% effective tax. That's why VAT is a thing, and one of the numerous reasons why a flat tax on everything is a bad idea.
Adam Smith himself, the 'Inventor of Capitalism', was the guy to point out that a flat tax would be inefficient and result probably in one guy owning all the stuff.
Also, the issue is just as much 'how the taxes are used' then anything else.
Also further fun bonus is that this requires special license as it is too heavy. The smaller truck license C1 qualifies, but still that means extra tests and training.
I came to learn about how a cognac company got into the semiconductor business, exactly what export laws impose an MPH limit on RAM, and why RAM is measured in Hit Points.
Remove it drive 130 or 140 on motorway. Have the cop run the plates and see oh N2... That is now instead of regular fine a bigger bunch of day fines, which probably with person with that much money to buy one of these means a few tens of thousand in fine. Or potential jail time and losing license.
Here in the US there are definitely people that uninstall-reinstall equipment to do emissions checks so I imagine that might not be the biggest risk, but in one of the comments on the article it also mentions that you could still be pulled over for speeding if someone sees you going over 55 and could likely lose your license.
> you could still be pulled over for speeding if someone sees you going over 55
That risk is mainly significant when there's a "general speed-check raid" going on, the periodical drives the police undertakes to remind motorists that speed limits exist and should be obeyed. If you're just going between 55 and the speed limit in this thing, it's not all that likely to attract the attention of any passing traffic plice officer so they even aim their radar at it, since it looks pretty much like any other (penis-envy variant of) pickup truck.
It's an import tax, so removing it after the fact may be a legal loophole.
Some US companies were doing that by e.g. adding pointless seats. One that ripped the seats back out after import got fined (many, many years later), another one was leaving the (barely usable) seats in for the owners to rip out and IIRC got away with it.
If it's just a matter of tuning the computer (most likely), all the owner needs to do before inspection is plug the tuner back into the ODB-II port and reset the computer to factory settings. Super easy.
Back in the day the R32 GT-R had a boost restrictor marked in bright yellow. Removing it gave an extra ~4PSI from the turbos good for about 60 extra HP.
This is usually done by setting the variable in the ECU for top speed. Tuning software (which was already used on this vehicle to mod it) like hptuners can change this in 1 minute. So it is easy.
I think you misunderstand how this works. When you get a custom vehicle you don’t really give a shit about regulations or reasons for them. As long as you can register it and renew your registration you will most likely do whatever you want to it. I am fairly familiar with custom motorcycles in the US. Most states and cities have regulations regarding noise levels. The EPA requires bikes to have catalytic converters to reduce emissions. But a bike in the hands of someone who cares about its performance will not stay stock of long. Usually the catalytic converter is removed (it restricts the exhaust system and you can get a few ponies by doing this), and the entire exhaust system is replaced with a shorter and wider one that will let the engine breathe better. That makes it a lot louder. You will also modify the fuel system to run less lean (lean means higher than stoichiometric air/fuel ratio). Lean fueling runs hotter since gasoline doesn’t cool off the cylinders and it doesn’t give you optimal power, but it burns cleaner. Instead you bring the ratio closer to 14:1 to get better power and a cooler running engine.
Most cops won’t pull you over for an exhaust that is too loud unless you keep blasting it in your neighborhood enough for neighbors to complain. And none of them will ever check your fueling system. Manufactures of these devices sell them as “non-public use only”, knowing full well you won’t race your 800 lb Harley. The saving grace is that most people don’t do this. Only a few people buy motorcycles (or high performance cars) and of those only a few modify them to this extent.
> When you get a custom vehicle you don’t really give a shit about regulations or reasons for them.
Well sometimes there is a small exception. If you live in California then you swap the stock parts back on to the car to pass the emissions test. (Note: Not because the tailpipe emissions are higher in any way, but because the state bans aftermarket parts).
Right. That in my mind falls under the “whatever it takes to keep it registered”. But I have never seen a determined builder go “oh yeah that won’t Pass inspection; I guess I won’t do it.” That just doesn’t happen.
You probably don't even need to pay for it. These vehicles are modified; not factory delivered. They probably anticipate/expect the owner to have to reflash the ECU, and include a hand held tuner for exactly this reason.
I'm not familiar with Hennessey products, but this is how Ford Performance handles their "factory" supercharger kits. The tuner isn't included with the kit, but owners expected to have one.
"From the factory, the TRX has a top speed of 118 mph before any Hennessey upgrades. And while the tuner doesn't actually reveal the Mammoth's top speed,..."
Do they make tires that size that are rated higher? And of course, do you want to take something like that (aero, celery of gravity, etc) faster than that?
At 272k plus taxes I don’t think we need to worry about this being a peoples car. I think that all manufacturers realize that ICE is on the way out. The new generation of electric cars on the horizon are very compelling and seem to be capable of even better performance than ICE vehicles. The Lucid Air and Rivian truck( along with Tesla and traditional car makers) are bringing prices down more quickly than I personally expected.
I think that FCA(now stellantis) hellcatting all the cars was/is a great way to send off the old technology. Making high profit vehicles like this is also helping stellantis bankroll the transition to electric cars.
I say all of that to say that big gas guzzler vehicles are an easy target for judgement but in the scheme of things they’re about 29% of CO2 emissions. Cars are getting more fuel efficient and the average car is not a supercharged v8.
Also what’s wrong with the fetishization of cars? There is a lot to geek out to in vehicle engineering. Not all cars are a giant eff you to the planet. Just like not every computer is a 500gpu crypto miner.
"Making high profit vehicles like this is also helping stellantis bankroll the transition to electric cars."
And keeps regular people from affording an EV truck. Although, I also hate how much stupid tech they put in them.
"Cars are getting more fuel efficient and the average car is not a supercharged v8."
I was surprised that I recently got 20.5 mpg hauling 1200 lbs of lumber. That was almost double what I expected to get.
"There is a lot to geek out to in vehicle engineering."
I absolutely agree. Prior to computer (and phreaks, and ham, etc) hot rodders where hackers. There's still a lot of interesting tech and concepts to explore.
> > "Making high profit vehicles like this is also helping stellantis bankroll the transition to electric cars."
> And keeps regular people from affording an EV truck.
How, exactly?
AFAICS, if Stellantis didn't have the profits from stuff like this, they'd have to charge even more for other stuff... Like electric vehicles. Or go out of business -- and then they wouldn't sell any electric vehicles at all. Which would lower the overall supply-side of the EV market, lowering competitive pressure on other manufacturers so they all have less of a need to compete on price. Now that would keep people from being able to afford an electric truck!
>And keeps regular people from affording an EV truck. Although, I also hate how much stupid tech they put in them.
They don't have the money to transition so they could either sell these high margin vehicles to fund the transition to EVs or sell off the business and dump all the non useful assets like the engine/transmission factories. Either way, you aren't getting your cheap truck until there is sufficient volume and the second approach will make it harder to get to that volume.
> And keeps regular people from affording an EV truck.
It's unlikely that many normal people will be able charge an EV, even if they can afford one. About 1/3 of houses lack a garage, and I highly doubt that apartments will offer chargers in their lots. Electrical generation may be an issue if large numbers of EVs are being charged every night. Lower repairability and the large costs associated with battery packs mean the used market won't be large. It's going to be very hard to live outside the city.
I don't think being charged at night is an issue when electricity use typically drops at night. Some searching shows that peak usage in the summers is about 2x the usage at 3-4 am: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 . You can also see this reflected in Time Of Use (TOU) plans power companies are switching to that de-incentivize electricity use during peak hours. For me this ends at 9pm, and my car (and my charger) already support delaying charging times to when prices are lower.
