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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (308376)	10/31/2006 4:54:10 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572190

go after the 1 or 2 issues that cause 80% of your problem I didn't argue that you shouldn't go after the biggest problem. The point is that your calculations get thrown off, not that "the idea should be totally abandoned because you aren't dealing with 100% of the issue." Interest goes both ways though. Yes but interest is a bigger factor in an upfront capital expenditure (buying a new car) than it is with an expense paid over the life time of the car. People might not have to borrow to pay for fuel, and even if they do, the borrowing occurs over the whole lifetime of the vehicle. If you have a car for 10 years you pay the cost of the car upfront and pay interest for the life of the loan. If you borrow money for the fuel you don't borrow the whole cost upfront when you get the car and pay interest on it for the lifetime of the vehicle. If the government subsidizes the vehicle purchase than, since the government generally doesn't pay off its debt, it tends to roll over the principle and thus pays the interest cost indefinitely. The interest on the fuel, if any, will not be for as long of period. Not true. Prius hybrids cost $25-30K depending on where and when you buy it. Priuses get subsidies. Also if your replacing all vehicles you would be replacing not just cares comparable to the Prius but larger, faster, and more luxurious cars. Also the Prius is neither a "plug in hybrid" nor a flex fueled vehicle. 4 - Your ignoring the cost of the flex fuel. Your calculating a 75% reduction in oil use, but the cars are "flex fuel" burning some mix. If they are burning ethanol or bio-diesel or whatever you have to count the cost of that fuel, which may be more than the cost of gasoline. That is true and that may completely offset the cost savings to American consumers. It may, when combined with the cost of replacing the vehicles, and the extra cost involved in making vehicles "flex fuel, plug-in hybrids", do much more than offset the cost savings to American consumers. This factor is huge. Since alternate fuels tend to be more expensive there is no saving to cancel out the additional capital cost for all the new vehicles. Its a huge hole in your plan. Enriching American farmers will have a multiplier effect on our economy, which will boost our standard of living, create jobs, etc. Subsidies don't generally have a positive multiplier effect. The money spent does indeed get spent again or invested, and thus it has a multiplier, but so would the same money if it was never taxed away or used for the subsidy. In this case you wouldn't only be subsidizing the vehicle, but also the fuel Ethanol received subsidies, and most alternate fuels are more expensive than gasoline, so they would either have to receive subsidies, or be mandated, or people would tend to still use gasoline and you wouldn't get the 70% reduction you want. 5 - If cars become more fuel efficient or otherwise cheaper to operate you may get an increase in miles driven, esp. if your subsidizing the cost of the car (so more people might have cars). Nice try, but this is not true. Miles driven has proven to be remarkably inelastic in the face of fluctuating gas prices. Total miles driven, isn't very elastic, esp. in the short run, but its not totally inelastic. Its a relatively minor factor, but it is still a factor. In any case that's only one of the two factors I mentioned. Your also subsidizing the cost of the vehicle which might lead to more vehicles and indirectly to more miles. Of course, each person would only get one of those incentives. What about people with multiple vehicles? Or what about someone who takes the incentive for one vehicle but buys a conventional vehicle as well (or are you going to outlaw them)? And what about the additional cost for future vehicles. (Not the whole cost of the vehicle but the incremental cost involved in making it a flex fueled plug in hybrid?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (308376)	10/31/2006 4:57:56 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572190

How much does it cost to save a gallon of gas? This is a tough question, but it is the question we need to ask of all approaches to energy independence or CO2 reduction. For reference, ethanol costs over $7 per gallon saved in subsidies to corn farmers and ethanol producers (mostly producers). Hybrids do better. A Toyota Prius hybrid would save fossil gallons at a cost of about $3/gallon. To be specific, if you own one for five years, you will save 882 gallons of gas and it will cost you $2,744 dollars more than if you bought a Toyota Corolla LE non-hybrid and drove the same 75,000 miles. That's right. It costs more, even though you buy less gas, because the cars cost more. This is based on a cost study by Consumer Reports, which includes initial cost, depreciation, insurance, maintenance, financing and resale. It also assumes an average price of gas over the five years of $2.58. zfacts.com "oyota has a hybrid deal for you Toyota Prius.jpgThe Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins has this clever column ($) today in the form of a fictional letter from Toyota to owners of its popular hybrid vehicle, the Prius. The main point of Jenkins' column is that hybrid technology is not really "green" technology at all. Rather, it's really just an expensive option that generates large markups for Toyota and its dealers. In so doing, Jenkins notes the following about the notion that a hybrid's supposed fuel efficiency makes up for its higher cost: Let us assure you that the Prius remains one of the most fuel-efficient cars on the road. Toyota applauds your willingness to spend $9,500 over the price of any comparable vehicle for the privilege of saving, at current gasoline prices, approximately $580 a year. And should the price of gasoline rise to $5, after 10 years and/or 130,000 miles of driving, you might even come close to breaking even on your investment in hybrid technology." blog.kir.com Cars, carbon, and Kyoto: evaluating an emission charge and other policy instruments as incentives for a transition to hybrid cars in New Zealand B. B. Gleisner S. A. Weaver Environmental Studies, Institute of Geography School of Earth Sciences Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600 Wellington, New Zealand Abstract Transition to hybrid petrol/electric vehicles (HEVs) is one means among many of reducing carbon emissions pursuant to the New Zealand emissions reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol. The potential financial incentive value of an emissions charge was evaluated by comparing purchase and running costs of an HEV with an equivalent petrol-fuelled car. Had a carbon tax of $15/tonne CO2 operated in January 2006, the net fuel efficiency saving on the basis of the emissions charge and the inbuilt fuel efficiency of the HEV amounted to $655.50 annually for an HEV. When compared with a $7000 purchase price differential in favour of petrol-fuelled vehicles, it can be concluded the proposed carbon tax would not have provided a sufficient incentive to bring about any significant change in the distribution of HEVs across the market. Shifting the norm to a higher proportion of fuel-efficient cars will therefore require other incentives and/or policy mechanisms. We explore alternative policy options for bringing about such a shift, including the option of a tradable vehicle emission permit system. rsnz.org