This week, we’ve been running a sidebar survey asking who Electrek readers think should be allowed to drive gas- and diesel-powered vehicles. After getting more than 2,000 submissions, here’s what you told us.
Despite the billions of dollars’ worth of damage being done to our air, our lungs, and our climate by internal combustion, it seems like the switch to zero-emissions vehicles is one that almost half of you believe should be totally voluntary, which just under half of the opinion-having respondents choosing the, “Whoever wants one. (Let freedom ring!)” option … but, perhaps, not for the free market-loving reasons you might first think.
Give the right incentives, add increased health care costs to the price of gas, and let the market play out. Force people and they will rebel and we’ll get another Trump.
EricK
EricK wasn’t alone, either, and several of his fellow Electrekkers took to the comments to voice similar concerns about EV mandates being counterproductive.
Whoever wants one. As we’ve found with prohibition and the war on drugs, banning something is the worst way to get rid of it. Now we can put in policies to encourage people to move to EVs, higher road taxes, credits for getting an EV, ending subsidies for fossil fuels, making EVs more socially desirable. But there will be a hardcore crowd that insists they will stay ICE, some might actually need them. But if we make EVs better, and push them a lot of people will choose to switch voluntarily.
BCGeiger
At least one readers who seems to have chosen the “Other” option thinks we can wean the most high-resistance (Ha!) EV drivers over the course of their next 2-3 vehicle purchases – with the right sort of legislation, of course.
No need to go Brown Shirt. you cut off new car sales and let nature run its course. Boomers’ love of “real” cars will filter out along with us soon enough. some will buy a final year ICE Corvette and cling forever. So what, statistical dust. cars have a half life of maybe 5 years in most hands. Those drivers will tend to want another new car rather than keep the old one they are sick of. And if you don’t push them around and get their backs up most will have no real strong reason in 2040’s range and charging environment to not buy an EV. buybacks are an option as are subsidies to buy out poverty line drivers and get them into a used leaf or such. we’re already doing them for gross polluters. There are many noncoercive options to accelerate their retirement.
we can deal with a some declining points over a decade or two after the cutoff, if we’d just stick to the cutoff plan. that’s the only coercive power play needed. don’t overdo it.
Harry Tuttle
Still, there were some Electrek readers, over 10% in fact, who believed that no one should be allowed to drive an internal combustion vehicle – especially in the face of global droughts, oil wars, climate change, and the constantly increasing capital costs of lost labor time and medical care that are being irrefutably driven by the West’s reliance on internal combustion.
I’m surprised to see so many people say that the market should decide. Existential threats to life should not be left to the whims of the market. That’s basically a death wish. You wouldn’t let the market decide if kids should bring guns to school, so why would you let it risk your life in other ways? We’ve become so enthralled to the cult of the free market that we’re willing to even sacrifice our lives for it. At least when we’re all dead, we can say we lived in a “free market”, right? What more could one ask for in life?
AMoralDefiant
As for me, I voted for “Only special use cases,” as the sunk carbon cost of building a new electric track car or motorcycle will take a long time – if ever – to overtake with tailpipe emissions if you’re only doing a few track days or car shows per year in the same way that antique and off-road vehicles can get special emissions exemptions today.
Obviously that’s a pretty self-serving argument, but with less than 5,000 miles on my own ethanol-fueled track car over the last decade, it would likely be another twenty or so yeas before I’d be threatening to get into a carbon positive space with an EV. I’m happy to get taken to task, though – feel free to scroll down to the comments and maybe show me the error of my ways.
On your way there, check out the breakdown of last week’s survey, below, then take a look at the sidebar for this week’s question and see if your comment gets picked for a highlight.
Original content from Electrek.
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