For a small number of cars, that's true. I wonder what that will look like as more of the grid switches to renewable, including solar, and adoption of EVs exceeds 50% of vehicles on the road.
Sure I just wish for ONCE the goal of the hacking zeitgeist on here would be “how do we get around limits to do something good for society” rather than “how do we use our cleverness to exempt ourselves from the rules that enable society?”
Maybe we also accept that some limits can't be surpassed, at least not at an acceptable cost. In my opinion, the world cannot sustainably support so many people. So artificial limits we like to defeat, natural limits are much tougher.
The carrying capacity of earth is likely hundreds of billions of humans, if we were to set our mind to it.
Just to concentrate on food alone: we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans. Even on land, using greenhouses everywhere would give us vastly more agricultural yield.
We are not using greenhouses everywhere right now, because that's a huge capital investment; and given current food prices, it's generally not worth it. But if push came to shove, we could totally do it. (Just like we _could_ totally get rid of fossil fuels, if we really had to and run everything on wind and solar. It's just not economically viable to do that right now.)
There's lots more techniques you can do to produce more calories. For example fusion power could help a lot to power lots of artificial lighting in vertical farms, and to purify sea water. (And even without fusion power, we could generate lots and lots of power from fission with current technology. It's just unpopular.)
> Maybe we also accept that some limits can't be surpassed, at least not at an acceptable cost.
I guess you would say that the suggestions I made above fall under the second clause of unacceptable costs?
Do you mean economic costs or some kind of ethical or moral or metaphysical costs?
I can see how some people might be queasy about putting fission reactors everywhere. But I don't really see anything against Dutch-style greenhouses apart from economic costs?
"The carrying capacity of earth is likely hundreds of billions of humans, if we were to set our mind to it."
I've never seen anything that states that. Link? UN and others estimate 8-12 billion. And none of those estimates are accounting for sustainable population. You say 100s of billions, but with what quality of life? With scare resources comes conflict.
"we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans."
Most major fish stocks are down more than 90%. Farm raised means feed and and antibiotics. Sure we can increase stuff like seaweed consumption, but that's not very significant.
"Even on land, using greenhouses everywhere would give us vastly more agricultural yield."
What are those greenhouses going to be made out of? Petroleum based plastics, glass (CO2 for melting), or cellulose/corn plastic (that requires chemicals that aren't environmentally friendly)? Where are we getting the nutrients? We already use a massive amount of petroleum based nitrogen.
"But if push came to shove, we could totally do it."
No, if push came to shove then people would start literally shoving in the form of a war.
"(Just like we _could_ totally get rid of fossil fuels, if we really had to and run everything on wind and solar. It's just not economically viable to do that right now.)"
That's another unsubstantiated claim. Even the EU says they cannot convert fast enough to get off of Russian gas. Let's see a link that says wind and solar are completely feasible to meet current power demands, including the energy storage required.
"I can see how some people might be queasy about putting fission reactors everywhere."
So are you changing from just the wind and solar mentioned earlier to include nuclear?
> Most major fish stocks are down more than 90%. Farm raised means feed and and antibiotics. Sure we can increase stuff like seaweed consumption, but that's not very significant.
I agree that hunter-gatherer tactics are beyond their limits.
> What are those greenhouses going to be made out of? Petroleum based plastics, glass (CO2 for melting), or cellulose/corn plastic (that requires chemicals that aren't environmentally friendly)? Where are we getting the nutrients? We already use a massive amount of petroleum based nitrogen.
I had mostly glass in mind. But whatever works, works. You can make your glass with any energy source, doesn't have to be CO2 producing.
You can take nitrogen out of the air. Also, the atoms that fertilizers are made of don't get destroyed.. so you can recycle them indefinitely (with some effort). We are also sitting on a huge ball of matter.
You can also use substantially less fertilizers and insecticides in a controlled greenhouse environment, perhaps with drip feeding.
I hope we both agree that those approaches take energy to pull off? So the question is whether humanity can get enough sustainable energy.
> Even the EU says they cannot convert fast enough to get off of Russian gas.
We seems to be talking about different time scales here? Getting off Russian gas is something they'd want to do in the next few months or years at most. I'm talking about decades at the least.
(And, the EU could totally get off Russian gas next month. It would 'just' make energy a lot more expensive at least in the short run, and likely put the EU into a severe recession for a while. That's a more painful than the shame of buying from Russia, so they keep buying from Russia.)
> No, if push came to shove then people would start literally shoving in the form of a war.
I don't think so. But for the sake of argument: a few wars here or there don't have much of an influence on carrying capacity. Unless, of course, the wars are bad enough to kill off a substantial fraction of humanity directly or even just destroy the economy badly enough to kill off indirectly.
(That's something we can argue about, if you want to. But we don't need to argue about a few minor wars.)
> So are you changing from just the wind and solar mentioned earlier to include nuclear?
Sorry for mixing examples. I used fission reactors as an example of non-monetary costs that someone might object to.
I suspect we _could_ run everything on wind and solar (especially if you also add solar in orbit via power satellites), if we really had to. But adding nuclear fission (or fusion) to the mix would allow us a higher standard of living.
> I've never seen anything that states that. Link? UN and others estimate 8-12 billion. And none of those estimates are accounting for sustainable population. You say 100s of billions, but with what quality of life? With scare resources comes conflict.
It's more than reasonable to ask for more background information. Sorry, it's a bit hard to Google for this stuff quickly.
So here are just two links that touch on the topics mentioned:
Also just to clarify: I am arguing that physically and technically we could support vastly more people on earth. I share your fear that people might blow each other up anyway.
There’s no way in the world voters will ever allow you to produce that much housing. There’s already a vast over population on this planet relative to number of shelters
I'm not sure about the latter. But I agree that political considerations are important, and I deliberately ignored them and only talked about technical feasibility.
>Just to concentrate on food alone: we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans.
Just to cite one of of your statements, the oceans have been decimated with countless species extinct and many more on their way there due to overfishing and habitat destruction. The oceans are also filled with industrial chemicals, plastics and have numerous massive "dead zones" due to nitrogen run off from the huge factory farms we run to sustain our massively overpopulated planet.
The suggestion that the earth isn't overpopulated, let alone the idea that the earth could support "hundreds of billions of people" is beyond absurd. We are losing biodiversity among animals, insects, fish and every other form of non human life due directly to massive overpopulation. Saying this ignores the decimation of our ecosystem and the food web that has left our planet teetering on the brink.
You are right that we are past what hunter-gatherer approaches can yield from the ocean. And that we are doing a bad job at protecting the habitat of wild-life.
However, there's vast patches out in the open ocean where almost nothing grows. Mostly because the areas with sunlight (at the top) are not where the minerals are that plants need to grow (mostly the sea floor). See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization for an overview.
If you mind putting fertilizer directly into the open ocean, someone more clever than me can probably work out a scheme for enclosing some water in a giant floating bag, and growing your stuff in there. (Or something much better than this.)
"From April to June 1982, speed was monitored on New
York's Interstate highways, and an 83% noncompliance rate
was found despite extreme penalties"
There was a legendary coast-to-coast race in the 70s, defying the national 55 mph limit:
"Dan Gurney, winner of the 1967 24 hours of Le Mans...won
the second Cannonball in a Sunoco blue Ferrari 365 GTB/4
Daytona. Gurney said, "At no time did we exceed 175 mph"
"In May 2020, Arne Toman, Doug Tabbutt, and spotter
Dunadel Daryoush set the new cannonball record of 25
hours and 39 minutes during the COVID-19 pandemic in a
modified 2016 Audi S6 disguised to look like a Ford
Taurus police interceptor. Police-evasion modifications
included brake light kill-switches, radar detectors,
laser diffusers, CB-radio, and a roof-mounted thermal
camera. Performance modifications included a trunk-
mounted 67-gallon auxiliary fuel cell..."
