Can the fuel emissions be reduced like this?

Question

What if starting in say, 2009 they re-vamp the Gas Guzzler tax. For every person that buys a low gas milage vehicle, for instance, 20 mpg and below they are charged a $2000 fee to the EPA. (If your gonna spend $40,000 on a vanity vehicle you should pay it anyway) Then the EPA would take that money and give it back as an insentive to people buying high milage vehicles and fuel cell cars, say 50-60 mpg. SUV's are selling at a rate of over 1,000,000 per month in the US and hybrid sold at an all time high in July 2007 at 187,000. That could equate to about a $3000-$4000 insentive to start out and taper off as the hybrids begin to overtake the sale of gas guzzlers. all the while cleaning up the environment and not to mention sticking it to the oil companies. So there you go Hillary, you and Obama take it from here.

Answer 1

Ain't gonna work.

1. Car manufactures are just going to lower the price by that amount or pay it for you to get you to buy gas guzzling cars, trucks and suv's.  They're highly profitable.

2. What you're suggesting is going to penalize people who truly need these vehicles, like businesses, car poolers, handicapped etc.

3. As long as gas is cheap, people are going to waste it by cruising around, road trips, not carpooling.

4. By offering incentives for buying higher mileage cars, people can buy hybrids and live farther away form their jobs and still use the same amount of gas.

What should be done is add that fee to the gas and use the money for hydrogen or charging stations.  This will encourage people think twice about driving a gas guzzler and to carpool, move closer to work, find jobs closer to home...

Why penalize people who want to drive a nice car but don't drive a lot of miles?  Why reward someone that buys a hybrid and commutes 2-3 hours to work every day?

If gas cost too much, people won't buy as much and they'll find alternatives.

Answer 2

No, people will just pay more for the car they want.  But good idea, that gas guzzler tax is a real winner.  Especially since it is based on a test that has proven to be really worthless to estimating actual gas mileage.

Answer 3

No new taxes.  I case I was not clear: No New Taxes.  In case you didn't hear me:  NO NEW TAXES!.  In case you don't understand.  Not just No to new taxes, but h**l NO!!!!!!!!.

Now what part of No New Taxes do you not understand.

Answer 4

This is not a new idea. Europe has been doing this for decades. Japan also.

Hybrids are just a stopgap measure until we can get to plug-in electric vehicles for commuting and running errands (most of what we really do with our cars) and linear electric drives for long distances and trucking. There are alternatives that no-one talks about.

I am sure that there is another energy source that has not been explored. When a different energy shortage was endangering our standard of living we started to use oil. We found that we didn't need whale oil for lamps light anymore and a huge petrochemical industry arose. Can we use Geothermal? Tidal motions? Wind? Photovoltaic panels? Waves? Or something else?

All of those are very possible partial solutions to our energy needs and we need  not rely on the supplies of oil to be our only source of energy.