[giardia]

A blind tax on ICE would be regressive as hell.

You'll be punishing people who can't afford an electric or hybrid which would in turn reduce their employment opportunities, either by taxing the fuel at a higher rate or by making their vehicle more expensive upfront (so they either don't want to put miles on it or they're forced to get a cheaper vehicle which is more prone to issues) -- and let's be honest, public transport outside the major city centers is a joke in America and probably always will be because of how spread out we are.

Rural residents (frequently low income) often don't have a stable enough grid to charge electric vehicles reliably either.

Don't get me wrong, I think we need to make the shift but there are still a lot of unresolved practical issues. I expect there's a lot more room for technological improvements in the next 5-10 years which will drive the cost so low that people won't even want an ICE unless it's really necessary for something. Honestly, there's bigger fish to fry with carbon emissions anyway.

[Rebelgecko]

Can you elaborate? I didn't realize there were places in the US without reliable electricity (other than during storms or whatever). How common is that, outside of people who are willingly "off the grid"?

[giardia]

There are quite a few places in densely forested areas. But it's not just a matter of uptime (which is an issue), but of capacity. If you live 50-100 miles out of town in a small community, the community can't afford to upgrade those lines. The county won't pay for it, and neither will the state or feds. That kind of range also means you need to charge fairly often.

[Rebelgecko]

Is the hardware limited by peak usage or just overall daily consumption? If people mostly charge at night I can't imagine it'll impact peak consumption that much

[hedora]

Unless you are talking about fast DC chargers, an EV's current draw is comparable to a households appliance, such as an electric range, dryer or furnace.

I'd be surprised to hear of a community with trunk lines that actually can't handle 1-2 EVs per house.

[fwungy]

Yes, but these things are the big electric consumers so adding a new class of high load appliances on a mass scale is a big deal.

[hedora]

For us (SF bay area) PG&E didn't manage 2 nines last year or the year before, and it is already mathematically impossible for them to get 2 nines this year.

Edit: Having said that, we are in the middle of an extended outage, so I just charge the EV in town. There are fast DC chargers in grocery store lots and near restaurants, so this isn't inconvenient at all. Our ICE pickup wouldn't fit well on the (often one bidirectional lane) roads this week, due to slides, debris, and rerouted heavy equipment / repair trucks.

The EV has 135 mile range (more like 100 in current conditions). EVs are fine in rural areas (probably up to abput 100 miles from town, assuming a car with a 300 mile EPA range). Also, we'll be buying a generator, ASAP, for other reasons. We could use that to charge the car on cloudy days after a Puerto Rico style grid collapse.

[Rebelgecko]

Is it one 3 consecutive day outage? Or a bunch of 2-3 hour outages here and there? I think the latter is not a big deal, especially if it's localized and you can just drive into town to use a charger (like you said).

[jeffbee]

1) The meme that gas tax is regressive is an Exxon propaganda plant.

2) It is extremely simple to make a progressive gas tax. You set the tax at a high enough level to establish a consumer incentive. Say, $2 per liter. Every month, everyone gets a check for their share of the revenue, divided among the whole population. At current rates of consumption this would be $160/month/person. For anyone who burned the average amount of motor fuel, it's a wash. But for people who used less fuel than average it's profit, and motor fuel consumption is proportional to income so it is naturally progressive. If you make the refund taxable income then it is even more progressive, because the median person doesn't even pay income taxes.

With the above plan suddenly everyone wants to use less gas than the average guy.

[noahtallen]

It’s a neat idea, but is this really true?

> motor fuel consumption is proportional to income so it is naturally progressive

Counterpoints:

- Older, cheaper cars are less fuel efficient and use more gas.

- Rent is cheaper further from job centers, meaning long commutes.

- Places where rent is cheaper tend to have less investment in walkability and public transit, meaning cars are used more often.

[jeffbee]

I don’t know why you are posting these suppositions when the government measures this directly. The spread between the lowest and highest income quintiles in terms of motor fuel consumption is 300%.

“ The highest income quintile (making at least $95,000 per year) spent slightly more than $4,000 on gasoline in 2013, while the lowest income quintile (making under $18,000 per year) spent about $1,200 on gasoline. Higher-income households also have more vehicles: 2.8 per household for the highest quintile compared with 0.9 per household for the lowest quintile.”

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=20772