"JJ McClure, a famous racing driver and team owner
(Reynolds), and Victor Prinzi, his chief mechanic and
sometime co-driver (DeLuise), drive a Dodge Tradesman
ambulance fitted with a NASCAR engine (Hal Needham and
Brock Yates used the same vehicle in the actual 1979
race)."
"...it took two and a half hours to drive there from
Albany. And I was driving from Albany, New York at 2:00
in the morning, burnt from all the travel. Cop stopped me
for doing 62 on a four lane road when there was no one
else in sight. Then the guy gave me a ticket. I was doing
62. And he said, 'We give tickets around here for over-
60.' and I said, 'I can't drive 55.' I grabbed a paper
and a pen..."
Really, (and I just learned this) it says it all that there was a punk album titled as a reaction to "I can't drive 55" called "Double Nickels on the Dime". In Soviet America, the rebels drive 55!
I don't think the commenter you replied to was particularly set on the specific example of a 55 mph speed limit?
In any case, from what you quote here, it seems Americans driving fast occasionally is worthy the stuff of legend? In Germany those speeds would be just another Tuesday.
About half of German Autobahnen famously don't have a speed limit. The recommended speed is 130 km/h (~80 mph).
Of course, petrol costs a lot more in Germany than in the US. In practice, that tends to limit driving much more.
> Of course, petrol costs a lot more in Germany than in the US. In practice, that tends to limit driving much more
Not really. People that drive a lot or like to save money just buy more fuel efficient cars - whenever I read about fuel efficiency of US cars (and bother to convert gallons and miles to units I understand) I am shocked how super inefficient many vehicles on the US market are, especially given that speed limit - likely due to much lower petrol cost.
What you describe is true; but petrol costs still limit driving. If driving was cheaper in Germany, more driving would happen. Especially more faster driving.
>I don't think the commenter you replied to was particularly set on the specific example of a 55 mph speed limit?
I was making a more general point too, and I'm sorry if you took my comment too literally.
In Germany it would be another Tuesday, because it would be legal. Driving fast according to the law doesn't represent the same thing, which is connected to that cultural difference I was observing.
Yes, you still have to drive safely. That's a lot more nebulous than just looking at velocity numbers.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that if you drive fast enough in Germany, and anything happens, the burden of proof shifts: the (extreme) speeder is presumed guilty of causing the accident until proven innocent.
Fun fact, the incident you linked to happened where I grew up.
Unsafe driving by itself is against the law in Germany. Even if no one was hurt.
You can argue that the law is bad and just be repealed, of course.
(Or like the guy in the article, you can have your lawyer try and argue in court that the law doesn't apply in this case. As a competent lawyer should in a fair trial.)
Not sure any politician was involved in the first place? Though of course politicians might utter opinions on the whole thing. As they should, so that voters can decide who to vote for, if they are in favour or against this law.
You will be happy to learn Cannonball Run movie script (also Smokey and the Bandit 2) was written by Brock Yates, original organizer of Cannonball Run :)
For more about the whole philosophy of the movement I recommend:
The change has been notable in recent years. This has always been a very libertarian forum but it's been drifting to the left at an alarming speed. Very dark times for entrepreneurship and society advances indeed.
I don't know how you are using ITT here nor is "criticism of vehicular personal transportation" all that common on this site. It does generate a decent amount of discussion but it isn't the prevailing attitude in my experience.
I also don't understand how that is "left" either.
The percentage of people that will do anything to their car that will negatively impact the emissions is so small that it's not even worth worrying about. The vast majority of people take their vehicle to an oil change chain so they can have the drain plug hole on their pan stripped out instead of just taking 30 minutes to do it themselves. I really don't think you need to worry about them pulling off emissions controls while they dyno tune their Camry.
"Fetishisation" is a word that is inching closer to being an instant giveaway for a ham-fisted or outright stupid take. Your average person driving a car in the US isn't "fetishizing" anything. They live in a big-ass country where a lot of things they care about are far away. Having a car allows them to get to their job, see their family, and so on. It's not some insidious plot to keep you from walking around your city.
> Your average person driving a car in the US isn't "fetishizing" anything. They live in a big-ass country where a lot of things they care about are far away. Having a car allows them to get to their job, see their family, and so on.
Americans are mocked worldwide for their ridiculous cars. Oversized, gas guzzling, ostentatious, and yes - fetishized cars are associated with Americans worldwide.
> It's not some insidious plot to keep you from walking around your city.
OP didn't say it is. However car manufacturers did in fact plot - conspired, even - to attack trams, public transport, trains, and anything else that could threaten their dominance. That's just well known fact, and I don't know why you're defending any of this.
Have you ever actually traveled outside America and seen how much nicer it is to be able to walk around a city that isn't designed completely around cars? It's a far, far superior daily experience.
So you can check my post history and I’m super pro-walkable city neighborhood, etc. My wife and I only own one car that we share and that’s even in the suburbs.
But remind me. Where are BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Jaguar, Rolls Royce, and others HQ’d?
While Americans have larger vehicles we also have more space and unfortunately a society designed around cars. I don’t get how we are “fetishizing” cars when almost all of the actual fetish vehicles are designed in other countries. Everyday people buying a giant SUV are almost certainly not fetishizing it. They just have 3 kids and it’s easy and they sit up high on the road.
I agree completely with the rest of your post, though. I’m experiencing some schadenfreude (not in a serious manner) with those multi-car households and giant gas-guzzling vehicles having to experience a bit of the costs for the world they advocate for when they typically do not. Problem is they vote, even against their (and my) long-term interests.
This is not to be read as a defense of car companies, or an attack on Americans:
Those cars are designed in other countries to be larger specifically for America taste.
Americans visit Europe and chuckle at the "tiny" cars, which are in fact perfectly appropriate for three children. And those cars were designed by the same companies for European standards.
To me, that reads as fetishization on a mass cultural level, and while you can point the finger anywhere you like that fact will remain at the core.
There is no justification, on a planet burning faster every year, for the ridiculously oversized cars Americans choose. None.
When you call it a fesithization that is definitely interpreted by me as an attack/insult and I don't think it adds any value, and probably strengthens convictions of people who drive large SUVs. Are Germans fetishzing Russian natural gas? No. It's incentives and economics, and poor government choices based on poor assumptions about the state of the world (same with America, gas, and the suburbs).
You're mixing up a preference based on no immediate negative repercussions with Pimp My Ride. Believe it or not, Americans are just regular people. Immigrants to the U.S. don't walk from point to point, they buy large SUVs too.
If Americans are burning the planet (and we are, to be clear, with bone-headed city and urban planning decisions) than auto manufacturers from other countries absolutely share the blame, including their employees (to the same extent you'd blame an American for buying a large SUV) for selling the fuel and matches and advertising how cool the fuel and matches are, especially when used together.
> However car manufacturers did in fact plot - conspired, even - to attack trams, public transport, trains, and anything else that could threaten their dominance. That's just well known fact, and I don't know why you're defending any of this.
Engaging with potential/probable sealions is just about my least favorite part of commenting.
You may be genuine, in which case I recommend using literally any search engine on the device of your choice to find sources which you like. Wikipedia, YouTube, or deeper - there is no shortage of sources - all you have to do is look.
