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Strategies & Market Trends : The New Economy and its Winners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (21615)	8/3/2004 4:20:48 PM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Respond to of 57684

>>Well, I know 2 people that own hybrids while the rest of my neighborhood looks like that commercial where all the parents are driving construction equipment like caterpillars and cranes and steamrollers to school. The hybrid people are paying less than $20 to fill up their tanks per week to commute in SV, and other people with these huge gas guzzlers are paying $80. I can't see how that makes anyone "worse off".<< I don't know what it's like where you are, but around here, hybrids cost at least $3-$4,000 than the traditional internal combustion version of the same model. I doubt the difference in the cost of filling the tank is $60, but I grant you you will fill your tank fewer times with a hybrid. Regardless, the point is that it takes a very long time for the hybrid owner to recoup difference in the initial outlay over what he or she would pay for internal combustion. In that sense, the hybrid owner would be worse off if he or she were to, for example, sell the car before recouping the higher cost. From a societal point of view, I do not know what the environmental or efficiency cost of manufacturing, distributing, utilizing and then disposing of a hybrid is over what the equivalent internal combustion car would cost in terms of environmental impact or energy efficiency, or, for that matter, money out of the pockets of the various actors (of course the consumer always pays the ultimate cost). However, this is something that must be taken into account, and I know of no one who has done so. (A recent article in Technology Review does suggest that a true assessment of the overall costs and benefits of adopting a hydrogen economy is much more of a mixed bag than proponents generally claim.) None of this takes into account the psychological value that many (I would guess most) hybrid owners derive from driving a lower-polluting, higher-mileage per tank hybrid. And, if they have made that assessment, and for them the benefits outweigh the costs, there is nothing wrong with that choice. The imporant thing is that it should be a choice that people are free to make or not make. It is worth noting that, while, from the car-buying consumer's perspective, the decision to buy a hybrid is a choice, from the auto manufacturer's perspective, it is anything but. Like the SUV, the hybrid is very much a creature of government regulation, specifically the regulations of the AQMD and the State of California. I question whether it can genuinely be said that the government does a better job than the private sector of making these choices. >>I'm not really satisfied to drift into 70s style economic hardship for everyone just because a few unimaginative politicians say "theres nothing we can do". << I am not satisfied to drift back into the '70's, either. The '70's were a disaster, the result of 40 years of increasing government over-regulation of the economy and of life. An unimaginative politician says "there's nothing we can do," and the status quo regulatory game goes on. It takes a courageous politician to say, in the face of lobbying pressure, "there's nothing we should do."