>Americans are mocked worldwide for their ridiculous cars. Oversized, gas guzzling, ostentatious, and yes - fetishized cars are associated with Americans worldwide.
Americans mock other nations for all sorts of shit that isn't true, like French people not showering or Germans sounding/being angry all the time. Should we take those thoughts seriously because a lot of people think them?
Americans do buy a lot of pickups. Many of these get decent gas mileage. A lot of people use these for work. Crossovers are the biggest new sellers (over 50% of new sales, if my memory serves me correctly), which get marginally worse mileage than the cars they're directly descended from. The size of all of these vehicles is prodded along by "safety" regulations and ratings, where a higher hood height is correlated with the driver/passengers being safer in accidents (this has its own problems but it's a different discussion).
I think you have an exaggerated view of what US auto consumer preferences look like. This is really easy because the whole "the US is a shithole with no redeeming qualities" narrative is popular among some crowds, but it doesn't reflect the reality of what's happening.
>However car manufacturers did in fact plot - conspired, even - to attack trams, public transport, trains, and anything else that could threaten their dominance. That's just well known fact, and I don't know why you're defending any of this.
Those plots and attacks range from completely unverifiable conspiracy theories, to unintended consequences, to actions that one might reasonably argue were an attempt to interfere with public transit. It is nowhere near as cut and dry as you're making it out to be, and trying to claim that some unproven conspiracy by Big Car is the primary reason the US is so dependent on cars today is myopic. You've suggested that others in this thread "just Google it", but some of the first results you're going to see when researching this subject touch pretty heavily on what I've said above -- the person asking you for some sources probably wasn't a "sealion" (whatever that is), they probably already did what you told them to, and some of the highest ranking info directly contradicted your argument.
>Have you ever actually traveled outside America and seen how much nicer it is to be able to walk around a city that isn't designed completely around cars? It's a far, far superior daily experience.
Nobody is denying that it's nicer to be able to walk around a city without having to deal with cars and traffic. The discussion is whether or not it is even feasible to have that anywhere in the US to the extent that other places do.
> Americans mock other nations for all sorts of shit that isn't true, [etc.]
That's not an argument that applies here, because Americans actually do buy stupidly big cars.
> I think you have an exaggerated view of what US auto consumer preferences look like. This is really easy because [overly defensive strawman]
No, I don't. Here's some numbers, which you could have looked for yourself, with the search engine of your choice:
" According to data from IHS Automotive, larger vehicles accounted for 63 percent of total US sales in 2013. Meanwhile, large vehicles only accounted for 25.4 percent of all vehicles sold outside the US during the same year."
> Those plots and attacks range from completely unverifiable conspiracy theories, to unintended consequences, to actions that one might reasonably argue were an attempt to interfere with public transit.
The cars are bigger. The cities are less livable. The conspiracies are verifiable, there are entire books, documentaries, and Wikipedia pages about the various fuckeries involved.
You seem to be rather defensive about this though, so feel free to think whatever you like.
> The discussion is whether or not it is even feasible to have that anywhere in the US
That may be what you wish to discuss - fine. You can have that discussion somewhere else, with someone else. It is feasible though - and necessary. Again, the fucking planet is burning.
>That's not an argument that applies here, because Americans actually do buy stupidly big cars.
>" According to data from IHS Automotive, larger vehicles accounted for 63 percent of total US sales in 2013. Meanwhile, large vehicles only accounted for 25.4 percent of all vehicles sold outside the US during the same year."
"Larger" is doing some really heavy lifting, and that data is not capturing the large market share gains crossovers have made in the last decade.
45% of all vehicles sold in the US in mid 2020 to mid 2021 were crossovers, which are almost without exception based on a "small car" platform and have similar fuel efficiency numbers. You're finding data that has some arbitrary definition of "large" -- from what I can tell, IHS would count an Impreza as "small" and a Forester as "large", and that is completely worthless for backing up a claim that Americans overwhelmingly drive gas-guzzling vehicles. The shift in focus to crossovers in the strategy of large auto manufacturers active in the US is glaringly obvious and you not realizing this is either a matter of you not paying attention or just willfully ignoring it.
>You seem to be rather defensive about this though, so feel free to think whatever you like.
I'm not even disagreeing with you that it happened in some circumstances, I'm just saying that you're massively overselling the importance of it. It's hard to even engage with this; you just keep saying that there's verifiable instances of it that are as impactful as you're claiming, but then refuse to provide specific examples that might make me reconsider my position. If it's so easy to find info about, just link it and we can be on the same page.
>That may be what you wish to discuss - fine. You can have that discussion somewhere else, with someone else. It is feasible though - and necessary. Again, the fucking planet is burning.
If you're just going to straight-up make very, very debatable assertions (like reducing American car dependence in favor of public transit being feasible) with nothing to back it up, there's no discussion to be had here. We get that America is car dependent, that we should reduce carbon emissions, that the climate apocalypse is imminent, etc. so if we're just going to go over that ad nauseam we're just wasting our time.
Your argument about car slogans could be applied to the advertisement of nearly anything. Computer ads aren't about how reliable and well built the parts are, it's about how it will "unlock creative potential" or make you a "pro gamer". That's just modern advertising and I don't think it's a reflection on people's day to day feelings about their objects. It gets a sale.
Cars are a fashion item though and that does allow car companies to push products that are not always ideal for how they are going to be used. I am not saying we should ban things neccesarily but some basic consumer protection is a good idea. And that should include sane emission levels in the same was as seatbelts.
Maybe that choice of word is ham-fisted, but there’s no doubt that personal automobiles enjoy a cultural and economic supremacy that should be challenged.
I'm still waiting for a coherent challenge that isn't 1) we need to completely change the economy and how geography works because climate change; or, 2) I don't like the people who really like cars.
People forget EVs were long seen as a useless literally-who-asked type of thing, until they weren't. All we need to do is have a train or bus beat an ICE supercar in a race.
them living far away from their jobs or preferred places to go were not values free choices made in a vacuum, and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise to make some kind of point about how the status quo is a law of the universe.
$272,000 cars are not really serious road going vehicles. Emissions per mile travelled may be atrocious, but adjusted for how far it will actually travel in its lifetime, it's probably no worse than a Nissan Leaf.
Spending that much money on a truck probably generates no more emissions than a basic Ford F-150. Would an iPhone Pro Max produce much more emissions than a iPhone SE?
But from an environmental, not spending the money in the first place (not upgrading a car or phone) in both cases would be a net win for the environment.
If you just take the money and bury it in your backyard forever, the central bank will just replace it after a while. (Assuming a typical inflation targeting central bank. And also in aggregate, because the central bank doesn't know exactly how much money is getting buried; but they do monitor total spending in the economy.)
If you leave the money in the bank, the bank invests it.
If you want to make a positive difference, you can use the money to contribute to eg carbon reduction efforts.
The rest of what you are saying is right: there's better and worse ways to spend that money. (In the worst case, you could buy a few tons of coal and just set them on fire.) I'm just saying that earning money and not spending it at all, doesn't automatically mean zero net emissions.
But since we are at it: loans create deposits only in some narrow technical sense, but not in practice.
You are right than in the logical second when a bank makes a loan, they just create a pair of accounting entries out of thin air. One entry in your checking account, and one entry to record the loan.
I hope you agree that most people don't take out loan to let the money just sit in their account: they spent it.
For simplicity, let's assume the common case that the people the debtor spends their money at, don't have an account with our bank.
Our bank loses reserves, when people spend deposits. It doesn't matter whether they spend via withdrawing as cash first or whether they make a bank transfer.
A bank can not operate with negative reserves.
They get more reserves by either accepting deposits or by borrowing them.
Does this make sense to you? If not, where am I going wrong? and why do you think banks accept deposits in the first place or issue bonds in their name etc?
(For simplicity, let's assume no (positive) legal minimum reserve requirements. But also let's assume that banks need a positive level of reserves to operate; eg to pay out withdrawals and net-settle interbank transfers.
If you want to challenge those assumptions, we can do that, too. But please say so explicitly. Thanks!)
In the UK there are no legal reserve requirements on lending. Similarly in the US for business lending.
Basel III makes no mention of reserves, but it does talk about liquidity. Liquidity can be and is met through interbank lending, with the center bank filling in as necessary.
People with this much money don’t drive the same cars everyday. They have like 10 of these and don’t even drive them that often - instead going with their Mercedes or whatever instead because it’s more practical.
Even if you are not that rich, it's not impractical to have 2 cars if you have the space to park them and the need. A smaller everyday vehicle that is easy to park in the city and the family mover for weekend activities.
95E10 is well over 2 €/L (like 7.57 $/gallon?) everywhere now. If it keeps the same 125-litre tank as the normal TRX, it'll cost you >250 € to fill it completely up.
On that note we should ban everything recreational, inefficient, and made for comfort, except the things I like.
People would benefit from living in smaller houses when it comes to heating too. Should we legally mandate small rooms with claustrophobia-inducing celling heights?
People like different things. Some people like their pickups. Maybe they find their size more convenient and comfortable. We don't know that. We do know that people made that choice out of their free will.
It totally depends on the individual. I use my giant pick up truck every single day. I’ll also be the first to get a viable electric when there’s one available. I get groceries in a Nissan Leaf.
Cars and trucks aren’t the issue we should be arguing about. Nothing is being done about shipping, cruise lines, and big industry. It’s a classic tactic for corporations to focus the government on individuals instead of themselves. Here you are falling for it hook, line, and sinker.
> Nothing is being done about shipping, cruise lines, and big industry.
Not sure what you mean, there's plenty of regulation on those. Eg most of the world has just recently gotten much stricter about what fuels you can burn in ocean going vessels. Though maybe not as much regulation as you want? Or the wrong kind?
In any case, I mostly agree with you. And regulation shouldn't focus on micro-managing individual people or even individual industries: just tax emissions, and let people sort it out according to their own preferences.
Fair enough maybe not nothing, but very little. As someone who lives a rural lifestyle and uses my truck (along with literally everyone else I know), it's a bit infuriating that we get picked on for ruining the planet. Switching from a truck to a car isn't really going to do much to address global warming. I also wonder how many folks on this site realize just how good of gas mileage "giant" trucks actually get these days.
That's why I'm in favour of something simple like a carbon tax to sort this out.
No need for any politicized discussions about lifestyles that way.
(If other countries don't follow suit with the carbon tax, just do adjustments at the border like what countries do for VAT. That'll automatically also do the right thing for the other countries that do also have a carbon tax.)
I concede that personal vehicles aren't the bigger problem, and I agree that something should be done about shipping, cruise lines, cement, glass, coal power, etc., before we worry about the small fries. The situation is kind of ridiculous, as by now everyone knows what the problem is, and yet there is no control over our own interests to survive, and our elected government intervenes to allow a bunch of people that need jobs to work and a few to get rich off of something that is literally killing nearly everything slowly but no longer slowly enough.
> We should be looking to reduce polluting vehicles like these and also the fetishisation of cars in general.
Eh, the former is pretty easy: just tax pollution and let people decide how much polluting they want to afford. But that's too boring to have long discussions about.
About the latter: it's not my business what people do in their bedroom.
This is problematic, because someone poor then can't drive at all, and someone rich just pays a bit more, to ride his private jet.
It's easy to say "just buy electric"... but that's 40k+ eur right now, and if you live in an apartment building, you have nowehere to charge it, unless you wait at a public charging station for hours every few days.
We have A LOT of people warning against climate change, eg obama:
I agree! Add the cost of CO2 into the price of gas. But don't ban inefficient speciality cars. I happen to be someone who really enjoys driving performance cars that happen to get really poor fuel economy. I have no problem paying the cost of the CO2 I generate. But I find it very irritating when people say we need to ban these cars outright.
Is there a cost? I would say it is priceless - because we do not have any mechanism to funnel that money into undoing the CO2. And no, planting trees are not the opposite of taking oil from deep underground. Once that oil is out it remains in the above-surface carbon cycle. While it is underground it would never even be part of it. So any price would be made up - and just funneled to some interest group. The "compensation" does not actually compensate anything. This is the danger of only thinking in "money". I paid, problem magically solved!
I like performance cars. They're neat. I don't agree that poorer people should shoulder a greater burden for societal adaptation to threats. If you have a high polluting performance vehicle, maybe it can be restricted in a normalizing fashion when used for transportation or recreation within some arbitrary boundary, like speed limits to some extent (though I'm aware of the caveats), but then if you can throw money at it anyway, you should at least for some time be able to take it to a track where they can set their own rules. I don't think physical performance limiters should be placed on vehicles at all, especially ones that are grandfathered in, but some people shouldn't have the ability to just disregard things in daily in daily life that the place has democratically decided upon only because the money is available. Or maybe it could be a condition of licensing within a certain area. Great you get the car, but can only drive it where you don't need valid insurance. If you want to drive it anyway, you need to have a limiter, or the car is impounded
> I don't agree that poorer people should shoulder a greater burden for societal adaptation to threats.
I don't get that? If do adopt a carbon tax, then the rich guy who wants to drive a performance car pays a lot more, than the poor person who take the bus.
> If you have a high polluting performance vehicle, maybe it can be restricted in a normalizing fashion when used for transportation or recreation within some arbitrary boundary, like speed limits to some extent [...]
That sounds awfully intrusive and full of loopholes, that only people who can afford expensive lobbyists and lawyers can exploit.
> [...] but some people shouldn't have the ability to just disregard things in daily in daily life that the place has democratically decided upon only because the money is available.
How would paying your democratically-decided-on carbon tax be the same as disregarding anything?
I didn't say anything about a carbon tax. I was talking more about agreed upon restrictions that can't simply have money thrown at them to just keep doing what they're doing. This carries over to a number of different policy decisions that have naive approached to truly reducing them. Like the real estate market, noise pollution, other pollution. Put another way, would you be chill about the local high-polluting company continuing to dump sewage into water ways if they're paying some fee? Probably not. People driving performance cars around can already afford the extra expense of having them, either for status or fun or whatever, I don't necessarily want to make it even more exclusive. A different example would be those disgusting coal-rollers that fuckheads drive. Do I want them to be able to drive in the city because they can afford to sink the cost and do it anyway? No.
>I don't get that? If do adopt a carbon tax, then the rich guy who wants to drive a performance car pays a lot more, than the poor person who take the bus.
But the poor guy with a beat 20 year old car in a badly insulated rental pays more than the rich guy with his Tesla and energy neutral villa.
Please don't argue in favour of electric car subsidies (or any other subsidies).
That's just needless paperwork, and never catches all use cases. Eg the guy who walks doesn't get an electric car subsidy. Or the guy who practices hypermiling on his ICE, vs the guy who drives his ICE like a maniac. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermiling
Much easier to just apply an emission tax (or a cap-and-trade program) and let people figure it out by themselves without extra paperwork and government favouritism.
If you want to do redistribution to help the poor, the impact of the overall tax system is important. You don't need to make every single tax progressive.
Individual taxes, especially sin taxes, should be designed to do their job as efficiently as possible.
There are a lot of valid arguments against ethanol, but performance is not one of them. If performance is the primary virtue, all performance vehicles should be burning 100% ethanol, and if in a place where sugarcane can be turned into ethanol, being carbon neutral. In other places, pay a corn-carbon tax.
This is accomplished via gas taxes. If you drive this car only 100 miles a year, you're still emitting a lot less CO2 than driving a Prius 10,000 miles a year.
Per the CDC, A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.
The weighted average price per ton for carbon credits from forestry and land-use projects that reduce emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere has been on a steady upward path, rising from $4.33 per credit in 2019 to $4.73 per credit so far in 2021, with a spike to $5.60 per credit in 2020.
So, spend $35/year or if you want to get fancy, the cost of 1 tank of gas per year to offset your carbon footprint from driving and enjoy a guilt-free year.
Or we could fold that cost into gas, if you use 1 tank a week, 10/gallons a tank, that would be less than $0.02 as a carbon tax credit.
I would be all for that.
But, if you raised the price of gas $0.50 and funneled all of that money into funding carbon capture industries, I would also be all for that, and at that price point more people would search for public transportation or purchase EV's so that is a double win.
But then again, these taxes would disproportionately affect the middle and lower classes in suburban and rural communities so that would make life far more difficult on people who already have it tough enough and manufacturers would probably shovel any taxes you put on them directly to the consumers as well, so I would say it's almost as if there isn't a single simple fix to the issue and only a multipronged approach that takes into account dozens of moving variables rolled out over time is the only viable solution.
That closes the loop, for sure. But doesn't a carbon tax address your exact complaint, in that externalities should be internalised? It takes the externality (CO2 is bad because global warming) and makes it a cost for the person performing the activity (CO2 is bad because gas is expensive, and useage is therefore to be limited).
The cost of the pollution is it's effect on the environment and everyone living in it. Just collecting taxes does not address that. The tax would have to actually undue the pollution to eliminate the externality.
What, exactly, is the car that's being driven for 100 miles doing? Is it something the 10k mile car couldn't do even better? Is it something that even legitimately needs to be done?
I agree this is a thing that can be done, but I disagree it's a job that it's doing - because stating its a job usually means there is some ultimate purpose to it.
I'm responding more to the point that gas taxes are some kind of effective solution and that category-based comparison is even relevant. Climate change demands we think outside categories and see what kinds of 'jobs to be done' we have to meet our needs and thrive, and then look at all available options to lower carbon footprint around those[1]. And look at some of these 'jobs' as less valuable than others, e.g. conspicuous consumption vs commuting to work to feed your family.
Also a more specific issue here is car manufacturing itself is like 25% of the carbon footprint of a vehicle, so regardless of use it's still doing damage.
[1] e.g. a solution may be that we take public transport, or micromobility, or relocate so we don't need to drive as far, or videoconference, or any number of other things that examine the full range of options we have to reach the goal.
> Climate change demands we think outside categories and see what kinds of 'jobs to be done' we have to meet our needs and thrive
No it doesn’t. That is what authoritarians do under the guise of climate change when they just want control.
Climate change demands we reduce CO2 in aggregate. It is better to tax all gas equally to force a reduction in its use and keep increasing the tax until its emissions are negligible. No exceptions, full stop.
Having bureaucrats look at 'jobs to be done' sounds awfully intrusive and inefficient, and needlessly morally arbitrary.
Just do a gas tax (or carbon tax) and be done with it. If you are worried about some specific use cases, just give those deserving people money so they can pay their taxes with that.
Come on. Gas taxes are hilariously regressive. The people—ALL the people—who can afford this kind of dumbass vehicle and who are willing to commit the offense of buying and operating it will never, ever be affected or restricted or motivated by any piddly gas taxes.
So, no. No. Of course it's not actually accomplished by gasoline taxes. That's a fantasy.
If you made gas taxes 1-2 orders of magnitude more progressive than they are right now, that would be a tiny start.
> The people—ALL the people—who can afford this kind of dumbass vehicle
The people who can afford 272k for a car are a vanishingly small percentage of the world population. In this category of people wasting money, this is one of the least impactful activities. For comparison, they might also consider chartering a jet to the Alps for skiing, renting a yacht for a week in the Mediterranean, going on African safari, etc.
> So, no. No. Of course it's not actually accomplished by gasoline taxes
You do know there is a point where gas taxes can be raised high enough that it just pays for full carbon offset/capture, right? At that point you’re just having a fit that rich people exist, which has nothing to do with solving climate change.
As with most ad valorem (or fixed per unit) consumption taxes, because consumption as a share of income declines with increasing income, so total and marginal tax share drops with greater income.
> Yes, like every sales tax, VAT, etc used everywhere around the world except for super liberal places like Montana.
Yes, sales taxes and VATs are regressive, though in many cases that is made somewhat more nuanced by selective exclusion of basic necessities on which the poor focus a disproportionate share of consumption; when that's done, they are progressive at the low end shifting to regressive higher. This kind of tax that puts it's heaviest burden somewhere between the above average income segment of the working class and the petit bourgeois middle class is somewhat more popular than straight regressive taxation (when you take into account payroll taxes and favorable taxation on LTCG and certain other income disproportionately concentrated among the very rich, US taxes on income also largely break this way).
> Calling these taxes regressive just a socially acceptable way for people to say “I don’t want to shoulder any burden for this”.
Er, no. I actually favor heavier gas taxes (or carbon taxes) as a pigovian tax, but I think that the overall system of taxation should be asjusted so the net effect is not to to decrease progressivity (which, given that I have above average income, probably means I shoulder the burden of that as well as of the additional gas tax, so really the opposite of what you suggest). An individual tax desirable for other reasons being regressive is an addressivle issue.
I'm not sure that's true about consumption in general?
But in any case, I don't think it matters too much whether individual taxes are progressive or regressive or flat. That consideration only really makes a difference for the overall tax system. Individual taxes can be designed to be as efficient as possible, as long as the overall system is as progressive/flat/regressive as desired.
Asking the rich to pay even a fraction of their fair share is not "punishing" the rich.
Just so we're clear, punishing them would involve, say, jailing them or confiscating all but $50k or so of their net worth and then making them work at Burger King for a month or two. That would be punishing.
Asking for a more progressive and fair tax system does not "punish" anyone.
There surely needs to be some incorporation of need into the calculations. The rich control enough of our resources that they are unlikely to be put off by a tax, whereas everyday people would be crippled by taxes high enough to make a difference.
I think tax incentives (and indeed fines) proportional to wealth/income work on everyone. But if you make it flat then obviously they're going to have an outsized effect on the poor.
In economics, an externality [0] is a cost that is not paid for by the buyer or the seller but generally society bears the cost. For example, when buying a pollution machine - the cost to the environment may not be factored into the purchase price despite it being there.
Internalizing the externalities refers adding an additional cost to the purchase price to cover for the externality. In the example above for the pollution machine, this could be a carbon tax or a carbon offset.
Talking about the individuals' personal choices first and foremost, instead of the state action and regulation that needs to occur is both alienating, and counterproductive. It's a tool used by corporations that benefit from lax regulation, to shift the blame for their negative externalities to the public. For example, the 'carbon footprint' is a marketing invention from BP.
Yes. Cars actively and provably harm other people with their emissions. Yet society tolerates them as a necessary evil (also due to the lobbying from car companies and big oil).
Hobbies that harm other people by polluting are not a "necessary evil". They are not necessary.
For example, in many cities in the world it's illegal to have a bonfire because it makes people (unwillingly) inhale toxic particulate.
Travelling is most CO2 intensive when air travel is involved. It would be fine if faraway travel took more time. But yes, in any case, we need to reduce air travel.
I strongly disagree and this kind of virtue signaling leaves a bad authoritarian taste. We used to look at amazing engineering in supercars, now all we hear about is woke fetish for reducing life quality, living in a pod and driving a scooter. The current trend is to ban all luxury and prevent people from excelling at craftsmanship. It gives people jobs, reduces income inequality (transfer of wealth from top to bottom) and propelling culture forward. Nevermind that.
All this is very perverse, like a race to the bottom with double-standards and contradictions everywhere. "For thee, not me".
Funny, living in cities that prioritize other modes of transport (biking, buses, trains, etc) has drastically improved my quality of life, as opposed to places that prioritize cars and inevitably end up being traffic-locked hellholes.
Living in cities that make you want to bike is good, you're choosing to bike and that means you're happier biking than driving. Living in a city based around driving when the government tries to ban ICEs is bad, because you wish you were allowed to drive. Good policy finds a way to align top-down directives with bottom-up preferences.
1) this isn't a Ferrari, the article literally describes this car as an anti-Prius
2) even the most polluting Ferrari, which according to this page (1) emits 385g/km , is still almost a quarter less polluting than this car (506 g/km according to the article)
Yes? An individual can't choose to revolutionize the shipping industry themselves but they sure as hell can choose a car that's not as polluting and less of a hazard to pedestrians. That's very much a personal choice that I'm happy to judge.
> An individual can't choose to revolutionize the shipping industry
Yes, but this entire thread is about de-revolutionizing the car industry. People in China and India would like to have a word with us.
We should be working on sequestrating CO2 from the atmosphere using novel means (Solar, Nuclear), making breakthroughs in efficiency and promoting domestic manufacturing. I don't have the answers. I am just pointing out the double-standards that are hidden behind massive sweeping statements like "Ban all cars".
These discussions tend to be about one-upping each other instead of discussing fundamental issues and solving them. It is mostly political, not objective and shying away from confronting reality.
> Yes, but this entire thread is about de-revolutionizing the car industry
How is it de-revolutionizing to optimize away from massive, wasteful cars like this and towards more efficient cars -- or perhaps even systems where personal cars are done away with entirely as a necessity?
> People in China and India would like to have a word with us.
India has roughly half of the country not owning a car, and the US, Japan, and Mexico all manufacture more cars than them. Not sure what bone they'd have to pick in this fight other than you assuming they're invested in manufacturing cars?
> We should be working on sequestrating CO2 from the atmosphere using novel means (Solar, Nuclear), making breakthroughs in efficiency and promoting domestic manufacturing.
All true, but we can do all those while also disincentivizing wasteful cars like the one described in the article that serve as nothing more than dangerous, pedestrian-killing status symbols.
Interestingly, when we live in a society where people disagree, this is exactly the way you can frame any policy you disagree with. Car owners have imposed their lifestyles on me my entire life. See? :)
Where did I say anyone was forcing me? I'm talking about the fact that most cities don't have car-less areas for pedestrians and bicyclists only, and that initiatives like the closure of JFK drive in SF to drivers being met with fierce resistance. Things like refusing to make protected bike lanes, refusing to build out adequate public transit, all in favor of... More highway lanes. More parking.
But sure, don't engage with the argument at hand, I guess.
Right, but not forced since OP literally said "Funny, living in cities that prioritize other modes of transport (biking, buses, trains, etc) has drastically improved my quality of life"
it's forced since i need to live where the jobs are, and kids who can't drive need to live where their parents are.
we all need to be able live together, and just as a completely carless city is unrealistic, a car only city is no better, but the latter unfortunately is often the reality.
We still look in awe at the amazing engineering in supercars. it's just that now, low to no carbon emissions is part of being an admirable super car. A gas guzzler is bad engineering
What did you think the "hacker" in Hacker News meant? While the actual activities rarely match the "learning to understand and control systems" sense, it's 100% in line with that niche usage. That usage also frequently fails to consider or care about ordinary senses of law and morality.
I can see this kind of take in most areas were most people live: dense urban networks along coasts. But the rest of us really do need cars to get around and no amount of city planning/rebuilding or place to place public transport is going to change that.
Yes, it is quite possible that I am a bit jaded. I just get tired being lectured to on that - not by you or the OP, just randos IRL, who love flying all over the world on vacation, while driving a prius or tesla.
I thought the subject was cars right now. I see the point of bringing up something for a larger perspective, but this here is just whataboutism. With this "argument" it's useless to talk about any source of pollution - because there always is another one. Also, using a different car is very easy, it does not compare to not flying, so the comparison is more than just a little flawed to begin with.
My point was about being principled not whataboutism. Of the people telling others to not drive cars, how many people are avoiding flying for non-essential travel? Its easy to tell others to sacrifice, and I'm sure that everyone has at-least one cause they care about.
> Also, using a different car is very easy, it does not compare to not flying, so the comparison is more than just a little flawed to begin with.
What if one wants to drive a gas guzzler, but avoid airline travel? :)
Global warming is one thing. Supporting war criminals like Vladimir Putin or Mohammed Bin Salman is another. I don't want to subsidise them.
So the rare times I drive, I mostly use an electric. The even rarer times I drive a diesel car, I use HVO100 [0]. That is by choice. I consciously try to limit my fossil fuel consumption with the goal of reducing war subsidies and global warming. So what if that makes me a naive idiot.
And yes, I hope for more people to share those goals, eventually translating them into my government's energy policies.
But but but... am I a gas guzzler party pooper? Not at all! Museum workshops work wonderfully well for steam trains, historical agricultural tools and industrial archeology. They could work very well for this kind of historical vehicle propulsion too!
Totally with you. Lets say 90km trip A to B in this car will get one there say 3,6 seconds faster 0,1% improvement in performance for about 3-4x the pollution.
It's really disappointing that the woke-scolding comment is now the top one.
Since the comment in question is merely a normative opinion on what we should do, here's mine: We should banish the fun police, and stop believing all the hyperbolic things that activists tell us. [1]
We are under no obligation to align every aspect of our life (like interest in fancy cars) with the puritan values of anyone.
That’s an unreasonably judgemental thing to say. I like high performance cars because they’re fun to drive and I also support the owner’s right to change the software on their vehicles. Software freedom != sociopathy.
They have the right, but by not paying the tax and removing the limiter they're committing fraud. At least name what you're defending. If you like driving a fast, multi-ton vehicle maybe the externalities of that fun should be accounted for in the cost? Just an idea
it might be said a little aggressively, but the point remains.
there is ZERO reason to be buying (or producing) vehicles like this. climate change is seriously happening for real, and this is like flicking off everybody who gives a shit for no reason.
if you need a truck like this to work (people got along fine with trucks with less power for a century), they aren't paying the asking price anyway
I am 9 years vegetarian, haven't air traveled in over a year, and drink only oat milk. I have a 40 year old steel bike for grocery store runs that are close and short. I am starting up a vegetable farm in my home to reduce need for shipped foods, which will get it's water from rain collection (in in the PNW). I don't commute to work, 100% remote.
No, it’s not. It sounds like you still air traveled in the last decade. Your emissions are likely higher than someone who has never air traveled and drives a truck around their local town.
Where does your electricity come from? Ecosystem destroying dams or fossil fuels? The PNW is pretty bad when it comes to energy and I would much prefer you move to the desert where you can live on solar or vote to put in some nuclear. Both of those would be vastly better for the earth than your plan for a vegetable farm.
moving the goalposts is so pathetic. not that GPs inane point that you ostensibly clarified wasn't obvious.. my point is I am doing my best with what I believe.
those truck buyers could start literally anywhere, but I doubt they are. same goes for the tuning company.
there is clearly a grey line. and this truck is clearly way past it.
But that’s all that you’ve done. You’ve just moved them somewhere that’s convenience for you.
That’s what I’m demonstrating here. If you don’t pick something objective like CO2 emissions and tax that directly, this is just a big pointless fucking culture war that does nothing to help climate change.
There is no shared sacrifice here, it’s just “fuck the person that buys this truck”. Nothing to do with emissions or anything like that.
yes... it's politics... call it "culture war" if you want to diminish the other
and yes. fuck the person who bought that truck (the very specific topic of the OP and this whole thread), and skirted the taxes, the very objective measure you purport to uphold.
this truck doesn't even pass the sniff test. it's blatant.
what do you even want?? I have no idea what you're arguing for.
I suggest we sue the shit out of corps skirting taxes. call the individuals who participate assholes.
the only reason you called me out is because for some reason I'm not allowed to have an opinion about this because lines are blurry?? it's called politics, where you hadh out the lines, redraw them, and hash them out again.
if you want to call me an asshole, fine, do it. you might be right, I'm probably a hipocrite in some area I haven't examined yet. but at least I'm trying
The point isn’t that you need to do those things, just that the line is arbitrary, those on one side are precipitating the demise of our planet and those on the other are wackos, righteousness lies on the line itself.
Posture elicits an emotional response and ad-hominem, this (inane I think you called it) conversation being a prime example. One of the reasons people are so divided is because we tend to lazily rely on how something makes us feel rather than doing the hard work of estimating the actual impact of something.
an individual's emotional response gets them to act. rational people tell them where to channel their energy. we need both.
but you put up goal posts marking objective things people can do better on, as if to check whether or not I'm allowed to have an opinion on this truck (which is the inane part, not the whole conversation) tho I'm tired of it as well.
I met those goal posts and went further because I've been acting on the emotional and rational responses for years now.
my point is that we don't need "arbitrary" lines to find out whether this specific truck skirting these specific taxes is crossing them. it's so flagrant it doesn't need an emotional or rational justification.
it clearly does.
just admit your original comment was an emotional one, go back and read it and tell me it wasn't at all.
I don't care whether we are polarized. I don't believe we are going to experience a magical unification where we figure out politics out and defeat climate change.
it's a slow train downhill and everybody who isn't getting on board now (trying and learning to reduce) is my enemy. end of story.
Why are you so limited in imagination? This is a fun car which statistically won't be driven every day. Just like Ferraris and Paganis, this is a weekend show-off trophy car.
This real super-happening climate change won't be impacted by literally a handful of people in Europe sometimes being half as efficient as a normal truck.
There's more FIA cars than Hennessey ones. Do you want to ban that as well?
i don't believe in ethically owning those cars either....
and this ostentatious excess a side effect of the processes that got us into critical climate change in the first place: a proliferation of needless consumption driven by manufactured demand due to excessive production.
and yes, we need to massively rethink car and transportation infrastructure to compensate.
maybe it is you who is limited in actual eyesight?
Because it placates one-dimensional morons into thinking they are doing something to stop climate change without actually changing anything. How many hours have been spent discussing this do-nothing tax while planes still fly without additional taxes?
Another 20% airfare tax would do more in a week for climate change than this tax will do ever.
> NIMBYism is a real part of failed climate policy
What you’re supporting is the definition of NIMBYism. It’s a tax on other people doing things you don’t like and it’s not happening to you so it’s okay.
> What you’re supporting is the definition of NIMBYism. It’s a tax on other people doing things you don’t like and it’s not happening to you so it’s okay.
how do you know I wouldn't support it? I would never buy that truck ever so of course I wouldn't need to pay a tax for it... I also support a 20% airfare tax. because I don't fly a lot. because I don't want to. because it's bad...
I would support insanely radical climate austerity measures imposed on my treasured way of life. I truly am ready to give up a lot if society starts moving in lockstep to face the future.
if only there were politicians willing to do so. but NIMBYs make sure they'll never be elected. until, to your point, it is in their back yard.
> I would support insanely radical climate austerity measures imposed on my treasured way of life. I truly am ready to give up a lot if society starts moving in lockstep to face the future.
Well good for you, you're a saint[1].
Newsflash 1: Most ordinary people aren't.
Newsflash 2: The world is made up of ordinary people.
Newsflash 3: The only thing saints accomplish by parading their sainthood is annoying ordinary people.
___
[1]: At least here, on-line. And I'm sure you're sincere about it, as long as it's about stuff that wouldn't happen to you. As for the "truly ready to give up [your] treasured way of life"... We only have you saying that.
Actually, you are right. You should be allowed to change the software. You should still not be allowed to drive faster than 90 kph. And have to proof in case of question that you did not go faster than allowed. But the software should be free, there you are right.
there are a myriad of wasteful, polluting machines in the world today. who is the arbiter of who is and who is not allowed to use such a machine?
also why blame anyone who purchases such a vehicle for nonsensical tax laws? it is not clearly a commercial vehicle yet the laws are such that it is considered so simply by weighing a certain amount. that is what creates the tax loophole, not the speed limiter. the limiter is simply a consequence of an arbitrary classification.
It's not arbitrary. The weight and speed have external impacts on road durability as well as air quality. Compare the amount of carbon dioxide released by a truck of that size and most other residential polluting machines and it doesn't come close.
If you want to push the cost of your hobby onto society by commiting tax fraud I don't think it's the democratically elected legislature that's at issue here.
I thought they were of concern for the effect on the global climate, in contrast to NOx, CO or HC emissions.
I would think it's academic anyway, because a vehicle that costs as much as a Ferrari isn't going to be used to commute in. Ten times the CO2 emissions from a vehicle driven 1/10th as much is a wash.
As far as weight goes, it may be huge but the article says it's just barely large enough to be classed with commercial vehicles. Wouldn't you think the biggest commercial trucks do most road damage? There's a widespread factoid that the damage is a very nonlinear function of weight, and so road taxes are allegedly misapportioned.
> The weight and speed have external impacts on road durability as well as air quality. Compare the amount of carbon dioxide released by a truck of that size and most other residential polluting machines and it doesn't come close.
Correlation, causation regarding weight/size of vehicle and external impact. Its actually quite simple to objectively determine that sort of impact on a vehicle by vehicle basis, all of this is known. No reason to anchor it to the weight of a vehicle.
Again, the tax aspect ("fraud") is NOT being pushed by a potential purchaser. the laws FORCE it to be a vehicle that is tax exempt (according to the article).
The government is well accepted as being that arbiter. The tax laws are reasonable, and keeping that vehicle driving slowly is correct for maintaining the shared infrastructure it will drive on
Driving this 15,000 miles a year would release about 12.2 metric tons of CO2 annually. That's equivalent to a couple going on a single roundtrip flight from California to Europe: https://flightfree.org/flight-emissions-calculator.
Judging by my Facebook, I know a lot of sociopathic assholes. :-/
At these rates and a great circle distance of ~8000km you'd get 4 metric tons for two people round trip. Long-haul planes are likely more efficient than average per passenger mile, so some SFO-LHR round-trips are actually closer to 1 metric ton per person. Still not great, of course.
Don't even have to be that specific, the investors in and customers of every airline, but especially budget airlines that fly holiday destinations = sociopaths.
Or you know, the fact that it produces literally six times the emissions of a ULEV (75 g/km). I swear, some people absolutely do not give a shit about the planet, as long as it's fine while they're alive.
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This is also to avoid taxes.